[aric]

Politicians decide what's illegal. Legislative decisions are frequently ethically repulsive if not crooked. It's usually circular logic to point to text on paper as justification of anything, especially in the context of ethics and discussion.

[chopin]

Who should then decide, what's illegal? Companies? That would lead to even worse results.

[aric]

Corporations already decide what's illegal, largely, thanks to deficient systems. That revolving door exists. It's wide. The fact about law makers was worth mentioning because it often escapes people: pointing to a law, rather than thinking critically about the ethics of a law, is circular reasoning.

Answering your question isn't simple. I foremost think about how the lawmaking process itself could be changed to make it significantly harder to create superficial laws: the type of laws that interfere with consenting people; the type of laws largely responsible for so many prison economies and victimless "crimes." This doesn't answer your question. This is to say that it's a good question and it should be thought about.

[lotsofmangos]

Has already led to worse results, when you take into account corporate lobbying and regulatory capture.

[dylanjermiah]

Why don't we let citizens decide? Companies produce a product and if consumers don't want to use it, they don't. Uber irrefutably makes a city easier to navigate, and in most cities far cheaper. They've only succeeded in some cities by launching irrespective of what laws and modified to fit them, imagine if they responded and subsequently shut down when they received a cease and desist from SF in 2011 (prior to UberX launch). How ridiculous is it that they needed to let consumers (which the laws are supposed to help) experience the service 'illegally' for it to become accepted by those whom are supposed to be acting in their best interest.

[chopin]

Its not only customer convenience and service price which is at stake. Regulations exist as well for: - protecting the workers providing the service - protecting customers against information asymmetries (like lacking appropriate insurance on side of the provider).

At least for the latter there are regulations in place in the taxi market here in Europe.

Finally citizens can decide. Vote for politicians which going to make change injust law (or what we see as injust). This works at least sometimes. Homosexuality was a criminal offense in most countries forty years ago.

[icebraining]

Finally citizens can decide. Vote for politicians

Frankly, that's a cop out, because you'd be insane to vote for the politician based on his/her opinions on taxi regulation laws. Our political systems simply don't allow real choice.

And even if you count voting in a broad direction as having real choice, that still doesn't work, because we have no pro-"free markets" party in this country.

So, no, we can't.

[kiiski]

> Frankly, that's a cop out

So is saying that the rules can be broken because there are no parties who would remove them. European democracies generally allow people to form new parties, and I don't belive Portugal is an exception. If the population was pro free market, there would be parties that are pro free market. If there are no such parties, that is because the population doesn't support that idea.

[DanBC]

> Why don't we let citizens decide?

Because people are terrible at assessing risk and would chose cheaper cabs rather than insured cabs.

[dylanjermiah]

So we should protect people from every single conceivable 'bad' outcome?