Horrible things about cabs in Chicago (I literally haven't taken a single one since I started using Uber so idk if some of these got any better)

- Drivers always claimed the credit card reader wasn't working and tried to force payment in cash - the card reader was always just clearly turned off and they would slap it pretending to try to get it to work

- Drivers randomly deciding to charge 1.5x or 2x based on the ride going outside some made-up "zone"

- Drivers all crowding around bars blocking the street and sometimes getting into fistfights over their positioning in front of the bar (this doesn't happen anymore since Uber)

- Most of the cabs had absolutely disgusting interiors

I do agree that Uber's whole pricing competitiveness is a VC-funded greater-fool scheme, but the expectations of service levels in the ride hailing have been greatly improved.

Interesting comment about Chicago. My memories of cabs in San Francisco were always pleasant enough if expensive.

Some older friends mentioned that before Dianne Feinstain was mayor you had unlicensed gypsy cabs that would shuttle random groups for a buck or two each.

I don't feel very bad for any taxi medallion owners who were exploitive, as I've heard some have been, nor for officials who let medallions become capital assets, but at least they were playing within the current local regulations. (And, even within the worst taxi medallion systems I've heard of, you'd occasionally hear of a driver who'd been saving up for a medallion, which they saw as their ticket to the American Dream, so they could keep more money from their fares.)

Then Uber comes in, knowingly ignores regulations everyone else played by, spews "sharing" nonsense, pricedumps on fares, temporarily attracts drivers and gets many hooked on loans for the recent-year cars Uber demanded, uses money and popularity of pricedumping rates to lobby politicians for official acceptance, then IPOs to keep the scheme going (and so some people can cash out).

>spews "sharing" nonsense

People forget that is how Uber got into this business - they started skirting medallions (which was an artificial market in the first place) by telling regulators that these drivers were headed in a particular direction and just picked up a fare.

Uber is absolutely a scummy company, but the taxi industry was/is a scummy industry. Google "taxi corruption" and you can find many, many instances of politicians being bribed to maintain the medallion systems.

In Washington DC, there were multiple cases of taxi companies bribing politicians to introduce a medallion system. Even when many of them were caught in stings, they still kept trying (with "good" reason, many of them would become multimillionaires overnight if it passed).

Uber was so successful because we consumers had little choice, though the ride subsidies were definitely helpful.

NYC had the same problems. Plus drivers who didn't speak English (or pretended not to), didn't know the city, or purposely took you on long, roundabout routes to collect a higher fare. Oh, and they were usually distracted. It was not uncommon for the driver to be talking to family/friends on the phone for the entire ride, or even watching television while driving (I reported the television driver to the Taxi & Limousine Commission, but I have no idea what the outcome was.)