[kodablah]

To encourage compromise in other areas of the country/world where citizens and voters often think there is no downside to adding regulation. So I guess in a precedent-setting way (unfortunately to the detriment of the minority that was against the additional regulations). Too often I feel locales make regulations, even if the majority of the citizens want them, that they feel have very little downside purely because they don't think companies are willing to leave.

As egregiously capitalistic as it may sound, I like that companies have to bend and so do consumers instead of either the company's leverage being too large or the government/citizens' leverage being too large. In the ride sharing space, I believe that Uber and Lyft have bent more than municipalities.

[MikeHolman]

It seems to me that Uber and Lyft have not bent much. From my (maybe ignorant) perspective it looks like their entire practice is to completely ignore all the laws about taxi regulations until a city threatens to kick them out, by which point they have enough leverage to change the laws in their favor.

Only this time they played chicken and lost the battle.

[EdHominem]

Considering that the government wants them to buy taxi medallions at $0.5M each, there isn't a lot of bending they can do.

Everything else is a smoke screen over the issue of losing medallion sales.

What people forget during these discussions is that this is not free money for the city, it's money out of every rider's pocket for an overpriced service, some small percentage of which trickles down to the city.

As for the battle, Uber is busily serving people elsewhere while Austin is stuck with cabs. The people of Austin are the losers in this.