Uber and Lyft subsidizing taxis in Mass.

New law legalizing companies like Uber and Lyft in Massachussetts also mandates a 5-cent surcharge that will go to taxi companies to "spur innovation." The taxi lobby is a powerful one.

Gov. Charlie Baker signs law regulating Uber and Lyft in Massachusetts

 

The taxi lobby is one of the three most powerful pure special interest groups, in which special interest is defined as a small group with outsized influence, in the state. Parking lot owners and liquor distributors are the other, which is why you can't buy wine online in our state and why it costs $50 to park near Fenway.

 

I have sympathy for the guys who own a sole medallion. The prices were jacked up (in part because of the guys who hoard medallions) and now some immigrant who busted his ass and finally got his hands on one is underwater by a few hundred grand.

Of course those guys will never see a nickel of this.

 

#democraticprocesses

 

How much will Uber and Lyft have to pay when self-driving cars are rolled out? BTW, the test in Pittsburgh seems interesting. I'd do it, especially since the rides are free.

 

Some day soon Congress will enact some special tax on some emerging industry to compensate "victims"* of that industry. And when those of my sensibilities object, some dipshits will say "But it was a Republican idea! Remember Massachusetts?"

And I will throw another shoe through another TV.

*With "victims" being defined as "those whose rent-gathering has come to an end."

 

Why is the government giving money to landlords?

 

It's funny, the last couple of years a new phrase has entered the lexicon ... pecuniary externality. This is when some previously favored group loses its favored status ... so the externality is the loss suffered by that group. Which is, of course, a crock of shit, seeing as how the favored group was rewarded in advance (with excess profits) for the harm that would befall it!

 

Yeah but you're a vegetarian, so your shit don't stink ...