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points by xp84 2 days ago | 0 comments
Honestly, I would argue Uber advocates had a valid point. Taxi medallion laws were created to artificially screw with the market by limiting supply of taxi cabs to far below a reasonable number that would’ve been on the road otherwise. This was 100% to the benefit of the taxicab industry and came at the expense of people who wanted to ride in cabs.

I do have some sympathy for the cab drivers who used to be able to earn a better living, but the only reason that was possible is that city government gave them a sweetheart deal, which isn’t fair. It makes exactly as much sense as having barber medallions or pharmacist medallions. If they had those, it might cost $85 for a basic haircut, and pharmacist and barber medallion owners might make a ton of money (remember, you can rent out medallions, so they became investment vehicles), but those are prices we’d all be paying for.

Regulations that just pick winners and losers, making most of us the losers, are stupid - and should be loopholed-around if it’s possible.

[–] mrguyorama 2 days ago
>Taxi medallion laws were created to artificially screw with the market

My area had no taxi medallion laws or system.

That's part of the problem. The excuses were always bullshit made up from generalizations of local problems. Uber wasn't needed to "Bust the taxi monopoly" because in most places there was no taxi monopoly, at least, not until Uber showed up and made one.

The excuse was never meant to be actually valid though. It was always just a simple "gotcha" that could be employed as a thought terminating cliche by people who had already made up their mind on which outcome they wanted.

[–] xp84 2 days ago
This is a valid point, but doesn’t it seem like it is tremendously easier to get a ride somewhere in some random suburban area or even a semi-rural area? New York or San Francisco had plenty of people who would’ve been willing to drive cabs who couldn’t afford a medallion[1] but it seems like in less urban areas what was lacking was just the exact product Uber provides: a dispatching system that connects people who need rides with people who are willing to drive, without requiring those drivers to paint their cars yellow and incorporate their own formal business. It lowered barriers on both sides of their marketplace, especially on the driver side, since it was no risk to become a driver - if you never got any rides, you hadn’t really invested anything.

Anyway, isn’t that a good thing for those areas? I think a lot of people just didn’t have any convenient way to get around besides walking or waiting an hour for a very infrequent bus.

[1] (I was going to say “couldn’t get a medallion,” but since they were rentable and thus served as investment vehicles, it’s really just a matter of not being willing to pay the price those things commanded on the market)