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[–] RabidRaccoon 0 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago  (edited ago)

Well it depends. If you're some random wannabe taxi driver and you bought a medallion because it was the only way you could operate, I sympathize.

On the other hand reading this

http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2014/06/06/how-much-do-boston-taxi-medallions-cost-2/

Not only has the archaic, city-sanctioned monopoly managed to survive 80 years, along the way it’s made multimillionaires out of individuals like Eddie Tutunjian, owner of 384 medallions and the Boston Cab garage.

Tutunjian, as of October 2013, effectively controlled 21 percent of Boston's billion-dollar taxi industry, which uberX is now threatening to make extinct. At least, that's the logical chain of thought.

The more pickups uberX drivers make, the less fares Boston cabbies collect, the less valuable medallions become.

Last March, a month after uberX launched, the Boston Business Journal estimated the purchase price for a medallion at $500,000 to $600,000. A year later, what's the going rate for a Boston taxi medallion? The answer: $700,000.

"The market dictates a medallion's value," Donna Blythe-Shaw, a spokesperson with the BTDA told BostInno in phone a call. But $700,000, now? In 2014? When ridesharing services like uberX are cutting into cab companies’ revenues?

This appears to be the case, if the figures in the image above are accurate. The figures were published by an independent taxi industry monthly newspaper, Carriage News (which costs just $2 a month for a subscription) and sent to BostInno by Blythe-Shaw.

Uber debuted a beta version of its uberX service to Boston users in February 2013. Almost a year-and-a-half later, uberX is the established industry choice among consumers. But, as recently as February 26, 2014, medallions have been trading at prices as high as $700,000.

Equating medallion ownership to residential real estate, Blythe-Shaw explained, the monthly "mortgage rate" for one $700,000 medallion is $4,000 – or $48,000 per year.

Most medallion owners collect rent from shift drivers, who pay upwards of $500 per week – translation: $24,000 per year – just to drive a taxi. Owner-drivers – medallion owners who drive a taxi they've purchased – have it worse.

I don't sympathize with someone who bought up 384 medallions, rented them out and used the rent to buy more of them. That is literally rent seeking behaviour

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking#Description

Rent-seeking is an attempt to obtain economic rent (i.e., the portion of income paid to a factor of production in excess of that which is needed to keep it employed in its current use) by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth. Rent-seeking implies extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity. The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee (or rent of the section of the river for a few minutes) to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector. The lord has made no improvements to the river and is helping nobody in any way, directly or indirectly, except himself. All he is doing is finding a way to make money from something that used to be free.[5]

I.e. it seems like if you abolished the medallion system all that would happen to most drivers is that they'd stop paying rent to someone like Mr Tutunjian.