From Peter Tenebrarum at davidstockmanscontracorner.com:
It turns out that it is not a good idea to create speculation revolving around interventionist government policies. Ever since Uber appeared on the scene, the previously coddled taxi industry is in trouble – and apparently nowhere more so than in NY City.
In NYC, there is a special situation: in the 1930s, the city created the “taxi medallion”, artificially limiting the number of taxis allowed to work in the city. These medallions have become objects of speculation and have been thoroughly financialized.
As Jeffrey Tucker reports, Uber has apparently busted the taxi cartel and destroyed the medallion market in the process:
“An age-old rap against free markets is that they give rise to monopolies that use their power to exploit consumers, crush upstarts, and stifle innovation. It was this perception that led to “trust busting” a century ago, and continues to drive the monopoly-hunting policy at the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department.
But if you look around at the real world, you find something different. The actually existing monopolies that do these bad things are created not by markets but by government policy. Think of sectors like education, mail, courts, money, or municipal taxis, and you find a reality that is the opposite of the caricature: public policy creates monopolies while markets bust them.
[…]
In New York, we are seeing a collapse as inexorable as the fall of the Soviet Union itself. The app economy introduced competition in a surreptitious way. It invited people to sign up to drive people here and there and get paid for it. No more standing in lines on corners or being forced to split fares. You can stay in the coffee shop until you are notified that your car is there.In less than one year, we’ve seen the astonishing effects. Not only has the price of taxi medallions fallen dramatically from a peak of $1 million, it’s not even clear that there is a market remaining at all for these permits. There hasn’t been a single medallion sale in four months. They are on the verge of becoming scrap metal or collector’s items destined for eBay.”
To continue reading: The Collapse of the NY Taxi Cartel
I first became aware of NYC taxi medallions listening to a Murray Rothbard audio cassette tape course. On one of my summer trips to Manhattan, I got a cab which was air-conditioned(only time ever there) and thus, I asked if he was solo –>he had two cabs with medallions which he paid less than but near $100,000 each. I am thinking the event happened during the late 80s.