The difference is the end game. VCs and Investors are expected to ultimately want a profitable company, so after Uber kills competition (Lyft, Public Transit) the price is expected to rise substantially. Public transit is expected to not be profitable, ever and is expected to use the combination of taxes and fees to operate not for profit.
One thing that seems to get completely lost is that these arguments proceed as if we're talking about public transit versus private transit in the abstract, but that's not actually the conversation. What we're talking about is public transits in a localities versus a single corporation nationwide.
Replacing a conglomerate of public local services, beholden to voters, providing essential infrastructure, with single national private monopoly seems like such an obviously bad idea I don't understand how this conversation is taking place.
Maybe we should be arguing in favor of how to make public transportation more competitive in some way, or how to increase diversity of private options, but the idea that we should just hand our national transportation infrastructure over to Uber is just crazy.
Between this and arguments against net neutrality (when we should be forcing more competition onto ISPs and increasing public ISP options), lately I feel like Americans are living in some delusion about the role of the private sector in society.
