>We are not talking about big capital like airlines; we are talking about the
>possibility of owner-entrepreneurs taxi drivers. You don't have to love the
>petit-bougeoisie to be skeptical of a system that uses a $250,000 per car
>capital threshhold to enter a marketplace that should require at most a
>$15,000
>per car capital threshhold.
>
>Using capital ownership on that scale as the means to restrict entry is not
>progressive. Owners of those medallions can replace the workers, so the
>medallion system doesn't even necessarily benefit the workers directly, only
>indirectly.
>
>Without question, more competition would lower fares and cab revenues. But
>would it lower wages? If revenues dropped less than the premium owners of the
>medallions demand from workers to use the cabs, the taxi drivers would
>come out
>ahead.
>
>A progressive system of taxi regulation might use training and licensing
>rules
>(ideally backed by union contract) to restrict entry to the marketplace, but I
>am unconvinced that the medallion system is in any sense a progressive
>substitute.
Who said it was? Medallian prices are capitalized monopoly rent streams, fuck 'em, it's muliply parasitical, but the kind of dereg'd market Rudy & the Manhattan Institute want would cut wages. I'd bet you.
Doug