> It's rare that bad business regulations and/or government sponsored monopolies are just, ya know, fixed. Quite often, people need to be shown how bad things h

> It's rare that bad business regulations and/or government sponsored monopolies are just, ya know, fixed. Quite often, people need to be shown how bad things have gotten before anything changes. This, and more so. I hate to admit it, but it really is true. I currently live in a city where the cab situation is just awful. And a lot of it is due to awful regulation. Biggest case in point: The city caps the number of permits at only about 400. But you need a separate permit to pick people up at the airport, and the number of those is capped at 50. So getting a ride to the airport is nigh impossible - dispatchers will just refuse to send you a cab - because the vast majority of drivers are not allowed to get a return fare. Uber and Lyft have done a great service by calling public attention to the situation, and so the city council is finally paying attention to it, too. But that's where their contribution stops - they've been actively lobbying against any proposed legislation that would allow metered cab service to improve, for example, and also actively fighting proposed rules that their drivers should be able to pass a basic background check and have a (vaguely) clean driving record. In that sense they're no better than the owners of the cab companies, who also have a vested interest in not seeing the situation for consumers improve. I almost wish there were a Nobel Prize in aphorisms, so that we could award it to them for showing that two wrongs really can make a right.