[timr]

I'm not sure I believe as strongly in the idea in places like London, where the official cab service is both highly regulated, and quite good.

In the US, the regulations for cabs tend to do little but drive up medallion prices. Uber cars are a much-needed disruption in terms of availability and quality, but you still can't really say that the drivers know much of anything about the city. If we had the equivalent of a London cab here in SF, I'd always choose that over Uber, yet I think you can probably undercut the price of an official taxi in London simply by ignoring the rules. That seems wrong.

If unregulated competition kills a good taxi service, that seems like a drastically different outcome than what's happening here in the states.