But it doesn't matter which it is

These two are posed as being opposites, exclusionary cases, yet they’re not:

No wonder Uber, Deliveroo and Lyft have lost more than half their value this year, far worse than the Nasdaq average.

For much of their life, the question of whether these businesses are tech companies or merely older business models in fancier packaging has been left unanswered. While they have claimed they are making industries more efficient and improving consumer experiences, critics have complained they simply exploit regulatory loopholes to undercut incumbents.

Exploiting regulatory loopholes to make industries more efficient and improve consumer experiences is not some negative activity that we wish to prevent. For it’s still doing that job of increasing efficiency and the consumer experience.

That regulations prevent this from happening is a fault in the regulatory system, not the attempts to make consumers better off.

Yes, of course that entirely ignores whether these are viable businesses for the long term. But we’ve a system to decide upon that too - that very market they’re competing in. If they go bust, ah, well, nice try, no cigar.

The entire process is beneficial - after all, it’s not entirely unknown for incumbents to shape the regulatory system to ensure that they cannot be undercut now, is it? In which case radical market entry aimed at just those restrictions is markedly beneficial, isn’t it?