When your livelihood is threatened through no fault of your own, you get angry. French taxi drivers have expressed that anger more violently than most. In furious protests against the growth of Uber, they’ve attacked drivers, set piles of tyres ablaze and blocked access to airports — forcing children and the elderly to walk long distances from shuttle buses to the terminals.

You may disagree with their mode of expression, but you can’t deny them their anger.

In the short term, their protest worked. Yesterday, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve restated the illegality of Uber, and ordered any cars defying the law to be seized. Across the world, authorities are trying to determine whether the direct contact Uber facilitates (between people wanting to go somewhere and people willing to take them) should be the preserve of the taxi driver, the person with the license, the badge, the car and the training. A few have ruled pro-taxi, recognising the sums drivers may have spent to set themselves up in business. But the tragedy for taxi drivers is that their skills simply aren’t worth the premium they once were. And that’s not Uber’s fault. That’s down to technology.

Many see Uber as a loathsome entity, a rule-breaking global corporation that screws over small businesses and treats its own drivers with contempt. The charge sheet makes for grim reading: its bosses have used misogynistic and aggressive language, valid customer complaints haven’t been followed up adequately, its tax arrangements don’t sit well with everyone. Here in London, Uber’s critics talk of “unlicensed” drivers and vehicles that put passenger safety at risk. (The truth is that licensing requirements here are stringent, with enhanced criminal record checks and vehicle inspections carried out by London’s transport body TfL.) But the criticisms, whether valid or not, don’t to address the real threat to taxi drivers: the way technology shatters their monopoly on route planning, ride metering and being flagged down in the street.

Defenders of the status quo will tell you that GPS route-planning software always compares poorly with painstakingly acquired local knowledge, but there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

GPS also enables the accurate metering of journeys; TfL recently ruled that Uber’s method of calculating fares is permissible because there’s no physical connection between the vehicle and the device — a preposterously arbitrary distinction, but one that demonstrates how technology can ride roughshod over regulations drawn up decades or even centuries ago. Similarly, we’re not permitted to stop an Uber vehicle on the street, but the app lets us see if one is nearby and, with luck, summon it. That doesn’t just simulate taxi-flagging — it betters it.

Technology solves many of the problems associated with private vehicle hire. Controllers can’t lie to us about the driver being “two minutes away” because we can see the car on a map. Ratings systems give drivers incentives to treat passengers with courtesy — something that London taxi drivers certainly aren’t renowned for. There’s no more haggling over tips. Payment is a breeze.

Uber’s price calculations might be mysterious, but they’re ultimately fairer than most private car services. Its “surge pricing” (multiplying fares up during peak periods) might be annoying, but it’s an effective way of manipulating supply and demand, and the customer can take it or leave it.

And mostly, they take it. Steve Wright, chairman of the Licensed Private Hire Car Association in the UK, has claimed that the pre-Uber market was “vibrant and competitive”, but we’ve seen proof that it clearly wasn’t vibrant and competitive enough. Technology has democratised private transport; authorities may be able to roll that back, but it’s only ever going to be temporary.