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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

To expand, "fifty-eight percent of New York City’s cabs are owned by corporate entities such as Freidman’s. Just a third are owned by the people who drive them. As a result, most taxi drivers and Uber drivers find themselves in the same boat—working as independent contractors, logging brutal hours."

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-taxi-medallion-king/

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But they still have a union.

At that got them the same or worse deal than they would get with Uber, which doesn't have a union? That sounds like a great return on union membership fees.

At least in New York, it paid for lots of union leaders, administrators and interns.

Even better! We should unionize everyone and use the mandatory dues to pay for ever more bureaucrats/admins/interns, so that when we reach full-robot, everyone still has a job. :-)

Whose combined salaries barely scratch that of a CEO

The argument would be that the union's negotiations established a wage floor, and uber drivers get a freerider benefit. If uber's funding dried up, and they only paid drivers from what paasengers pay, they would have a lot more pressure to lower rates. Furthermore the union probably makes the wages sticky, rather than able to be lowered if competitors exit the market.

Though hailing cabs is inconvenient there probably is some socal utility to the medallion system beyond just rent seeking for the owners. For example the supply of cabs being steady at odd hours, and better compliance with ruling on serving all areas of a city.

Just a small point of disagreement: Often, in busy parts of NYC, hailing a cab is much more convenient that calling an Uber. Ubers often take awhile to get to you whereas a yellow cab can be hailed within a few seconds.

I am interested in the question you pose though - about the social utility of the medallion system. Perhaps there's some benefit in keeping the number of cabs limited in order to keep the roads emptier and thus more usable?

If a yellow cab can be hailed within a few seconds, it sounds like there are enough cabs to serve the market.

Would more cabs only lower the utilization rate and thus earnings?

>If a yellow cab can be hailed within a few seconds, it sounds like there are enough cabs to serve the market.

That's only true of certain areas and certain times.

The New York Taxi Workers Alliance is a non–profit that acts on behalf of drivers, but is not a union in the traditional sense. There is no "contract" between drivers and owners for example, there is no defined collective bargaining unit.

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