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Most major American cities have long used a system to limit the number of operating taxicabs, typically a medallion system: Drivers must own or rent a medallion to operate a taxi, and the city issues a fixed number of them. Now Josh Barro reports at the NYT that in major cities throughout the United States, taxi medallion prices are tumbling as taxis face competition from car-service apps like Uber and Lyft. The average price of an individual New York City taxi medallion fell to $872,000 in October, down 17 percent from a peak reached in the spring of 2013, according to an analysis of sales data. "I’m already at peace with the idea that I’m going to go bankrupt,” said Larry Ionescu, who owns 98 Chicago taxi medallions. As recently as April, Boston taxi medallions were selling for $700,000. The last sale, in October, was for $561,000. “Right now Uber has a strong presence here in Boston, and that’s having a dramatic impact on the taxi industry and the medallion values,” says Donna Blythe-Shaw, a spokeswoman for the Boston Taxi Drivers’ Association. “We hear that there’s a couple of medallion owners that have offered to sell at 425 and nobody’s touched them."
The current structure of the American taxi industry began in New York City when “taxi medallions” were introduced in the 1930s. Taxis were extremely popular in the city, and the government realized they needed to make sure drivers weren’t psychopaths luring victims into their cars. So, New York City required cabbies to apply for a taxi medallion license. Given the technology available in the 1930s, It was a reasonable solution to the taxi safety problem, and other cities soon followed suit. But their scarcity has made taxi medallions the best investment in America for years. Where they exist, taxi medallions have outperformed even the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. In Chicago, their value has doubled since 2009. The medallion stakeholders are many and deep pockets run this market. The system in Chicago and elsewhere is dominated by large investors who rely on brokers to sell medallions, specialty banks to finance them and middle men to manage and lease them to drivers who own nothing at all. Together, they’re fighting to protect an asset that was worth about $2.4 billion in Chicago last year. “The medallion owners seem to be of the opinion that they are entitled to indefinite appreciation of their asset,” says Corey Owens, Uber’s head of global public policy.. “The taxi medallion in the U.S. was the best investment you could have made in the last 30 years. Will it go up forever? No. And if they expected that it would, that was their mistake.”
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday December 01 2014, @02:41AM
How so? I can't honestly see that at all. I've yet to weigh in on Uber or Lift as rent seeking and corporate-government malfeasance is rather banal and uninteresting to me at the local level. I've also never needed routine access to such transportation.
The balance between what is practical and what is possible is a vague statement. In all fairness it applies to almost every design process we undertake as engineers. It's the white coats in R&D that get to blow shit up "just because" to keep pushing possible into practical. In that respect, smart phones with ubiquitous Internet connections allowing use of sophisticated processes does indeed make quite a bit of what is possible now practical. In some cases, what we thought was wholly impractical.
Minimum wage is only involved in the sense that the drivers are being compensated for more than their associated costs of driving. Minimum wage is an insulting term by definition. It means that your contributions will be valued to the lowest extent by law, and this can be substantially lower than what is agreed to be needed considered "living".
So Uber has two wholly different kinds of drivers. Those who are not remotely interested in being compensated for their associated costs of driving, and would happily settle for a reasonable fraction, and those who wish to make a living. It's the difference between car pooling and getting a Taxi. What Uber does is adroitly reveal the markets, how they have failed or succeeded to serve their customers, and creates an alternative economy in competition to the entrenched interests and players. Hell yes, it's disruptive. Is it unfair though?
On one hand Uber serves purposes for car pooling (single threaded) quite well. If they made it easy and I knew there was a 3rd party with paper trails, I would be somewhat amenable to blind car pooling. Uber creates an entirely new market, with new regulations, and new players. The initial market is one that could be barter. Admittedly both Uber and Lyft control prices, which is not shocking and instantly evil. They want to be middle men, but are also stepping up and providing tools and additional insurance.
Uber is only an "evil" WRT to minimum wage because in some cases it illustrates what was true all along; People are willing to carpool and receive reasonable compensation towards the costs.
Where this is strongly true and the barriers to entry were strong and state protected we see a lot of strife and anger. So I'm thinking this is not really about minimum wage at all, and it was about controlling access to an entire market. Now the street level workers are figuring out that the market was entirely artificial to begin with. In some cases it comes along with the bittersweet knowledge that the people who own them are also losing their assess.
Might all the cabbies go out of business when the market is flooded by additional free miles like Google does with free email? We may want to possibly consider that all the cabbies going out of business might be a good thing. Where the market supports better compensation to the point you could live off it, what you will see is highly qualified cabbies, impeccable men with invariably sweet smelling cabs.
The only reason why this is disruptive is that Uber holds up the mirror and shows that a lot of taxi markets are wholly corrupt and artificial all the way up to the state level. Uber is bringing competition and transparency to these markets. The issue of minimum wage is separate, and not correct to apply when the idea of driving for Uber is not always profit. If you felt strongly about that, then Uber can allow two account levels. A "Settler" and a "Worker".
A Settler can work for less and acknowledges that this is just about getting another person to contribute gas money. Ohh, and some more insurance. Lyft does that. The issues of worker rights, unions, vaca...blah blah blah blah are signed away as a Settler.
A Worker can demand a living wage for their time in addition to operating costs, while retaining all rights and privileges affordable by law as a worker. Tit for that, that also means they are treated as W4s, or at least 1099s. Settlers can be grouped in with environmental legislation where the burdens of taxation are lifted in this case. At the very least, a Settler could claim an exemption I'm sure for the income.
The difference between a Settler and a Worker is handled under account preferences.
I'm not seeing your condemnation of them being supported. Uber doesn't seem to be destroying markets and lives as much as it only revealed they shouldn't be alive in the first place under true capitalism and free markets.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.