Airbnb and Uber are shit in 2025. They're basically no better than what they were trying to replace. "The arc" you describe is people saying that these products aren't a magical solution that prints money and being proven right as the products are worn down to the level of the thing they were trying to disrupt by market forces.
Uber, in particular, drives me nuts because we replaced a supposedly powerful and evil taxi cartel (which happened to be a bunch of small, regional businesses) with a huge multinational corporation. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Totally get the frustration. Uber and Airbnb definitely have their flaws. But the sheer scale of users (200M last I checked) shows that a product can be both polarizing and essential at the same time.
Kind of like how we’re seeing with LLMs: not perfect, often overhyped, but undeniably useful at scale.
Convenience, consistency, and global. They solved real pain points, even if the cost and ethics are now questionable.
It’s like a software library that’s buggy and bloated but everyone depends on it because rewriting it from scratch is harder than dealing with its flaws.
You start from a false premise, that we have now is better than before.
Taxis were better than Ubers, bed&breakfast were better than AirBnB.
Maybe you are just too young to know it. The only reason we moved to Uber is because it was half the price of taxis, because it was subsidized, not anymore.
Uber and Airbnb solved real pain points: global availability, predictable, nice interfaces, cashless payments, reviews etc. These are the things small, local systems struggled to provide consistently.
Also, my point isn't that the current system is objectively better. It's that scale and convenience created network effects that make it "essential" in practice, even if it’s buggy, slow, or worse in some respects.
Taxis and B&Bs and Hotels all still exist and compete with Uber and AirBnB.
Even at the same price there are valid reasons why many people prefer an Uber over a Taxi, in particular the predictable pricing and globally consistent UI.
Uber changes the pricing depending on the demmand. Taxis can't do that, they are regulated by law in most of the west.
Predictable my ass. You have been lied to.
And btw all over the world you rise up your arm, and the taxi stops, I think that is a pretty consistent user interface that anybody in the world can understand. I have to help my aunt each time she needs an Uber.
Please don't pretend to be dumb, "predictable" in this context means that you know the final price of the trip before you start the journey, instead of having an odometer.
And randomly hoping for a taxi to drive by maybe works as long as you exclusively travel between airports, train stations, and downtowns of major cities, but if you're even slightly more remote than that you'll have to call or use some random app to get the Taxi to pick you up.
Uber, in particular, drives me nuts because we replaced a supposedly powerful and evil taxi cartel (which happened to be a bunch of small, regional businesses) with a huge multinational corporation. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.