Comments on: April 4 roundup

By: J.T. Wenting

J.T. Wenting — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 04:34:45 +0000

same happened in Amsterdam, where taxi licenses can go for millions as well.
Of course very few have the funds to pay that much up front, so the Amsterdam Taxi Company “generously” agrees to loan them the money, on the condition they sign up to work for them, and hand over most of their pay to the company in addition to having to repay the loan and interest.
Anyone who does manage to get a license otherwise gets hunted down, their cabs damaged, they get beaten up and sometimes knived, and in extreme cases they’re forced to hand over passengers to drivers from the taxi company at gunpoint after being pursued in wild west like chases by multiple other taxis.

Yes, ta

By: James

James — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:51:48 +0000

For once, I’m with the ‘free marketers’ on one. The cab medallion scheme is terrible. The artificial barrier to entry of these medallions means higher prices for consumers and underserving of less profitable markets. The counterargument is based on the idea that without such scarcity, that the streets would be gridlocked wth cabs. But wait.. wouldn’t the all-holy free market take care of this? Why yes, of course it would – just as it has in many cities in asia where congestion is rampant – environmentally damaging individual car usership goes down, and the demand for public transport goes up.

Note, tha some fools might try to confuse the issue of these medallions with ‘licensing.’ Let’s not fool ourselves – it is perfectly possible to have a safety-and-regulation licensing scheme – just like the DMV licenses all regular drivers who mee the required standards of performance, it could do the same for taxi drivers.

By: BL1Y

BL1Y — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:59:53 +0000

Thanks for the shoutout.