[balloot]

"you require each user to use a valid credit card"

Who is "you"? Someone, somewhere would be creating a system that verifies unique identities, aggregates ratings, etc. Even if the logic is peer-to-peer, the system requires an extremely robust engineering infrastructure to keep it going, and the people that build that thing take on all the issues Uber is dealing with, but without real control over the system.

Or to put it differently, it's not a coincidence that all big peer-to-peer systems are anchored in weird spots around the world. In any major country the government will hunt down the keepers of the system and hold them accountable for the content.

So, to answer your question directly, you're missing a whole lot.

[lxmorj]

Fair, but I think if Uber truly does remove the regulatory hurdle, than their high-overhead model is not necessarily going to flourish, unless they 'kick the ladder out from behind them' with Uber-specific (ha!) regulatory exceptions. Is the software that handles all these issues really worth XYZ% of the revenue, or could it be done leaner?