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That's good in theory, but is it actually true that cities are currently full of mostly Uber cars to the point where it's a problem? Or unregulated cabs, in cit

That's good in theory, but is it actually true that cities are currently full of mostly Uber cars to the point where it's a problem? Or unregulated cabs, in cities that don't have medallions. The optimal economic solution would be to tax all traffic, have toll roads, or some kind of technological solution. I can't see any city ever doing that though. But it's only relevant if it really is a serious problem. The parent comment was ridiculous. It asserted that eliminating $100k barrier to entry, eliminating a monopoly (their own words), and increasing competition would drive prices up. You could maybe argue that congestion would increase, but prices almost certainly would not.

dalke 12y ago
Yes, mine is a mathematical model. I believe that only NYC is close to that point, but I have no evidence to prove it. In any case, the SF mayor wants to raise the number of medallions as a source of revenue, so it's clear they are not limiting the number in order to influence transportation modality use. (The legislative history suggests that a goal of Prop K, which put the current regulations into place, was to prevent oligarchies in the local taxi cab industry.) FWIW, http://www.emmanuelcombe.org/moor.pdf http://www.emmanuelcombe.org/moor.pdf does an overview of what economists have written on the topic. Some papers conclude that taxi deregulation does what you think it would do, some papers conclude otherwise. There's no clear consensus. See http://www.thelocal.se/20090112/16868 http://www.thelocal.se/20090112/16868 for some of the situations that occur in a deregulated taxi marketplace. The history of taxi medallions in SF shows that Prop K was voted on to prevent oligarchies.