https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-files-leak...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-...
This is a level of deliberate, optional fraud that goes a step beyond, is it not? It's organised crime.
Someone, generations ago, made a law saying people in your town could only solicit car rides if they paid a special tax, and now you're out here vigorously defending that dead model.
State-enforced monopolies are often legalized corruption. I care more about that than some corporation using their resources to break that corruption.
Congratulations on a text book case of Chesterton's Fence [0]. You've mischaracterized the purpose and nature of the law.
1. we have cars, we have people willing to drive them around to take people places
2. we want some regulation of this new business/service, to make things safer for the riders
3. we want some regulation of this new business/service because otherwise competition will force the price so low that nobody can make a living offering to do this (and we consider the service valuable).
So, we introduce a scheme which says you have pay for a license in order to provide this service. This creates driver identity and "responsibility" which we want for riders. We limit the number of licenses so that we do not have too many drivers chasing too few riders, and thus offering a more reliable income to the drivers, ensuring that the service remains available.
[ time passes ]
Uber introduces a scheme in which there is almost no floor to what drivers might be paid, but manages to tell a story that convinces enough people that they could make a living or at least a significant amount of extra cash by driving without the required license. Uber also assures riders that even though there is no official license, their technology can provide the driver identity/responsibility that it offered.
Result: better ride hailing for riders, money for Uber, and a steady, constant turnover of drivers "just giving it a try because I heard you can do really well ..."
As usual, a mixture of pros and cons, which vary depending on which perspective you are taking and your moral/political philosophy.
You have created a convoluted ex post facto defense of taxi laws which sound plausible but are likely wrong.
"Chesterton's fence" doesn't say that "the most socially positive explanation is correct".
The simpler explanation is one of "concentrated benefits, diffused costs". A group of taxi owners helped implement a state-enforced monopoly at the expense of the rest of society. Technology enabled a new group (Uber) to concentrate benefits further at the expense of the relatively diffused monopoly-holders. Society benefited in some ways (easier rides) while likely bearing costs in other ways (drivers subsidizing Uber).
Why is it convoluted? Watch the process that has happened with every other technological development in the last (say) 40 years? How is what I've described any different?
> A group of taxi owners helped implement a state-enforced monopoly at the expense of the rest of society.
You assume that the downsides of the "monopoly" (I'll ignore the twisting of the conventional meaning of words there) are larger than the upsides, and yet you seem to similarly assume that the downsides of Uber are smaller than the upsides.
Society got a new line of work that made a reasonable living, control over the drivers in the interest of safety and accountability. Those are not exactly like the discovery of fire or the dawn of agriculture, but they are not of zero worth.
I also note how your description of "A group of taxi owners helped implement" has an implicit negative tone, something alone the lines of regulatory capture. Yet we regularly hear calls for regulations to be created with the participation of those affected by it, so that legislatures and civil servants don't make stupid mistakes/decisions.
Look, I'm not really interesting in defending the medallion systems. Taxi service in many places sucked under it and conditions for many drivers weren't exactly what society might have been aiming for.
But tearing it down in favor of another mixed bag of pros & cons needs to be done with a subtle weighing for the relative pros & cons, not the reckless and giddy greed of a company like Uber.