It's not the technology that's the problem, it's the consolidation of entities that control the technology. Low-cost mobility is vital to a healthy economy. Anything that could potentially monopolize transportation should be heavily scrutinized, or else we end up repeating the history of the railroad monopoly era, but with cars.
I don’t see how “robotaxi” implies “monopoly” at all. The road network is already there. There’s lots of money to be made. The idea that only Waymo will ever be able to figure this out seems rather far-fetched to me.
I believe this is somewhat the point of the article. For example, consider the VC subsidizing of Uber in the early days. That was used as a means of fighting competition because Uber could price more competitively than other potential market entrants. I think the same idea applies with Waymo and Tesla. They’re incumbents in the market with significant war chests to have preferential pricing power, which could allow them to push out competition. From here, even if there’s lots of money to be made, people are generally fickle with these types of apps, and it’s not a huge leap to think they’d take the best deal, even if it means that the competition slowly drains out of the market.
