Jason Fried recently said that he had made a point of talking to every Uber driver he rode with, and that he had gotten uniformly glowing assessments from those drivers about Uber. I'm running the same experiment later than he is, and getting very different results.
I've also found that I've gotten uniformly glowing assessments from all my drivers about Uber. This past weekend, my driver told me that "Uber is the best thing to happen to the transportation business ever". He had driven taxis, limos and worked as a delivery driver before. I hear similar stories from all my other drivers. It's certainly a different experience than riding in a taxi, but it's always hard to generalize from my limited number of rides/drivers.
My friend's driver didn't tell me he wasn't "licensed"; what he was telling me was that he was, for conventional livery companies, uninsurable. It seems clear to me that Uber checks drivers differently than black car companies do.
What common good is being protected by requiring a towncar be booked 30+ minutes in advance? And if that was for the public good, why didn't those regulations come back when booking regulations were original drafted (apparently pre WW2)? The only people I've seen who have argued that Uber is against the "common good" are people who associate common good with the best interests of taxi medallion owners, and I haven't heard a compelling argument for how this regulation will help protect the common good (especially how it will outweigh the destruction of common good a free market with choice over transportation provides that would be killed).