Thank you. You seem to get the itch nearly completely. However you are missing one thing where Uber and Lyft have gone overnoard to the greedy side:
At least in California, driver pay, and what the customer paid are decoupled. There is no more "surge" per say, it's just a dynamic price for the user, which might be completely different than the one the driver has.
They started out with that, but I can't think of any other reason they changed it to the current model, except greed. And AFAIK this is only how it is in some US cities, like cities in California.
In Europe they still operate at a standard of 25% cut.
At least in California, driver pay, and what the customer paid are decoupled. There is no more "surge" per say, it's just a dynamic price for the user, which might be completely different than the one the driver has.