[_delirium]

Their beef with Sweden's regulation is odd, since Sweden has an extremely deregulated taxi market. Pricing is entirely set by the operator, subject to only two consumer-notification conditions that you note. You can charge whatever you want, but: 1) you must legibly advertise the price on the exterior of the car; and 2) you must have a meter which is inspected to ensure that you are actually charging the prices that are advertised. That's pretty similar to how, say, butchers are regulated: you can sell your meat for whatever you want, but must advertise the per-kilo price, and must use an official scale whose calibration has been validated. In the case of taxis, you must also have vehicle insurance that covers for-pay carriage of passengers, but that's just a basic road requirement (all drivers are required to have insurance that covers the kind of driving in which they're engaged).

Unlike NYC (for example), there isn't any kind of "medallion" system, government-regulated pricing, etc. And unlike London, there is no exam requiring drivers to have any particular knowledge. If anything the outcry from consumers is more often in the other direction, especially from tourists. Tourists who aren't aware that Sweden has completely deregulated taxi pricing are sometimes scammed into paying incredibly high fares, because there's nothing illegal about charging $500/km, as long as that's the stated price. (The fact that Sweden uses SEK instead of EUR helps this particular scam, since many tourists, especially those just arriving at airports, have no intuitive sense of what a SEK/km price means.)