Confession of a liberal: we do taxis entirely wrong

[Recursion]

Regulations and standards are great. If you want to regulate taxi cabs, awesome! Regulate the hell out of them. Regulate them until the Sun comes down. Require incredibly high safety, environmental, and labor standards. But once you have done that, allow anyone who can meet those standards to run a taxi cab.

This is the arbitrage that Uber is manipulating, and it's entirely avoidable. Medallion schemes are a racket, nothing more. Set standards -- set high standards -- but then let anyone who can meet them participate. Even as a bleeding heart liberal I'll say sorting that out is one thing the market is very, very good at.