Since the article picked out Frankfurt, Germany: There are reasons, and they're pretty simple to understand by reading the appropriate law (http://www.gesetze-i

Since the article picked out Frankfurt, Germany: There are reasons, and they're pretty simple to understand by reading the appropriate law (http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pbefg/ http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pbefg/) Taxis are part of the local public transit network here (and regulated by county officials). §13(4) is about when to grant new taxi licenses, incl. a pretty detailed set of things for officials to look out for. §13(5) is concerned with who is granted new licenses (established and new applicants, but folks need to be serious about running a taxi business; the latter precludes the 'on-and-off' Uber model), with an eye on avoiding concentration of power. These things (along with all the other rules for public transit in general and taxis in particular in that law) make sense when considering taxis to be part of public infrastructure that just has to work, and not some investors' toy. I can understand that investors and their minions running shops like Uber aren't happy about that, but luckily that was no concern when people wrote legislation on providing reliable infrastructure. Uber was particularly tone-deaf here when pushing their all-American pitch about how they're taking on some evil monopoly (when in a city of 200'000 people, there's not a single taxi company commanding 25 cars. Most have 5 or less).