Uber ran at a loss to undercut the competition (traditional taxis) and passed the costs of that onto the drivers. Then once people were onboard they increased prices while hanging the drivers out to dry, to the point where ultimately the consumer pays as much as they did for a normal taxi but there's some ease-of-use improvements from the app, a hell of a lot of money ending up in silicon valley instead of local taxi companies, and an ever-growing mass of human suffering as the gig economy erodes the ability of the working class to find economic security.