[Retric]

Most Taxi regulations are good for the public not the consumer.

Go back and you find people wanted to cut the number of Taxii on the roads. I would much rather you use a bus than a Taxi. The problem was regulatory capture constricted past this point.

ex: We don't want a lot of them on the road making traffic worse. Drive to B -> C you add X congestion, call a cab they drive from A -> B to pick you up, then B->C that's X + Y congestion, pollution, risk for accidents etc.

PS: The real issue is after regulation people tend to forget why it was added. "Let's deregulate Banks!"

[Zach_the_Lizard]

>Go back and you find people wanted to cut the number of Taxii on the roads.

The explicit reason given, at least in the case of NYC, was the desire to make driving taxis more profitable. During the Great Depression there were more drivers than passengers and it couldn't pay the bills. How do we solve this? Limit the supply of drivers, therefore raising the price and reducing competition. From a consumer standpoint this is terrible.

We would have ended up with an explicit monopoly for a specific company if it weren't for some folks getting convicted of corruption (taxi company bribes) scuttling that deal.

> I would much rather you use a bus than a Taxi. The problem was regulatory capture constricted past this point. >ex: We don't want a lot of them on the road making traffic worse. Drive to B -> C you add X congestion, call a cab they drive from A -> B to pick you up, then B->C that's X + Y congestion, pollution, risk for accidents etc.

Why limit it to taxis? There is a great way to promote public transit, reduce air congestion and pay for roads: tolls and congestion pricing. This would affect all drivers, not just certain drivers.

>PS: The real issue is after regulation people tend to forget why it was added. "Let's deregulate Banks!"

The irony is it appears you've forgotten why these regulations were created in the first place.

[SilasX]

>more drivers than passengers and it couldn't pay the bills. How do we solve this? Limit the supply of drivers, therefore raising the price and reducing competition. From a consumer standpoint this is terrible.

Yes, but what regulators didn't realize (and still don't) is that economic incidence is tricky. Just because you can charge more, doesn't mean any specific factor in the production chain gets to partake in any of that.

For example, just because Gucci bags surge in popularity doesn't mean the Gucci office janitor can charge more for his labor -- the supply of such services is unaffected and they can find more providers at the same price.

And indeed, the same dynamic applied for taxi medallions: sure, you can charge more to passengers, but the immense supply of qualified drivers -- who only need a small takehome -- means that they'll bid up the price of the medallions (rental price or capitalized) so that the drivers are still poverty level, and almost all the monopoly profits go to medallion holders, not drivers.

[st3v3r]

"The explicit reason given, at least in the case of NYC, was the desire to make driving taxis more profitable. During the Great Depression there were more drivers than passengers and it couldn't pay the bills. How do we solve this? Limit the supply of drivers, therefore raising the price and reducing competition. From a consumer standpoint this is terrible."

Is it? If it's not paying the bills, then you're not going to have people doing it. Making sure that the price is at a point where it can sustain itself makes it much more likely that it'll still be there tomorrow.

[abduhl]

This source would disagree with you about the reason for taxi medallions:

https://books.google.com/books?id=VXpyNs5EaHEC&pg=PA119&lpg=...

It confirms the story that I have heard previously that taxi medallions were introduced to protect consumers. This doesn't mean that profit was not a reason but I'd like to see something that shows the "explicit" reason you state.

[kazinator]

I suspect it's not just for the consumers but for the image of the city. Cabs are one system that visitors interact with immediately, before nearly anything else. Grotty cabs make a bad impression.

[jon_richards]

So does a 2 hour taxi line.

[___ab___]

I agree, but most consumers probably see them as harmful, and many consumers are dissatisfied with state-sanctioned monopolies on taxi service. The actual effect doesn't matter to the consumer, only the perceived one.