The world and times are changing....
To survive you need to be flexible and able to quickly adapt. If you look at nature, species that specialise and depend on a particular food source or environment are at risk of extinction. Same rules apply to the modern world. If you get set in your ways you will be left behind. That is a risk for taxi drivers who don't like change. The apps have disrupted the traditional dispatchers, drivers need to follow the trends or get left behind lamenting the old days.
Maybe taxi drivers need to look beyond passengers. We are insured to carry people and goods for hire or reward. The high street retailers are fecked, more and more closing down every day. Sales are virtual, payments are virtual but the products are real and have to be delivered in the real world.
An Post are closing post offices and their snail mail business has been decimated but they have adapted and their parcel delivery business is growing exponentially.
Amazon want to control everything and now they have, they want to set up and run their own delivery fleet and cut out the middleman. Remains to see if that will work.
Lynk are adapting too with 'Lynk Delivers'. They are partnering up with the big multinational private parcel companies as local service providers and utiliising any drivers on the existing taxi fleet that are interested and recruiting extra car/van drivers to supplement the delivery fleet.
I am doing agency HGV truck driver work and one of the contracts I was working on recently had half a dozen taxis in the warehouse loading up with parcel deliveries every morning. Drivers adapting to the situation and it is less risky during Covid as they are carrying no passengers. It is different but still a living to be made until the taxi game picks up.
Stand still and you are History!