[spangry]

Indeed. In quite a few places (Australia, for instance) the taxi industry is basically a government protected cartel. State governments charge insane amounts for taxi licencing (to get their cut of the cartel rent) and then restrict supply of taxi plates (to maximise their cut). Consequently, it was recently not uncommon (in Australia) for resold taxi plates to go for mid six figure sums on the open market. It was nuts.

I think Uber has changed this, although they're basically using predatory pricing as their market strategy. I must admit I have mixed feelings about all of this... Who knows? With two anti-competitive colliding like this, maybe we'll somehow end up with a competitive market at long last...