In 2016, near the end of his second term as president, Barack Obama was asked what he planned to do on returning to civilian life. He gave a one-word reply: “Uber.” The joke suggested two changes that had occurred during his presidency. First, Uber had become a verb; the idea of “ubering” was commonplace. Second, the ride-hailing app had changed how Americans thought about the economy: headlines announced the uberization of everything from higher education to healthcare. That September The Economist announced the dawn of “Uberworld.”  The company’s true financial success remains an open question. Founded in 2009, it raised $1.3 million in investor funding within a year; by 2015 its valuation rose to $51 billion, propelled by venture capital from sources like Japan’s SoftBank Group and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Behind the scenes, however, its balance sheets showed staggering losses—$3.8 billion in 2016 alone. In 2019 its Chief Executive Officer, Dara Khosrowshahi, argued that, like Amazon, it was burning through investor cash to establish market dominance; profits would follow in time. This February it announced …