I don't know about "evil" medallion cartels, but here's an article from 1985 about the shocking medallion prices in New York City:

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/16/nyregion/taxi-medallion-c...

A taxi medallion has been sold for $100,000, a record for the price of these taxi licenses, which once cost $10. The number of medallions has been frozen since 1937 so by law there are only 11,787 medallions, which license cabs to pick up street hails, in the city. But demand has been rising rapidly and so has the price.

...

The first medallion to hit the $100,000 mark was sold earlier this month to a 30-year-old Asian, Stanley Cheung, who lives on the Lower East Side. He is like so many of the city's cabdrivers over the years - energetic young immigrants able to borrow enough money to buy a medallion and a cab and take off in pursuit of the American dream.

However, according to Jay L. Turoff, chairman of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, a medallion has been rising in value so much that it is producing a new kind of buyer - the doctor or lawyer or other professional who looks upon the medallion simply as an investment.

It reads like the same pieces I saw about high priced medallions in the 2010s. I don't remember seeing articles criticizing taxi medallions in cities were they weren't expensive.

I only have experience in couple of cities (Toronto & Ottawa), and medallions are... just an insane thing. A positively insane thing. Nominal price of about $1k, their market price was up to $300k. For many people I spoke to, their one and only retirement financial planning was essentially a mortgage on their own medallion. When Uber came along and medallion prices fell, they were... devastated, angry, distraught, hopeless.

On one hand my heart completely goes out to them - they worked hard and invested in something they perceived or were assured had permanent value.

On the other hand, W.T.F. You are banking your family's entire life that... what, city will never change the model or expand number of licenses or revamp their code, basically that nothing will ever change?

So I don't know if there was an "evil medallion cartel", but there definitely was "extreme lobbying by people whose livelihood was intimately tied in shortage of transportation methods" and a little bit of "unspecified people going to uber office with bats and having a little smash-the-computers fun".

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On the other topic you mention - if there indeed exist cities where "taxi is no more regulated than uber", then what IS the distinction between "Uber" and "Taxi" in such places? Can I just slap a sign on my car and pick up people?