[davidgerard]

>It's easy to dismiss off the protestors as old hat for not reacting gracefully to a changing market, but the issue at least in London seems to largely be with the fact that their existing businesses are subject to more costs and regulations than the kinds that Uber and other services are facing.

This is the fundamental issue: Uber's business advantage is to evade regulations that apply to its competitors; its business strategy is to try to drive them out of the market before regulation catches up with them.

[davidw]

Don't you think that's a bit simplistic? In some places, like here in Italy, the taxi folks are pretty nasty:

http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Cronache/2006/07_Luglio/2...

Short English version: economist and professor writes an editorial advocating liberalizing taxis, and some taxi drivers printed a flyer with his face, home address and phone number, inviting taxis to honk when they go by his house.

And don't forget that a lot of that regulation - in some places - may have been written by the industry in question in order to maintain the status quo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

[Xylakant]

Uber tries to sell on the same, simplistic narrative: We're disruptive, we're good! Berlin for example has a very different Taxi market - it's mostly small players, 1-3 cars (there's roughly 7600 taxi in Berlin, distributed over around 3000 companies). Still, Uber tries to sell based on "we're breaking a monopoly" while skirting the regulation and strong-arming the competition.

The recent injunction against Uber in Berlin is ignored by Uber and the taxi company that fought for it in court stated that they won't pursue that since Uber threatend to countersue for damages, effectively threatening to use their funding as leverage over a company that owns three cars.

The case you're citing is also a bit problematic: Italy is a bit a problematic state when it comes to threatening and lack of help from courts. The same thing could happen to an economist and professor writing an editorial advocating against Uber - just not by taxi drivers, but by Uber drivers. I'd blame that on Italy, not on Taxis.

[davidw]

The taxi drivers in Italy are a reasonably powerful lobbying force. When they don't get their way, they get pretty nasty in lots of ways: parking their cars in the middle of already crowded roads and things like that.

My point was that the analysis of Uber was a bit simplistic in that there are some positive aspects to wrecking what was once a cozy monopoly created by regulations that are not there for the customer, but for the entrenched industry. It's probably different in different places, which is why a more complex, case by case analysis is likely needed.