I think that Uber is an improvement for relatively well-off people, a direct no-op for poorer people, and a potential indirect harm to poorer people if Uber harms taxicab service by competing unfairly.

I have no problem at all with Uber's black car service, but I think the taxi service is sketchy.

Wait, poor people take cabs? Isn't the primary cheap mode of transportation in a large city the bus and train system? That's got to be true for SF and NY at least.

Uber is getting pretty cheap too, regardless. Example: my wife just caught a car to SFO from Berkeley for less than $80, and no tip. That's cheaper than a taxi, friendlier, you can call 10 minutes before you need the Uber, and track it to your door.

A taxi would need to be reserved well in advance, would show up at an indeterminate time, the driver would be indeterminately sleepy, and you'd have to deal with tipping and credit cards. He might be smoking too, and if any of this happened with Uber, you'd leave a bad review. A few reviews, no more driver.

Of course, a person on a budget is going to take BART or a shuttle.

A poor person sometimes needs to go someplace very specific on short notice.

Of course, in some cities the cabs don't go the places they are technically "required" to go -- they give a very long estimate of arrival as a way of getting you to go away. Or don't show up at all. I suspect this varies a lot by geographical location.

I've never had a problem calling a cab to get to SFO, which I've done over 20 times. Calling a cab to get to the airport is probably the least painful cab usage scenario in SF. Uber doesn't do much to improve upon that situation, but does make it about 20 dollars more expensive.

The worst cab situation in SF is trying to find a cab at night, which Uber has greatly improved upon.

Yes, poor people take cabs.

Then they are lucky Uber exists. Don't believe in your purported indirect harm, do believe in downward price pressure, and upward quality pressure.

Well, the legislatures of many cities don't agree with you.

> Wait, poor people take cabs? Isn't the primary cheap mode of transportation in a large city the bus and train system?

Buses and trains, in many cities, don't go everywhere, and don't always run when you need to go, so, yes, poor people take cabs.

I would argue that all granted monopolies are flawed models. Either they require the use of force to prevent illicit competitors (who are making consensual business transactions with customers), or they serve the demands of the market well enough that there are no illicit competitors (in which case the granted monopoly is by definition unnecessary).

> I would argue that all granted monopolies are flawed models.

Sure, granted monopolies are (at best) a blunt instrument for internalizing externalities; the questions aren't whether they are imperfect (they are), the question is whether more finely-tuned mechanisms of internalizing the externalities have their own costs which outweigh the benefits. (Also, of course, whether the externalities are accurately assessed.)

> Either they require the use of force to prevent illicit competitors (who are making consensual business transactions with customers)

You seem to suggest that consensual business transactions are always desirable, which (even making the usual assumptions that make this true when considering only the effects on the direct participants) only is sensible if you completely discount the possibility of externalities.

> You seem to suggest that consensual business transactions are always desirable, which (even making the usual assumptions that make this true when considering only the effects on the direct participants) only is sensible if you completely discount the possibility of externalities.

Not at all. I recognize the existence and inevitability of market failures. I just think that regulations will lead to more market failures ("government failures") and will (on average) decrease economic efficiency.

> (who are making consensual business transactions with customers)

...using public property (public roads, public rights of way for water lines or telephone lines, etc).

A city excluding illicit competitors from using its roads "requires the use of force" no more than vindicating the right of a property owner to exclude others requires the use of force as a general matter.

> A city excluding illicit competitors from using its roads "requires the use of force" no more than vindicating the right of a property owner to exclude others requires the use of force as a general matter.

They key difference is not so much the use of force itself, but rather who we consider to be legitimate purveyors of force. When it comes to property rights, obviously there are many varying philosophies and codes that people adhere to, but most people who believe in any form of personal property rights believe that the owners themselves can legitimately use force to defend that property. In other words, there is no monopoly on the legitimate use of force for enforcing property rights.

Government, on the other hand, enjoys a monopoly on the legitimate use of force for many things. If a random group of people went around to every house in a region forcefully taking money in order to fund roads, hospitals, charities, etc., the vast majority of society would not see this as legitimate. Likewise, if 9 of the 10 families on your block agreed to forcefully take and use your family's house and property as they saw fit, the vast majority of society would not see this as legitimate. The fact that the majority of people in a region agreed on the use of force would not legitimize it. So government is unique in this regard: it can and does do both of those things and more, and society sees them as the only group of people who can legitimately do that. This is the quality of government I don't care for, and what I believe leads to economic inefficiency.

Municipalities can ban Uber even within your framework. In that situation, the justification for the use of force derives not from the government's monopoly on the use of force, but from a property owner's right to use force to exclude anyone from their property (i.e. the public roads).

I suppose that's true if you consider "public property" to be equivalent to "private property" that just happens to have the government as its owner. But by that logic, governments could have arbitrary control over all public property, meaning they could do things like ban political dissidents from using roads. In reality though, the mini-framework I presented is too simplistic to extend to public property. The key difference is that public property, unlike traditional personal private property, is funded by taxation, which is why we reflexively reject the idea of the government exercising certain control over public property.

You don't have to consider the government as the outright owner of public property. You can think of the government as holding public property in trust. Trustees are empowered to exercise the rights of property ownership as long as they do so consistently with their fiduciary duties. So a municipality could still exclude Uber from the public roads based on its right to exclude others from property it holds in trust.

> My point is that even within that framework, municipalities do not need to resort to the government's monopoly on the use of force to exclude Uber from the public roads.

Sure they do.

> The public built the roads that Uber runs its service on, and the public, acting through municipal governments, is entitled to exclude Uber from those roads.

Perhaps, but, in any case, that doesn't relieve them of the need to rely on the so-called "monopoly on force" to exclude Uber, it just, at best, is the justification for that particular use of it.

There is a difference between using a power to achieve an end, and necessarily needing to use that power to achieve that end. Cities might use their monopoly on force, as governments, to enforce a ban on Uber, but even if they did not have that power, they could use their rights as the entities that build and maintain the roads Uber runs on.

> Cities might use their monopoly on force, as governments, to enforce a ban on Uber, but even if they did not have that power, they could use their rights as the entities that build and maintain the roads Uber runs on.

No, they couldn't. Rights are a theoretical justification for excluding someone, the government's compulsory power is a mechanism for excluding someone.

The former cannot substitute for the latter (and vice versa.)

I'm presupposing a point of baddox's hypothetical, which posits a mechanism for enforcing the right to exclude others from property independent of the government's monopoly on force.