Is what I suspect is the key point. Because capital costs are so low, it's easy for anyone to get into the business. Because it's easy to get into the business, you end up with lots of turnover as people come in looking to charge high rates, get tired of it, and move on to some other job.
Medallions artificially raise the capital costs involved in becoming a Taxi driver, and therefore make people more likely to continue as drivers, since they want to recoup their initial investment, and it's not trivial to do so.
This doesn't follow at all. All other things being equal, barriers to entry drive prices up, not down. If you want to argue that taxis are different than most other businesses in this respect, you're going to have to explain why.
Data > intuition.
Also, alternate hypothesis: cabs are less likely to use meters when things are deregulated, so most people don't know what they're paying for, and overpay.
2 mile: $7.15 v $17.80 5 mile: $13.90 v $32.50 10 mile: $25.15 v $57.00
idling: $0.45 v $1.25
The expensive ones are the less regulated cars of ubercab.
And for what it's worth, in New York, the only time I've had bad experiences with Taxis were times I waved down a livery, or got another unlicensed taxi.
That jumped out at me too; I can't imagine how deregulation would raise prices for consumers. I'd love to see a cite for that.
I would have believed "too many taxis == too much traffic," AKA tragedy of the commons, but not this.