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Comment by Widdershin | Hacker News Reader

Why does it cost so much to get a taxi license? 100k EUR seems pretty steep.

Seems like such licenses only exist to help monopolies stay monopolies. Uber turned taxi rides into an free market—-bad news for taxi drivers and their lobbyists. The French law courts seem to be working their hardest to ensure that France will never become a more innovative economy

A more lucrative license field to disrupt would be medicine

What happens when there is no taxies and Uber is the monopolist?

If they allowed a free for all then competitive forces would quickly force standards down. The same commercial pressures that make Facebook and Twitter abuse their users would lead to all sorts of problems in Paris.

And of course the taxi companies aren't monopolies, they have to bid against each other to obtain a license and compete for customers.

Limited supply and many are allowed to resell the license. Paris probably wanted to limit the number of taxis all over the street. Then Uber happened.

Resalable or transferable licenses sounds the most idiotic thing ever. Ofc, some cases like selling whole company it could be allowed. But otherwise it should return to be reissued...

Limited number of licenses.

This is the same as liquor license. I've seen liquor license well for 1 mil in some areas.

NYC and SFO licenses used to routinely go over a million.

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