Even if the need for limiting a service is true, why auctioned? Just give them for free in a lottery, and tie them to the recipient so they can't be sold or exchanged. If the recipient doesn't want it anymore the medallion reverts to the Authority and a new lottery is called to re-assign it. This is done for example with public housing in a lot of places.

At the end of the day they are a scarce, highly demanded, revenue generating asset and as long as people are renting them, someone will price them appropriately (i.e. whatever the market will bear). It should be the city capturing that revenue instead of Mario's Medallion Rentals [1]. There are externalities to having a bunch of taxis clogging up traffic - $500 million per year in wasted time alone. The city is the one who spends to improve mobility.

At the end of the day taxi service is a business. Nobody goes homeless because of the scarcity of medallions for roaming taxicabs. Driving for a dispatch service or doing other work - yes, homeless - no. If you're suggesting that we do it as a subsidized public-works jobs program, I can think of much more deserving projects than driving a taxi. I'd rather have them driving subway trains instead, for starters.

[1] Note: the current system does not capture revenue for the city very effectively, but it should.

It is not a capital expense in the same way that a vehicle is. It is physically impossible to offer taxi service without a vehicle. It is merely illegal to offer certain types of taxi services in some areas without a medallion. I am asking why a medallion is reasonable in the first place, a question we wouldn't have to address regarding a vehicle.

As to congestion, that is a post hoc justification of medallions that were intensely lobbied for by taxi companies as an anti-competitive measure.

Would you say that pollution allocations (eg SO2 or CO2 credits) are also not a capital asset? I mean sure, you can buy them and sell them or take out an option against their future value. But you could just break the law and pollute without one perfectly fine.

I fundamentally disagree with that assertion. Legal compliance is just as valid a consideration as physical necessity. Just because you can dump toxic waste in the river doesn't mean that should be the baseline behavior. Congestion is basically a form of pollution - pollution of our traffic system.

The existence of taxi medallions is no more or less valid than the existence of liquor licenses. Societies regulate things that they deem to have negative externalities, film at 11. It doesn't matter that they have roots that you dislike (eg prohibitionism), what matters is the role we assign them in the present time.

> can later be sold for as much or more than you initially paid

If the price is down by over 40% since pre-Über, that's questionable.

Past performance does not guarantee future returns and all that.

That's good in my book, I'm not a fan of the way they've been financialized. I'd rather see them auctioned off on a yearly basis to avoid institutional investors running the price up. So a big drop in medallion value is just fine with me.

Doesn't Uber solve the wandering empty cab problem? Uber cars don't need to drive around to find fares.

I'd say it's some better, but not all better. The problem isn't just the finding fares part, it's the fact that they are on the roads all day. When you drive a private car to work you spend 8 hours parked, and the car is off the roads. Commercial vehicles like Uber drivers will do back-to-back runs for hours.

It's better than inching around the block all day though. And to their credit they are all driving using GPS guidance. That probably does help throughput somewhat vs Mark 1 Intuition by routing you away from congested routes, avoiding hesitation and missed turns, etc.