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Comment by cpkpad | Hacker News Reader

I live in Boston. Taxi drivers are jumping to Uber and Lyft wholesale. They make more, and perhaps more importantly, the income is steady. With the taxi system, medallions cost about $600,000 to buy, and were owned by rich investors.

Cab drivers rent those medallions for around $200 per day, and after paying off the investor, kept any profit on top of that. On a bad day, they'd lose money. On a decent day, they'd work a 16 hour shift and make minimum wage. On a great day, they'd make a few hundred bucks.

In Massachusetts, the law is designed to protect those investors (who lobbied for it) -- not cab drivers. There is nothing in the law which is not corrupt.

Self-driving cars will cost jobs. This just costs the very rich their investments in medallions, which prior to Uber were a full-proof investment.

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You're right except the whole "making more" part.

Once the market is saturated with Uber drivers like has happened in places like London, rates start to go down, and drivers make WAY less than than the used to. Simple supply and demand.

No defense of the medallion system. Maybe the government should "bail out" taxi medallion owners, and simply pay back these medallion costs so that taxi drivers are free to figure out the next step in their careers/lives without the indentured servitude of paying back the medallion loans hanging around their necks.

> Once the market is saturated with Uber drivers like has happened in places like London, rates start to go down, and drivers make WAY less than than the used to. Simple supply and demand.

That's the problem with a profession where the main skill requirement is possessed by the majority of the adult population. It's never going to be a good job because the supply is essentially infinite. Imagine how different things would be for us as software engineers if everyone knew how to program.

Boston is one of the original Uber markets. The market is as saturated as it gets. I talk to drivers. They're much better off. It's like night and day. Driving for medallion owners was sub-minimum wage, they'd sometimes lose money, and the shifts were insanely long. A driver on their 14th hour driving a given day wasn't a safe driver.

At least in Boston, a medallion loan or an individual medallion owner driving a cab are a complete myth and fabrication. A medallion costs $700,000. No one with three quarters of a million dollars is driving a cab. Investors buy medallions and lease them out. Poor immigrants lease medallions and cabs, and scrape by. Medallion owners, calling themselves small business owners, aren't even required to provide minimum wage or basic health care. It's a horribly exploitative business, and I'm glad to see it go under.

Subsidies or bailouts for medallion owners seem like a horrible idea to me, at least in a town like Boston. In a city where lower-class individuals owned medallions, it would be another story.

> simply pay back these medallion costs so that taxi drivers are free to figure out the next step in their careers/lives without the indentured servitude of paying back the medallion loans hanging around their necks.

this is actually one of the more sensible proposals i've heard.

although i will say that the two cities i've lived in (leeds and manchester) already had private hire vehicles before uber. and it was kind of hit and miss. at this point, i'm not sure uber has to be cheaper - i'd use it just because their user experience is so much better than ringing some terrible phoneline etc.

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