[rehitman]

Am I only one who is against regulation? Seems that in few of these big cities we are back to where we were 10 years ago. I remember when I was student in Toronto, taxi cab was so expensive that taking one was completely out of reach for student. If you miss a bus at night, sometimes it was better to wait until next morning or just walk. At the same time you would see lines of taxis in the Front street ideal and not working because prices were so much higher that what people could pay. Combination of price fixing, super expensive taxi license, different insurance that legally drivers had to buy made it completely impossible to move a taxi with lower price. I think at the end both drivers and customers are hurt by this.

[spywaregorilla]

Is there any evidence that this is due to regulation and not just market forces coupled with a finite pool of burnable vc funding?

[pseudo0]

Toronto taxi medallion prices peaked at $360k CAD prior to Uber entering the market [0]. That seems like pretty strong evidence of the system being coopted to serve the interests of medallion holders rather than consumers.

[0] - https://globalnews.ca/news/1780260/toronto-taxi-licence-pric...

[gms]

Market forces alone (in particular: competition) don’t lead to consumers being hurt.

[spywaregorilla]

Market forces lead to consumers being hurt all the time due to externalities, information asymmetry, monopolistic / monopsonistic / platform owner powers, etc.