I think there is a big difference between the safety regulation and monopoly ensuring regulations. You see it quite a bit in the food truck discussions.

Most people don't have a problem with some set of minimum safety regulations for an activity. Most people don't freak out about basic access and destination regulations.

On the other hand, governments creating artificial scarcity and going after business models that target this scarcity is pretty repugnant. Too many cabs is not the problem of government and will be rightly sorted out in the market place.

I feel like this is cyclical.

Government steps in with common-sense safety/destination regulations, requires cab drivers to be certified. All good. Then, these cab companies who have by necessity acquired some competence in lobbying start getting some rules in to benefit them, creating a cumbersome, crappy situation ripe for disruption.

Enter Uber. After they've had some success, the government will step in with some basic, common-sense safety/destination regulations...

OK, that got me. It took a few minutes, and rereading the above link to work out it is not Manchester UK (pop 1/2m) but Manchester NH (pop 100K)

However 19 cabs total for a population of 100,000 is really low. A quick google / yell shows me 109 listed taxi firms in Manchester UK. Thats about what I would expect.

Why are there only 19 actual cars in Manchester NH?

- http://www.taxinumber.com/taxis/manchester/?page=5

I would naively expect the number of taxis used in a city to scale with something like the square of the population. The smaller the city is, the fewer places there are to go, the farther away basic things tend to be, and the more likely people are to have and drive cars.

Not population. The number of cabs is strongly related to the number of people WITHOUT CARS in an area. No matter how heavily populated, if an area is built in the standard car-centric suburb design, there won't be many cabs since car ownership will approach 100%.

Your example is a clear case of regulation failure. The cab companies knew of the inspection but took no action to comply with the regulations.

In smaller cities like Manchester where there are only 19 cabs there is very little market pressure. Competition in large cities will put more pressure on companies. The risk of a significant lawsuit is also significant pressure to maintain vehicles.

How is it a case of regulation failure? If there were no regulation, all the defective cabs would still be on the road right now.

> "Competition in large cities will put more pressure on companies."

Only if competition sticks around. In most major cities the long-term trend seems to be larger cab companies swallowing up smaller cab companies until there are only 1-2 players left, at which point competitive pressure is little to nonexistent.

yes.

The lack of commercial insurance is troubling. Who pays if an Uber car is in an accident and a passenger is severely injured?

Aren't all Ubers livery drivers? Shouldn't they already have commercial insurance?