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Yeah, it's terrible when the Gov't interferes with the free market.
Nothing to do with government. Just the opposite. Technology ( Uber,Lyft) radically changed the market. This is the epitome of free market. It would have been government interference if cities or states had stepped in by banning Uber and Lyft to save the taxi industry.
There is always risk...often big risk..in any "investment"
The Taxi Union wasn't as strong as the Hotel Union. Hotels successfully banned Air Bnb to a vast extent in NYC and other cities. That was all union action in effect. UTOG wasn't strong enough to do the same with Uber.
Nothing to do with government. Just the opposite. Technology ( Uber,Lyft) radically changed the market. This is the epitome of free market. It would have been government interference if cities or states had stepped in by banning Uber and Lyft to save the taxi industry.
There is always risk...often big risk..in any "investment"
It's not quite as simple as that. The loans to buy the medallions were given to people who never should have qualified for million dollar loans--people making a little more than minimum wage. In addition, some wholesalers would put a medallion on the auction block and bid on it and deliberately pay an inflated price on that one medallion to drive up the price on all the others.
I believe in the free market as well, but what happened here was fraud and there needs to be regulation to keep the free market orderly and lucrative for everyone. Do the cabbies who bought them bear some responsibility?--sure they do but they were flat out lied to.
I believe that partial compensation is appropriate and in the future people should not offer risky loans to people with low income or artificially inflate prices.
The Gov't controlled the supply of these things, which lead to them being inflated in value. They helped create the bubble. And being the Gov't is slow, it couldn't react to changing technology.
There was a huge amount of fraud that pushed medallion prices up to their peak level. It was basically a Ponzi scheme. Uber/Lyft popped the bubble. But there was no legitimate reason for medallions to get to the prices they were.
The city should take this opportunity to dissolve the medallion system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bluedog2
Nothing to do with government. Just the opposite. Technology ( Uber,Lyft) radically changed the market. This is the epitome of free market. It would have been government interference if cities or states had stepped in by banning Uber and Lyft to save the taxi industry.
There is always risk...often big risk..in any "investment"
There have been a lot of suicides among the groups of medallion owners that bough near the peak.
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