> Simple: the number of cabs at which taxi driving is no longer profitable is far, far more than the optimal number of cabs.
Do you have any evidence of this claim? As with anything, there isn't some magical shut-off point where everyone is selling something and then no one is after the price increases another dollar.
Your analysis strikes me as too simplistic. It ignores opportunity costs and the possibility that it might decrease personal car ownership outright if a viable taxi system were to exist.
At any rate, even if it's taken as fact it doesn't justify a fixed number of medallions revised once every few decades. A price set on them, adjusted regularly, would achieve the same cause and be less limiting and more responsive to growth (something cities tend to do a lot of between the issuance of new medallions).
Creating artificial scarcity does nothing but enable some people to profit with little risk.
Do you have any evidence of this claim? As with anything, there isn't some magical shut-off point where everyone is selling something and then no one is after the price increases another dollar.
Your analysis strikes me as too simplistic. It ignores opportunity costs and the possibility that it might decrease personal car ownership outright if a viable taxi system were to exist.
At any rate, even if it's taken as fact it doesn't justify a fixed number of medallions revised once every few decades. A price set on them, adjusted regularly, would achieve the same cause and be less limiting and more responsive to growth (something cities tend to do a lot of between the issuance of new medallions).
Creating artificial scarcity does nothing but enable some people to profit with little risk.