Well, that's a tradeoff. If the number of medallions is kept up with demand (as is the case in many places), I'd argue that some mechanism to protect the livelihood of those who can't obtain better jobs is a net positive, as it allows the less fortunate to get ahead, especially in an economy where decent blue-collar jobs are getting harder and harder to come by. It's not like taxi drivers are fat cat millionaires who get rich off the back of poor consumers.

Generally the medallions are owned by someone else invariably rich (or lucky to get it early) and then rented out to the taxi drivers. The taxi drivers start doing shady things in order to pay the rental costs and earn a living. Then various sides get into the game of how many medallions should be available in the market to play with the supply/demand curve and maximize their own profits.

I think Uber is owned by someone much richer than any taxi company owner, and the difference is that the shady things in Uber's case are done not by the mistreated employees but by the owners themselves (often against their own employees), and they don't do it to earn a living. I am not saying taxi company owners are saints, but Uber is by no means better.

If you've seen the HBO series Deadwood (a masterpiece, BTW), I'd say we're replacing an Al Swearengen with a George Hearst. Both may be villains, but the scale makes all the difference...

I don't very much care for Uber. I don't want them to have a monopoly in the taxi market. Hopefully a more open taxi industry with competition allows for improved quality.

Competition without regulation doesn't improve quality, historically it lowers it.

If Uber ultimately goes public, then the owner will be society. The medallion owners largely were individuals who had the access to credit and leveraged in as the values rose.

There is a lot more transparency with Uber, however if they achieve a near total monopoly on transportation such as Google did for search, the end result from a consumer experience standpoint may end up the same, with different trade offs.

The alternate issue, the employees/drivers, won't matter in the long run because there won't be drivers whether it was Uber or medallion holders.

> If Uber ultimately goes public, then the owner will be society

thats a ludicrous reductionism as to what "publicly traded" company actually means and it discredits the rest of otherwise reasonable argument to say this.

> If Uber ultimately goes public, then the owner will be society.

No, if Uber is ever nationalized, then the owner will be society.

If Uber merely goes public, then the owners will still be the stockholders, its just that it will be easier to trade in the stock.

From failing operations in Venezuela to gigantic state operated industries in China, I see a lot of examples of nationalized & government operated companies where the end beneficiaries are the insiders who get to re-allocate wealth to themselves at the expense of the rest of their citizens.

> If Uber ultimately goes public, then the owner will be society.

You mean those in society with disposable income to invest (or a 401K). That's not quite the same as "society".

> The medallion owners largely were individuals who had the access to credit and leveraged in as the values rose.

Sure, they were small-business entrepreneurs. As I said, they are Swearengen to Uber's Hearst, but their immigrant employees certainly benefit from the regulation, too.

> The alternate issue, the employees/drivers, won't matter in the long run because there won't be drivers whether it was Uber or medallion holders.

Perhaps, but there will be other similar issues.

Sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, both public and private, own immense quantities of stocks in publicly traded corporations. If the trend of give-everything-away philanthropy continues, even the most tightly controlled corporations should continue to spread out through society.

If Uber goes public, nothing significant will change. The same creepy people will be in charge, the CEO will still be the same guy who's advocated breaking laws and sending PIs to stalk reporters.

Rent seeking through regulations designed explicitly to eliminate competition is not suddenly ok because you perceive them as "blue collar."

It's unreal that people would attempt to defend this.

I guess that depends on the values you hold, doesn't it? For many of us, there are some values that occasionally trump that of unrestricted competition, and many of us believe that sometimes free competition reduces freedom rather than increases it.

More accurately, there are a few of you that support rent-seeking.

Or even more accurately, many of us think that it is possible to conceive of things worse than rent-seeking, and so in some circumstances it is possible that a reasonable amount of it may be the lesser of two evils (just as accepting killing in self defense is not the same as "supporting murder"). Others, of course, may believe that there can be nothing worse.