There is a significant consumer safety element to the way Taxis are regulated. The fact that this is used to protect a monopoly is a separate issue and I agree that it is a real problem.

The Tesla analogy is perfect, though. I've never felt like car dealerships being independently owned was a useful benefit. I don't see any reason why both models can't coexist.

> I've never felt like car dealerships being independently owned was a useful benefit

Eh, it was useful for car manufacturers when they were first getting going: they didn't have to put up the capital to open shop. The regulation came in when a dealership showed that a given region had high demand for the company's cars, so the company would move in across the street and undercut the franchised dealer. Obviously the franchised dealer had more clout with local politics than the auto manufacturer did - this is why all the dealership laws are state laws. It was kind of a legitimate regulation back /then/, but really has no bearing on things now (especially for a car company that has never franchised any dealers).

If by "legitimate" you mean "useful" or "good" (as opposed to the law not being passed through the established legislative process, because that criticism wouldn't make sense), then even then it was illegitimate. If the manufacturer can come in and undercut the dealer, they should. Unfortunately, the dealer was local and the manufacturer often wasn't. The same reason any protectionist measures are created.

I think taxi regulations are there to deal with a world way before mobile computing. The regulations addressed at it's heart an information asymmetry between taxi drivers and riders, especially with tourists.

With current ride sharing apps, a lot of that goes away. You don't worry about tampered meters and being driven the long way around, because the trip is GPS tracked on both sides for example. You don't have to worry about getting in a random car in a city with a complete stranger, because reputation systems have pre-vetted your drivers and your driver's cars. a If taxi drivers get angry at you for using credit cards or for short trips, you can complain to a central agency that will deal with it. In developing (and some developed) nations, these ride sharing apps have a better safety margin than the local regulations do. Inefficient systems like taxi lineups at airports are not necessary anymore.

The international nature of these ride sharing apps also give you a universal set of rules as you travel, and make it you can communicate your destination without being able to speak the language. The advantages go on and on. The companies making and creating these things don't really matter, but the general app really does and we shouldn't smother them with regulations.

> There is a significant consumer safety element to the way Taxis are regulated.

Whatever those safety elements are, I've certainly never experienced them. Theoretically they're there, I guess, but my (admittedly anecdotal) experience has been that Uber is safer in every way than taxis are.

Well, I'd say they're twofold:

* Obviously, whether the guy is going to try and kidnap you. Well, Uber has rating, but the background checks are pretty flimsy. Still, I'll concede that it may well be just as good.

* The second thing affects non-customers and it's ensuring the roads aren't congesting with a glut of taxis driving around looking for fares all day (with all the attendant problems that causes). While the average car spends 2 hours or less on the road in a day a taxi or an Uber is going to spend a lot more than that. I'm not really convinced Uber has an answer to that.

There are also issues like insurance/liability and so on that are rarely encountered, but are something of a big deal if they do come up. And there's the worker protection aspect of it.

You're missing the point, which is that the costs are not borne by customers but by everyone on the road. Supply and demand is not a mechanism to solve this kind of problem