[Aurornis]

> Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

It’s weird to see the completely broken NY taxi cab medallion system brought up as a good thing.

Most taxi drivers didn’t own a medallion. They had to rent one from one of the operations that had bought them up. It was a government granted monopoly in the control of companies that charged the drivers for the right to be able to work.

The price was high partially because the supply was artificially limited, which made getting a cab bad for people of the city.

People like to criticize Uber but let’s not glorify the past system. It sucked. The Uber model that let anyone work without having to surrender their pay to some company hoarding the tokens was great for drivers and for people of the city.

[addaon]

The whole point of the medallion system was to artificially limit supply — not with the purpose of driving up cost (although, yes, that was a secondary effect), but with the purpose of making the city more pleasant. There’s a trade off in the number of taxis — if you want a taxi, more is better; if you want to walk, drive, take a bus, bike, or basically do anything but take a taxi… fewer is better. This was a conscious choice and a control that made the city more pleasant, that we’ve lost.

[hunterpayne]

That a driver (who already owned a car) had to pay 2x the price of an average house (which is already overpriced) to do the job isn't a secondary effect. Its a primary effect and drives up price and down the driver's pay. That that happened is a 10000ft giant red sign pointing out that it didn't work. That you can't understand that means that you fundamentally don't understand good public policy in any way. Anytime a policy creates such an outcome, that system needs to be scraped and a new one needs to be created because its rotten to the core.

[saimiam]

What would this new system look like that doesn’t involve the trade offs between having cabs on demand if you need them and having a walkable city if you don’t that the person you replied to spoke about?

Uber and friends have indeed democratised giving rides to people - though where I am, a few rich people have bought numerous cars and have daily wagers driving them finding fares via Uber - but at the cost of far more cabs on the road.

Others, notably motorbikes and scooter ride aggregators have emerged to replicate Uber. These motorbike cabs are even harder to regulate than cabs.

Uber, imo, has broken the equilibrium that existed before.

[kelnos]

You make the medallions non-transferrable/rentable, and use a lottery system to grant them.

Uber has absolutely increased traffic levels in the places where they operate. I don't personally think it's to a level that is actually a problem, but I also avoid driving myself around in cities whenever I can, so I may not be the best at observing this.

[Aurornis]

> if you want a taxi, more is better; if you want to walk, drive, take a bus, bike, or basically do anything but take a taxi… fewer is better.

You used driving as an example. I don't see how it's better for the city if we encourage more people to own and park cars because taking taxis is too hard.

The nice thing about Uber is that it lets those cars used for personal driving double as taxis when demand is high. Instead of having your own car and parking it, you can have someone else use their car to drive you.

I think some people have become so desperate to make Uber evil that we're intentionally ignoring what's gained.

Finally, regulating taxi medallions is an awful way to address traffic. If traffic is the problem, you regulate vehicles and traffic. Creating a system where you have to buy something approaching the price of a house just to do a job with a low hourly rate because the city wants to regulate traffic is beyond broken.