[untog]

> If I sell my neighbor's lawn chair to a passerby without my neighbor's permission

That isn't even remotely similar to the position a local government fills, however.

[jessriedel]

That point of the example wasn't demonstrate definitively whether the government has moral authority to sell exclusivity. (That's obviously disputable whereas the lawn-chair example is not.) The point was to show that Lyft isn't necessarily entitled to anything just because they have a signed a contract, as you suggested. Rather, you would actually have to dispute jMyles's claim on moral authority.