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Taxi medallions are the biggest cartel racket out there, and they're inordinately powerful in city politics. You want to regulate taxis? Great. I'm a liberal.
by bandrami 12y ago
Taxi medallions are the biggest cartel racket out there, and they're inordinately powerful in city politics.
You want to regulate taxis? Great. I'm a liberal. I love that. Regulate the everloving #$%& out of them. Require absurd safety and environmental features. And then let the market decide how many taxi cabs the city can support.
Even a bleeding heart leftist like me will say there are things the market is really, really good at, and deciding how many service providers a sector should have is absolutely one of them. Set standards -- set them high, for that matter -- but for God's sake let anyone who meets them participate in the market. Otherwise you're just a protection racket.
- jahewson 12y agoI'm with you on the cartel bit but I think you're confused about what racketeering is.
- bandrami 12y agoThat was hyperbole; it's not racketeering in the legal sense, since it's based on lobbying to change laws. Fair point.
- lazyant 12y agoThis is my philosophy for many things ("regulate and let them be") including prostitution for example. Driving a cab shouldn't be different than having a company that uses forklifts; if you got the required licences you are good to go, there's no artificial fixed number of forklifts allowed in a city. For the regulatory part I'm called a leftist in the US and for the free market part I'm called right wing in Europe (where taxi drivers go on strike so they don't increment the licences and let more people work but for less overall money for all), go figure.