Except that people who own the licenses are going to lobby against that (and probably with greater effect considering they're able to afford the licenses in the first place) since that would be a huge loss in equity for them.

It's the same with liquor licenses in Boston (maybe all of Mass., but I'm not sure about that). There's a limited number of them, but they can be resold, usually fetching more than a million dollars. This is a huge startup cost for new restauranteurs, but they have held their value, such that when you decide (or are forced) to sell or close the business, you can recoup that initial investment. Issuing more licenses or trying to reduce the cost of them in other ways would just destroy that value for the owners, most of which have taken out loans against them that would still need to be repaid.

The fun part is that a taxi licence is delivered for free by the city, provided you fit the criterias. But taxis don't want too many licences to be around of course, so they lobbied for a low limit to be delivered (which may or may not be revisionned when a city increase in size/population). They built this bubble themselves and now they're crying about it. Since last year you can't resell your licence anymore, obviously it only works for the new ones delivered, otherwise the country would get sued and loose instantly. But the "bought" licences are probably going to stick around forever.

Also the current protest is not about Uber but UberPop, which is kinda illegal at the moment and rightly so. I don't mind the taxis getting fucked over by their own greed, but I'd prefer if it was done lawfully.

it doesn't work this way. Taxi license are free. A finite number of them were issued by the state.

Taxi drivers are willing to pay $250k to get a license from other taxi drivers! It's a token that get passed around.

The day these license are worth $0, the last owners will be screwed. Ponzi ?