Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to go back to the medallion system? Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid).

The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it.

Also, the argument on Uber/Lyft drivers not being contractors since they can't set their own rates and decide which ride they take strikes me as weird since medallion drivers were contractors, had to charge the price set by the city and could only pick-up customers in the (arbitrary) zones covered by their medallions.

And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-white neighborhoods...).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24225648

Maybe the cure can eventually become worse than the disease? Also, as terrible as the medallion system is, the taxi industry weren't uniformly as bad as SF's in every region, so ridesharing probably unintentionally wiped out some quality cab companies in the process.

I've never heard anyone say that pre-Uber cab companies were better. But I could always be wrong.

Or Uber: the business that allows me to drastically reduce the probability of me being scammed by a taxi driver, as well as increase the quality of the cars themselves

Source: my numerous experiences with taxis in multiple cities in the US and around the world before and after Uber

Or Uber: A failed Randian play to use VC money to squelch out every independent taxi company in the United States and the world by subsidizing rides to well below their cost. To the tune of $1B per quarter. I suspect they thought they could drive them all out of business and then take over and raise prices. Unlike their patchwork of independent competitors, Uber didn't have to cover the cost of a ride from fares.

I guess now they deliver lunch so that's pretty cool.

I for one look forward to the movie.

If it was a physical product it would be considered dumping and be illegal.

Not to mention Uber and Lift don't pay for the roads their businesses depend on. And then Uber and Lift have dramatically increased congestion in a lot of cities. Which negatively impacts people that live in those cities. Finally both Uber and Lift are applying political pressure to eliminate mass transit.

No idea what ratfucking is, but the willful ignorance in your examples is almost comical.

Example 1: innovations in technology & clever business model put previously expensive thing in reach for an order of magnitude wider audience, leads to significant qualitative shift in behavior/capabilities for the average person.

Uber: Exactly the same thing.

Why are you so offended about the harm to the taxi industry, what about all the vacuum tube manufacturers put out of business by semiconductors? Innovation has always involved creative destruction, but for some reason there's a bigger than usual portion of society now that is completely unwilling to acknowledge utilitarian benefits and wants to make all change illegal. And the even greater tragedy is it's always the comfortable, well-off upper middle class making these arguments on behalf of the working class, with absolutely no skin in the game because they will never be the first ones affected by the negative consequences of their absolutist worldview.

Couldn't vacuum tube manufacturers pivot to semiconductors, at least somewhere in the production process.

Nope - only in the sense of your great grear grandfather's axe after your grandfather replaced the head three times and your father replaced the haft twice and the head is now a sledgehammer. Vacuum tube making is about metalworking essentially. Sure you can swap components between the wires but manufacturing of vacuum tubes is entirely different than silicon and even they needed new fab processes for nanometer changes.

Lightbulbs and would have been a better pivot (with or without a gas in the medium for neon lights or CFBs) at least until LEDs finished them off.

Taxi industry had its karma coming. Prior to Uber, ratfuckers would sit behind the wheel and rip off the clients.

Maybe there was some place in the world where taxis were clean and taxi drivers honest, but in my corner of the world they were synonymous with low-key mafia.

In Prague (in 1997, at least), the taxis were literally run by the (Russian) mob.

Oh, yeah, I was 19 at that time and I avoided them, they were up to no good. This strange combination of sleazy and menacing at the same time. Precisely the type of people you do not want to join in their car.

Therefore they mostly preyed on international tourists at the airport.