When Uber entered the market, what they were doing was technically illegal (the taxi industry was regulated, Uber wasn't a registered provider, its drivers didn't own a taxi permit (which no longer exist), etc).

You can generally sue for illegal behavior that causes you losses.

Further to that, taxi licences were limited in number and sought after.

So it became less of driving a taxi and more about financial investment. People bought dozens of licences and leased them out.

It no longer became about driving taxis and was more an investment.

As soon as Uber came, those who invested heavily were left holding a useless (or heavily reduced) investment.

Ah! So the government created artificial scarcity just as they do in housing.

The argument I've heard before (about the medallion system in the US, which had the same result as what GP described with licenses) was that since roads are a limited resource, this prevented too many taxis from causing excess traffic just driving around looking for customers.

It's an interesting argument because having the app connect customers means they don't have to drive around aimlessly, which almost sidesteps the problem (they still have to pull over somewhere but aren't necessarily causing traffic).

They could fix the whole system by issuing as many medallians as people want. Fixed reasonable price, renewable each year. You have to meet certain criteria for public safety, like good driving record, not a sex offender, the car must pass annual safety inspections, etc. But other that, let the market decide how many taxis.

It makes level of sense to limit number of medallions. And then also at same time cap prices and mandate availability. That is if you have a medallion you must have car on order or on road at all times. This could be achieved by multiple medallion owners working together so that there is a taxi available Wed-Thu night during rainstorm.

Also you do not want to give out so many medallions that owners cannot possibly make a living. Now transferability outside selling whole business is stupid.

> cap prices

> Also you do not want to give out so many medallions that owners cannot possibly make a living

Do you really think that some government agency can come up with the correct price and license cap using Excel magic? Of course not, most likely this will just lead to corruption and an inferior service.

Let the free market find the price. If it's not possible to make a living people won't drive. Where I live taxis usually charge whatever Uber is showing.

If you want free market to find the price. Why not force Uber and Lyft to accept pricing from their drivers. Absolutely any pricing and any rules. I think that would be reasonable.

Thats what sidecar did, and the driver market rejected it because it was an awful and unsafe experience. Imagine trying to set rates while you're driving around!

Uber shows how much they will pay, the driver doesn't have to accept the trip. If drivers don't accept Uber will have to adjust the price.

I can only imagine what NYC traffic would look like if there was an unlimited number of yellow cab medallions allowing pickups in NYC.

Correct. And the screeching from the taxi lobby was thunderous. We are better off now this has occurred, really its a sovereign risk issue and they should have sued the government instead.

I feel like you just ignored everything else that was said and just zeroed in on the one thing that aligns with your viewpoint.

Not OP. But I theorize that almost every single ill plaguing society on a large level ATM can be traced back to a specific government action or refusal by the government to act.

Homelessness? Check. Drunk driving fatalities? Check. Domestic violence? Check. Abusive monopolies on single-person transportation? Check.

In theory government can do almost anything so it’s hard for this statement to be wrong…

I can't find a reference, but I'm pretty sure that someone on the Australian Financial Review's rich list, got rich from Taxi medallions. When Melbourne was to host the olympics, the licence authority decided there would not be enough taxis. They invited people to apply for free licences, and lots of people did apply for a licence. One person applied for a shedfull - something like 200?, and received them all.

Sounds like a racket. So still hard to fathom the legality.

Lobbying by the taxi industry has also been persistent for the past decade or so [0]. Along with some fairly excellent return political stunts from early days Uber [1].

[0]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/gq9jzm/queenslands-taxi-driv...

[1]: https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/uber-uses-hor...

Taxis are regulated and would be barred from operating if they fall out of compliance. this specific story is about taxi licenses which are of limited availability and costs a lot of money to get. Since Uber lobbied the govt for permission to operate without these, their value have freefalled and Uber is compensating the holders of those licenses.

That protectionism hasn't stepped up properly the past ten years only shows that maybe governments found they would benefit from letting the taxis get slapped around a bit. There will probably be more stories like this in the future as Uber has become entrenched and now will be pressured to get more proper.

"Taxis are regulated" - well, kinda...

They're only just now thinking up maybe potentially one day working towards regulating them. https://www.9news.com.au/national/rogue-taxi-drivers-could-b...

>this specific story is about taxi licenses which are of limited availability and costs a lot of money to get.

An unjust situation created by the government. Uber didnt pass the unjust laws protecting cabcharges monopoly.

Take a look at page 79 of the first 'key document' https://www.mauriceblackburn.com.au/class-actions/join-a-cla...

The law said you need a license to provide taxi services. Uber and its drivers didn't have that license. So the lawsuit is for the damages caused by Uber's illegal behaviour.

But Uber wasn't and still isn't a taxi company. It's just an aggregator as they call it.

They can call themselves a hotdog stand, that doesn’t mean the courts agree.

How are they a taxi company? Certainly not thought of that way by your average person. Its taxis vs ride sharing.

I think your average person does think that way.

This entire debate and court case is between Taxi's and Uber, because they're competing by providing essentially the same thing.

The passenger clearly doesn't care if the person driving them from A to B is using a company vehicle vs their own vehicle. Ride sharing is a silly name, as you're not really sharing the ride if the driver isn't going to the same place are they.

"Ride sharing" is the silliest euphemism, it's not sharing a ride unless the driver was going there already.

If you don't want to lump them in with taxis, they're a car service with contract workers. That's all they are.

> Certainly not thought of that way by your average person. Its taxis vs ride sharing

Uber operates primarily as a taxi service with an app

Ride sharing is a non-core feature called UberPool, which lets users share Uber taxis with other users.

Disagree there. I think most people would prefer uber over taxi for service/convenience/cost, but I doubt modern uber would be considered that different to a taxi service.

“a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice.” So yea that sounds like Uber/Lyft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi

I regularly see people say they’ll call a cab and then use Uber/Lyft.

Ride sharing generally means carpooling/picking up hitchhikers etc. Where the driver is going on the route anyway and is adding passengers for HOV access, gas money, or just conversation. https://rideshare.org/

Uber’s initial intention was carpooling where someone would put in their intended destination and could pick people up for money. However the business model clearly switched to a taxi model with a paid driver not staying at the destination. They still wanted to call it ride sharing because what they where doing was often blatantly illegal

PS: Their initial subsidized prices convinced many people to advocate for an exception which was often granted. That’s the bit that’s rarely talked about, they essentially bribed the general public.

> Uber’s initial intention was carpooling where someone would put in their intended destination and could pick people up for money.

Historically incorrect. Uber started out as a black car service (with California tpc licenses). Lyft started as a pivot of the carpooling app zimride named after the founder.

> Their initial subsidized prices convinced many people to advocate for an exception which was often granted

That's not really what moved the needle. What moved the needle on exceptions was the sharp drop in drunk driving incidents and fatality.

> Lyft started

Ahh ok.

PS: There was sharing but it was time sharing Limos, so I can see getting those swapped.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/11101...

> Initially, the idea was for a timeshare limo service that could be ordered via an app. After the conference, the men went their separate ways. However, when Camp returned to San Francisco, he continued to be fixated on the idea and bought the domain name UberCab.com.

We hereby witness the effectiveness of Uber's PR machine tasked with creating that category with the specific goal of evading taxicab regulations.

Laws are not strongly typed.

Not a taxi company, just a company that takes fares to drive people around.

if it walks like a duck and...

An unjust law, which was ignored justly.

You don't have LGBT people paying cops because they committed buggery before it was legalised.

Appealing to unjust laws for your argument is the weakest play in the book.

Uber didnt cause any damage, decades of taxi monopoly caused damage. Uber corrected the injustice.