[dnautics]

The worst part of the medallion story was how the industry tricked the driver's into investing back into the medallion scheme, thereby becoming small time exploiters the next generation of drivers (n=2) and in any case winding up with often negative assets when the inflated price cratered. Meanwhile the owners of say ticker TAXI and their trust fund kids are probably doing just fine

[dehrmann]

I lay most of the blame for this with the NYC TLC for restricting medallions in the first place. The real way to reduce congestion is use fees, and it puts a natural cap on the number of taxis. Ideally, the fees are used on improvements to mass transit.

[Gibbon1]

My take away from Uber and Lift was restricting the number of cabs was a mistake. Would have been better off all around to actually just partially subsidize them. And make buses/subways free.

I get a lot of flack for that position, my response is we heavily subsidize private cars.

[dnautics]

buses and subways don't have to be free to be awesome. In fact I suspect subsidization and political control of them is part of the problem. One of the world's best public transport systems, singapore, is at least partially privatized (it once was fully privatized, and arguably system quality is going down) - and it has the lowest fares I've been on.