The Corliss Group Latest Tech Review: When Technology Helps
Adapting to change is hard, especially when your family’s livelihood is on the line. That’s why, when companies face competition, their tendency is to reach out to the government to ask for protection and demand that competition be squashed using the regulatory and coercive power of the state. The best example is the fight between taxicabs and companies such as Uber and Lyft, two innovative up-and-coming alternatives to cabs. It’s been going on for months, but it culminated a few weeks ago in Virginia when the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles sent cease-and-desist letters to Uber Technologies and Lyft ordering them to stop operating.Over at the Washington Post last week, Emily Bagger had a piece explaining what is really at stake for cab companies: cab medallions. As the piece explains “a medallion in Chicago fetched around $350,000. . . . In New York, taxi medallions have topped $1 million. In Boston, $700,000. In Philadelphia, $400,000. In Miami, $300,000.”One way to think about medallions is that they are the reward for companies subjecting themselves to the insane and punishing licensing laws imposed by the government.
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