The problem of course is that everyone in the chain benefits, except the customer. 1) Government gets free (non-taxing) income from the cab drivers. 2) Govern

The problem of course is that everyone in the chain benefits, except the customer. 1) Government gets free (non-taxing) income from the cab drivers. 2) Government officials have to deal with a voting bloc (and potential strikes) if they don't comply. 3) Cab drivers get to limit supply, and all the advantages that brings, like for example not paying 2%-5% of the fare to the card companies, plus paying $1000 a month to the banks for having a payment terminal at all (not, of course, including the separate cell subscription the payment terminal needs) (yes I know the situation in America is slightly better, but ...) 4) Let's face facts here, regular people don't, or very rarely, use cabs because of the price of that service. So they don't have an incentive to go against this. 5) There is some limited value to the regulations : they are probably overkill, but they do keep out bad drivers. Bad as in criminals, and bad as in drunk and so on. Bottom line : this is a problem with the democratic system itself, and specifically a point where it doesn't agree with what the tech scene wants. Tesla has effectively the same problem.