[lbo-talk] Kill The Medallions

Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
Wed May 20 13:02:37 PDT 2015


On Wed, May 20, 2015 1:27 pm, Shane Mage wrote:
> There's been a lot of criticism of Uber and Lyft, many, I'm sure, based on
> real incidents. But them's the trees. The forest--which needs to be
> burned down completely--is the monopolization of urban vehicular transport
> services through restricted licensing and the sale of permits for
> participation in that monopolistic capitalist enterprise.

This is exactly right. Uber is a monstrosity, and Travis Dickhead or whatever his name is exemplifies everything that is wrong, wrong, wrong with Silicon Valley startup culture. But the medallion taxi racket is a disgrace. NYT: "The average price of an individual New York taxi medallion fell to $840,000 in November, down 20 percent from its peak of $1.05 million in June 2013."

Clearly this is a speculative asset, like real estate and Rembrandt.



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