> that's pushing the use of "the free market" quite a bit. Cities control the supply of medallions. The fact that people can bid whatever they want for them doesn't make it a "free market".

Why not? Every market and auction is premised on limited resources. There is limited road space, which is auctioned off in the form of tokens, which are the mediallions.

Medallions clearly don’t represent road space but a specific use. They basically create a taxi cartel with a high price of entry. I could get behind auctioning off all road space to limit traffic and pollution but not that.

> Medallions clearly don’t represent road space but a specific use.

Why do you say that? It's not clear to me, especially sans any support.

we don't have any true free market. All our markets have limits due to some form of restriction. Even without medallions there would be resgrictions due to road space etc. but withinnthe framework society decided on thr medallions give a market.

The alternative is letting a few monied lords gobble up the commons and rent it back out.

That's what happens with medallions.

The traditional, centuries or even millenia-old way of dealing with the commons was a set of customs and practices that resisted both the monied lords and the indigent local fool. These were resilient across an extraordinary long time, but the way in which industrial capitalism leveraged and facilitated greed defeated most of them, leading (in the late 20th century) to a belief in "the tragedy of the commons" and very confused thinking about how a commons could function.

Doing medallions create artificial scarcity?

> Doing medallions create artificial scarcity?

If you mean 'Don't mediallions ...', no. They take a real scarcity, road space (and pollution capacity) and shift it from an externality, something an entity consumes and but doesn't pay for, to something they do pay for.