8 ms·

> It was faster to just put unlicensed taxis on the streets and use investor money to pay fines and lobby for favorable legislation And thank god they did. The

> It was faster to just put unlicensed taxis on the streets and use investor money to pay fines and lobby for favorable legislation And thank god they did. There was no perfectly legal channel to fix the taxi cartel. Now you don't even have to use Uber in many of these places because taxis had to compete - they otherwise never would have stopped pulling the "credit card reader is broken" scam, taking long routes on purpose, and started using tech that made them more accountable to these things as well as harder for them to racially profile passengers. (They would infamously pretend not to see you if they didn't want to give you service back when you had to hail them with an IRL gesture instead of an app..)

33MHz-i486 1y ago
i dont know that its such a great thing in the end. Uber/Lyft is 50-100% more expensive now than taxis were before. Theyre entrenched in different ways.
- bnjms 1y ago
  As far as I was aware taxis were an imagined thing we saw in movies. I understand you could call a number and ask for a ride to the airport though they were never useful.
  - internetter 1y ago
    What?
    - bnjms 1y ago
      Taxis weren’t actually available in most US cities before ride share. Only the large dense cities really had them. This argument that things were better before is only relevant for a small handful of metros. The ride shares are better in spite of their flaws.
  - starttoaster 1y ago
    They're always more common in metro areas of the US. You must be from a relatively rural area and don't get out of it much. That said, uh, the use of getting a taxi to drive you to or from the airport was just not having to park at the airport which generally costs a lot of money, and in certain areas is a little sketchy on whether or not your car will get cracked open while you're away.
    - sahila 1y ago
      That's a little reductive. I grew up in San Diego and went to school in LA and had the same experience with taxis - never took them. But now I use ubers in those cities whenever I'm there. The US has tons of cities like this that I imagine would have issues with taxis - all parts of the bay area peninsula / east bay, cities in Texas, Denver, etc. Most cities are not like the NYC/Boston and even in places in Chicago, unless you lived downtown likely didn't see taxis driving around.
- tnel77 1y ago
  How much of this is inflation?
  - ab5tract 1y ago
    Gas is priced lower when counting for inflation, isn’t it?
    - jack_pp 1y ago
      But drivers got to eat
      - barrenko 1y ago
        who cares about the drivers....
        rvnx 1y ago
        Especially because in 10 years from now they will progressively get replaced by AI like Waymo, so no point into making sure they are happy in the long-term
      - Ekaros 1y ago
        Why don't they just order it on food delivery. I heard that it massively cut margins on the greedy restaurants, so can't be inflation there...
    - JCharante 1y ago
      Gas is such a small part of the cost
- jack_pp 1y ago
  Idk how it is in the US but in eastern Europe that's only true if surge is on and even so considering how shitty the quality of service was before Uber it's fine.
  - mantas 1y ago
    And it’s still shitty. Uber/Bolt is like on par with 90s taxis. At least here there was a short attempt to make things better in early 2010s with nicer cars and trying to force drivers to be nicer. But then it was „disrupted“.
    - Den_VR 1y ago
      The disruption worked in most cities I use uber in. It’s far more trustworthy to use uber.
    - kelnos 1y ago
      I far, far, far prefer Uber (or Lyft, in the US) wherever I am, over whatever local taxi service there is. Yes, the quality of cars varies a lot. Yes, you never know if you're going to get a quiet driver or a way-too-talkative one. But I know what I'm going to pay up-front, can always pay with a credit card (which happens automatically without annoying post-trip payment), the ride is fully tracked, and I can report issues with the driver that I have an expectation will actually be acted upon. And when I'm in another country where there are known to be taxis that scam foreigners, Uber is a godsend. Yes, pre-Uber taxis were expensive and crappy, and even if Uber is expensive now, it's not crappy; it's actually worth the price. And I'm not convinced Uber is even that expensive. We always forget to account for inflation... sure, we might today say, "that ride in a taxi used to cost $14, but in an Uber it costs $18". But that ride in a taxi was 15 years ago.
      - BLACKCRAB 1y ago
        [dead]
- repeekad 1y ago
  Did you remember to factor in well over 30% inflation in America in the past 5 years plus Uber Lyft initially losing money on rides to capture market share before they eventually had to actually breakeven?
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    > plus Uber Lyft initially losing money on rides to capture market share before they eventually had to actually breakeven? That's typically considered to be somewhere between assholish and straight up illegal in most civilized economies.
    - ghiculescu 1y ago
      What law is it breaking?
      - Macha 1y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#Legal_aspects_amongst_different_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#Legal_aspect...
        ghiculescu 1y ago
        In all those countries what’s illegal is abuse of a monopoly, which is not what’s being discussed here. The parent cited Uber and Lyft when they first started. Nothing is illegal about startups undercutting established competitors.
        Macha 1y ago
        I can only speak in EU terms in any more detail here, but the EU laws are based on "dominant market position". Monopoly is one route to that but it's not the only route and there is no minimum market share required, as e.g. Qualcomm found out (https://www.cliffordchance.com/insights/resources/blogs/talking-tech/en/articles/2024/10/qualcomm-case--eu-general-court-confirms-ec-finding-of-predatory.html https://www.cliffordchance.com/insights/resources/blogs/talk...)
- silisili 1y ago
  Uber did a great job convincing lay people that taxis were ripoffs and they were a good deal. For some time that was probably true. Now, I see people at the airport walk over to the pickup lot, joining a crowd of others furiously messing with their phones while scanning the area for presumably their driver. All the while the taxis waiting immediately outside the exit door were $2 more expensive, last time I checked.
  - CSMastermind 1y ago
    In NYC, Vegas, and a few other places I take taxis because they're dense and work well there. Uber was a godsend for everyone living outside of like 4 metro areas in the US.
  - kelnos 1y ago
    I mean, that seems pretty unfair, no, giving one set of transportation companies an arbitrary advantage over another? This sort of thing is exactly why Uber started in the first place: because taxis had unfair monopolistic advantages for no particular reason, and gave customers a poor experience, because they knew they didn't have to do better to keep their jobs. I have no idea what I'm going to get with those taxis waiting immediately outside the exit door. Even in my home country, at the airport next to my city, I have no idea. I know exactly what I'm getting with an Uber/Lyft, every time. That's valuable to me. I was just in another country a couple months ago, and when trying to leave the airport, I was confused where I'd need to go in order to get an Uber. I foolishly gave up and went for one of those "conveniently-waiting" taxis, where I was quoted a price up-front, in my home currency, that I later (after doing the currency conversion on the Uber price) realized was a ripoff. The driver also aggressively tried to get me to instead rent his "friend's car" rather than take me to the rental car place like I asked. And honestly I consider that lucky: he didn't try to kidnap me or threaten me in any way, but I was tense during the whole ride, wondering if something bad was going to happen. That sort of thing isn't an anomaly; it happens all the time to tourists in many countries.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      In the US, as well. I won't recount what recently happened to a friend in Milwaukee. It was an unpopular story (because the ripoff was Uber-based, and not the traditional taxi). There's bad actors in every industry. I have found that industries that get "entrenched," tend to breed the most bad actors. If anything turns into a "pseudo-monopoly," expect the grifters to start popping up. They'll figure out how to game the system.
- chrischen 1y ago
  That's probably due to general inflation...
- Dumblydorr 1y ago
  So are most things from 20 years ago. Inflation is acting as the majority of those increases I’d wager.
- ses1984 1y ago
  I strongly prefer to take traditional taxis, but I also comparison shop and Lyft is almost always 20-40% cheaper than a cab ride.
- ahepp 1y ago
  “Entrenched” because that’s how consumers prefer to spend their money?
- jama211 1y ago
  Where I live Ubers are WAY cheaper than taxis, even if you go back years and years.
- anakaine 1y ago
  Here in Australia theres a never ending steam of complaints about taxis managing to bill passengers extraordinary amounts. From taking a route that deliberately includes a highway leg thats expensive to correct (screws tourists), to demanding higher fares, to card skimming, to outright just not displaying the taxi licences so you cant complain and have no idea which driver was being creepy. Uber at least has fixed rates from what was displayed and there are logs of which driver was doing dodgy stuff.
- krageon 1y ago
  it's way cheaper here, it's more convenient and I won't get ignored due to how my voice sounds on the phone. It's just better
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
troupo 1y ago
> And thank god they did. There was no perfectly legal channel to fix the taxi cartel And instead Uber offloaded everything onto gig workers and society. And still lost 20 billion dollars in the process (price dumping isn't cheap).
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  “Society” should have things like universal healthcare like every other industrial country in the world. The US is the only country with an ass backwards system where you are dependent on your employer for health benefits.
  - jart 1y ago
    My employer is a lot more dependable than the US government. If you trust the overlord you didn't choose more than the one you did, then you might want to rethink your career.
    - JustExAWS 1y ago
      What’s more likely - your company is going to get rid of you in the next five years or the government is going to take away your citizenship? Did you try to get insurance on the open market before 2012 with a pre-existing condition? Every other industrial country in the world has health insurance not tied to your employer. Even smaller countries like Costa Rica and Panama have better more affordable insurance. Yes I’ve done my research on caja, Costa Rica’s national health care system. We will be staying there a couple of months in the winter starting next year and it’s our Plan B to retire there.
      - jart 1y ago
        I got my job because I had a life threatening illness at the time. My employer saved me when no one else would. After spending all that money saving my life, it'd be a shame if they got rid of me before I had the chance to fully repay their kindness. There are a lot of other good countries where you can go for care. For example, if you have an impressive looking GitHub then Audrey Tang will give you a gold card. That's privileged elite immigrant status and you don't even need a college degree. You get your gold card. You go to Taiwan. The place where some of the greatest people in the world (e.g. Jensen Huang) are from. You're under no obligation to get a job. You get free health care. The ER waits are ~15 mins. If your heart bleeds red instead then the Chinese also say on RedNote that if you're a sick American, then just come on down to China and they'll treat you and take care of you, no matter how bad it is, or how long it's going to take.
InCom-0 1y ago
The supposed 'taxi cartel' were just (some) scummy operators ... not really a cartel. Fast forward to today => you are paying more for what is essentially very similar service (because it literally turned into a monopoly because of network effects) and the money ends up in the pocket of some corporate douche not even the people doing the actual work. This is the business model: get more money out of customers (because no real alternative) and the drivers (because zero negotiating power). Not to mention that they actually got to that position by literally operating at a loss for over a decade (because venture money). Textbook anti-competitive practices. However, the idea itself (that is having an app to order taxi) is spectacular. It also something a high-school kid could make in a month in his garage. The actual strength of the business model is the network effects and the anti-competitive practices, not the app or anything having to do with service quality.
- NovemberWhiskey 1y ago
  Classic indications of a cartel (in the economic sense) are deliberate limitations of supply and fixing of prices through collusion. I don’t know about other cities, but NYC absolutely had a taxi cartel.
  - InCom-0 1y ago
    This is true ... except that it is simplistically naive way of looking at things, because this is just one form (out of many) of anti-competitive practices. It is essentially high-school level elementary basics of anti-trust. In actual reality there is quite a bit more to it than that. For instance: Monopolies often don't actually limit supply. You only make it so customers can't choose an alternative and set prices accordingly (that is higher than they would have been if there were real alternatives). Big-tech companies do this all the time. Collusion is also not required, but only one form (today virtually unheard of or very rare) of how it may happen. For instance: big-tech companies often don't actually encroach on core parts of the business of other big-tech companies. Google, Microsoft and Apple or Uber are all totally different business with little competitive overlap. They are not doing this because of outright collusion. It's live and let live. Why compete with them when they are leaving us alone in our corner? Also: trying to compete is expensive (for them), it's risky and may hurt them in other ways. This is one of the dirty little secrets: Established companies don't (really) want to compete with other big companies. They all just want to protect what's their and keep it that way. If you don't believe me have a look at the (publicly available) emails from execs that are public record. Anti-competitive thinking through and through.
e40 1y ago
What about the problem of sexual assault by drivers? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/business/uber-sexual-assault.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/business/uber-sexual-assa...
- apwell23 1y ago
  what about it?
  - e40 1y ago
    The comment to which I replied said Uber was better than taxis. The article I referenced details why that might not be the case, when it comes to passenger safety.
    - apwell23 1y ago
      where does compare with taxis? do taxi rides even record and keep track of things like 'making comment about appearance' . how is a comparison even possible ?
cyanydeez 1y ago
Very few cartels actually existed to justify free range regulatory erasure.

33MHz-i486 1y ago

i dont know that its such a great thing in the end. Uber/Lyft is 50-100% more expensive now than taxis were before. Theyre entrenched in different ways.

bnjms 1y ago
As far as I was aware taxis were an imagined thing we saw in movies. I understand you could call a number and ask for a ride to the airport though they were never useful.
- internetter 1y ago
  What?
  - bnjms 1y ago
    Taxis weren’t actually available in most US cities before ride share. Only the large dense cities really had them. This argument that things were better before is only relevant for a small handful of metros. The ride shares are better in spite of their flaws.
- starttoaster 1y ago
  They're always more common in metro areas of the US. You must be from a relatively rural area and don't get out of it much. That said, uh, the use of getting a taxi to drive you to or from the airport was just not having to park at the airport which generally costs a lot of money, and in certain areas is a little sketchy on whether or not your car will get cracked open while you're away.
  - sahila 1y ago
    That's a little reductive. I grew up in San Diego and went to school in LA and had the same experience with taxis - never took them. But now I use ubers in those cities whenever I'm there. The US has tons of cities like this that I imagine would have issues with taxis - all parts of the bay area peninsula / east bay, cities in Texas, Denver, etc. Most cities are not like the NYC/Boston and even in places in Chicago, unless you lived downtown likely didn't see taxis driving around.
tnel77 1y ago
How much of this is inflation?
- ab5tract 1y ago
  Gas is priced lower when counting for inflation, isn’t it?
  - jack_pp 1y ago
    But drivers got to eat
    - barrenko 1y ago
      who cares about the drivers....
      - rvnx 1y ago
        Especially because in 10 years from now they will progressively get replaced by AI like Waymo, so no point into making sure they are happy in the long-term
    - Ekaros 1y ago
      Why don't they just order it on food delivery. I heard that it massively cut margins on the greedy restaurants, so can't be inflation there...
  - JCharante 1y ago
    Gas is such a small part of the cost
jack_pp 1y ago
Idk how it is in the US but in eastern Europe that's only true if surge is on and even so considering how shitty the quality of service was before Uber it's fine.
- mantas 1y ago
  And it’s still shitty. Uber/Bolt is like on par with 90s taxis. At least here there was a short attempt to make things better in early 2010s with nicer cars and trying to force drivers to be nicer. But then it was „disrupted“.
  - Den_VR 1y ago
    The disruption worked in most cities I use uber in. It’s far more trustworthy to use uber.
  - kelnos 1y ago
    I far, far, far prefer Uber (or Lyft, in the US) wherever I am, over whatever local taxi service there is. Yes, the quality of cars varies a lot. Yes, you never know if you're going to get a quiet driver or a way-too-talkative one. But I know what I'm going to pay up-front, can always pay with a credit card (which happens automatically without annoying post-trip payment), the ride is fully tracked, and I can report issues with the driver that I have an expectation will actually be acted upon. And when I'm in another country where there are known to be taxis that scam foreigners, Uber is a godsend. Yes, pre-Uber taxis were expensive and crappy, and even if Uber is expensive now, it's not crappy; it's actually worth the price. And I'm not convinced Uber is even that expensive. We always forget to account for inflation... sure, we might today say, "that ride in a taxi used to cost $14, but in an Uber it costs $18". But that ride in a taxi was 15 years ago.
    - BLACKCRAB 1y ago
      [dead]
repeekad 1y ago
Did you remember to factor in well over 30% inflation in America in the past 5 years plus Uber Lyft initially losing money on rides to capture market share before they eventually had to actually breakeven?
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  > plus Uber Lyft initially losing money on rides to capture market share before they eventually had to actually breakeven? That's typically considered to be somewhere between assholish and straight up illegal in most civilized economies.
  - ghiculescu 1y ago
    What law is it breaking?
    - Macha 1y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#Legal_aspects_amongst_different_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#Legal_aspect...
      - ghiculescu 1y ago
        In all those countries what’s illegal is abuse of a monopoly, which is not what’s being discussed here. The parent cited Uber and Lyft when they first started. Nothing is illegal about startups undercutting established competitors.
        Macha 1y ago
        I can only speak in EU terms in any more detail here, but the EU laws are based on "dominant market position". Monopoly is one route to that but it's not the only route and there is no minimum market share required, as e.g. Qualcomm found out (https://www.cliffordchance.com/insights/resources/blogs/talking-tech/en/articles/2024/10/qualcomm-case--eu-general-court-confirms-ec-finding-of-predatory.html https://www.cliffordchance.com/insights/resources/blogs/talk...)
silisili 1y ago
Uber did a great job convincing lay people that taxis were ripoffs and they were a good deal. For some time that was probably true. Now, I see people at the airport walk over to the pickup lot, joining a crowd of others furiously messing with their phones while scanning the area for presumably their driver. All the while the taxis waiting immediately outside the exit door were $2 more expensive, last time I checked.
- CSMastermind 1y ago
  In NYC, Vegas, and a few other places I take taxis because they're dense and work well there. Uber was a godsend for everyone living outside of like 4 metro areas in the US.
- kelnos 1y ago
  I mean, that seems pretty unfair, no, giving one set of transportation companies an arbitrary advantage over another? This sort of thing is exactly why Uber started in the first place: because taxis had unfair monopolistic advantages for no particular reason, and gave customers a poor experience, because they knew they didn't have to do better to keep their jobs. I have no idea what I'm going to get with those taxis waiting immediately outside the exit door. Even in my home country, at the airport next to my city, I have no idea. I know exactly what I'm getting with an Uber/Lyft, every time. That's valuable to me. I was just in another country a couple months ago, and when trying to leave the airport, I was confused where I'd need to go in order to get an Uber. I foolishly gave up and went for one of those "conveniently-waiting" taxis, where I was quoted a price up-front, in my home currency, that I later (after doing the currency conversion on the Uber price) realized was a ripoff. The driver also aggressively tried to get me to instead rent his "friend's car" rather than take me to the rental car place like I asked. And honestly I consider that lucky: he didn't try to kidnap me or threaten me in any way, but I was tense during the whole ride, wondering if something bad was going to happen. That sort of thing isn't an anomaly; it happens all the time to tourists in many countries.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    In the US, as well. I won't recount what recently happened to a friend in Milwaukee. It was an unpopular story (because the ripoff was Uber-based, and not the traditional taxi). There's bad actors in every industry. I have found that industries that get "entrenched," tend to breed the most bad actors. If anything turns into a "pseudo-monopoly," expect the grifters to start popping up. They'll figure out how to game the system.
chrischen 1y ago
That's probably due to general inflation...
Dumblydorr 1y ago
So are most things from 20 years ago. Inflation is acting as the majority of those increases I’d wager.
ses1984 1y ago
I strongly prefer to take traditional taxis, but I also comparison shop and Lyft is almost always 20-40% cheaper than a cab ride.
ahepp 1y ago
“Entrenched” because that’s how consumers prefer to spend their money?
jama211 1y ago
Where I live Ubers are WAY cheaper than taxis, even if you go back years and years.
anakaine 1y ago
Here in Australia theres a never ending steam of complaints about taxis managing to bill passengers extraordinary amounts. From taking a route that deliberately includes a highway leg thats expensive to correct (screws tourists), to demanding higher fares, to card skimming, to outright just not displaying the taxi licences so you cant complain and have no idea which driver was being creepy. Uber at least has fixed rates from what was displayed and there are logs of which driver was doing dodgy stuff.
krageon 1y ago
it's way cheaper here, it's more convenient and I won't get ignored due to how my voice sounds on the phone. It's just better

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

troupo 1y ago

> And thank god they did. There was no perfectly legal channel to fix the taxi cartel And instead Uber offloaded everything onto gig workers and society. And still lost 20 billion dollars in the process (price dumping isn't cheap).

JustExAWS 1y ago
“Society” should have things like universal healthcare like every other industrial country in the world. The US is the only country with an ass backwards system where you are dependent on your employer for health benefits.
- jart 1y ago
  My employer is a lot more dependable than the US government. If you trust the overlord you didn't choose more than the one you did, then you might want to rethink your career.
  - JustExAWS 1y ago
    What’s more likely - your company is going to get rid of you in the next five years or the government is going to take away your citizenship? Did you try to get insurance on the open market before 2012 with a pre-existing condition? Every other industrial country in the world has health insurance not tied to your employer. Even smaller countries like Costa Rica and Panama have better more affordable insurance. Yes I’ve done my research on caja, Costa Rica’s national health care system. We will be staying there a couple of months in the winter starting next year and it’s our Plan B to retire there.
    - jart 1y ago
      I got my job because I had a life threatening illness at the time. My employer saved me when no one else would. After spending all that money saving my life, it'd be a shame if they got rid of me before I had the chance to fully repay their kindness. There are a lot of other good countries where you can go for care. For example, if you have an impressive looking GitHub then Audrey Tang will give you a gold card. That's privileged elite immigrant status and you don't even need a college degree. You get your gold card. You go to Taiwan. The place where some of the greatest people in the world (e.g. Jensen Huang) are from. You're under no obligation to get a job. You get free health care. The ER waits are ~15 mins. If your heart bleeds red instead then the Chinese also say on RedNote that if you're a sick American, then just come on down to China and they'll treat you and take care of you, no matter how bad it is, or how long it's going to take.

InCom-0 1y ago

The supposed 'taxi cartel' were just (some) scummy operators ... not really a cartel. Fast forward to today => you are paying more for what is essentially very similar service (because it literally turned into a monopoly because of network effects) and the money ends up in the pocket of some corporate douche not even the people doing the actual work. This is the business model: get more money out of customers (because no real alternative) and the drivers (because zero negotiating power). Not to mention that they actually got to that position by literally operating at a loss for over a decade (because venture money). Textbook anti-competitive practices. However, the idea itself (that is having an app to order taxi) is spectacular. It also something a high-school kid could make in a month in his garage. The actual strength of the business model is the network effects and the anti-competitive practices, not the app or anything having to do with service quality.

NovemberWhiskey 1y ago
Classic indications of a cartel (in the economic sense) are deliberate limitations of supply and fixing of prices through collusion. I don’t know about other cities, but NYC absolutely had a taxi cartel.
- InCom-0 1y ago
  This is true ... except that it is simplistically naive way of looking at things, because this is just one form (out of many) of anti-competitive practices. It is essentially high-school level elementary basics of anti-trust. In actual reality there is quite a bit more to it than that. For instance: Monopolies often don't actually limit supply. You only make it so customers can't choose an alternative and set prices accordingly (that is higher than they would have been if there were real alternatives). Big-tech companies do this all the time. Collusion is also not required, but only one form (today virtually unheard of or very rare) of how it may happen. For instance: big-tech companies often don't actually encroach on core parts of the business of other big-tech companies. Google, Microsoft and Apple or Uber are all totally different business with little competitive overlap. They are not doing this because of outright collusion. It's live and let live. Why compete with them when they are leaving us alone in our corner? Also: trying to compete is expensive (for them), it's risky and may hurt them in other ways. This is one of the dirty little secrets: Established companies don't (really) want to compete with other big companies. They all just want to protect what's their and keep it that way. If you don't believe me have a look at the (publicly available) emails from execs that are public record. Anti-competitive thinking through and through.

e40 1y ago

What about the problem of sexual assault by drivers? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/business/uber-sexual-assault.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/business/uber-sexual-assa...

apwell23 1y ago
what about it?
- e40 1y ago
  The comment to which I replied said Uber was better than taxis. The article I referenced details why that might not be the case, when it comes to passenger safety.
  - apwell23 1y ago
    where does compare with taxis? do taxi rides even record and keep track of things like 'making comment about appearance' . how is a comparison even possible ?

cyanydeez 1y ago

Very few cartels actually existed to justify free range regulatory erasure.