I do feel bad for employees in industries entrenched behind heavy monopoly-protection. Promises were made to these employees, typically by politicians somewhere

I do feel bad for employees in industries entrenched behind heavy monopoly-protection. Promises were made to these employees, typically by politicians somewhere on the stupid/corrupt spectrum, that the monopoly could protect them in perpetuity. Monopoly invariably breeds indifference and high prices and that cost fall almost entirely on the taxi user, which is (generally) the wider middle class (and let's not pretend working class people never need a cab too, so they are also hurt) and it's unsustainable to force regular people to subsidise the indifference of a pretty random group of employees (and medallion owners and cab company owners - it's not an exclusive blue collar affair on the receiving end). So instead of being gently pressured to improve by competition over time, change is dramatic and discontinuous -and that is painful, and that elicits sympathy. The only thing anyone could really have done was to have gradually liberalised the taxi industry over maybe a decade or two to soften the blow, but that requires a time machine.