"In the last half decade, two trends conspired to end the taxi medallion regime. First, people are more comfortable with trusting strangers."
This isn't true. When I was growing up, hitch hiking was still very common.
I'd argue that people used to trust strangers to a radically higher degree before the prohibition based crime wave (the one that makes swaths of every city in the US more dangerous than Afghanistan) that began in the 1960s.
I agree. But as the article goes on to point out, we are not more trusting of complete strangers, but rather strangers who've been vetted by many AirBnb reviews, background checked by Uber, etc. Technology has changed the definition of a 'stranger'.
This isn't true. When I was growing up, hitch hiking was still very common.
I'd argue that people used to trust strangers to a radically higher degree before the prohibition based crime wave (the one that makes swaths of every city in the US more dangerous than Afghanistan) that began in the 1960s.