Although I am a big proponent of spreading the word about Regulatory capture, it's not quite that simple. A lot of the regulations that exist for taxis really do make sense, given a few contexts:
1) you don't know who is coming to pick you up
2) the ability to contact your former driver in the event of a bad experience is almost nil
3) you have to trust the taximeter
4) taxis have to jockey for a visual hail
5) there is no guarantee that a dispatched taxi will actually arrive.
while there are concerns (e.g. safety, insurance) that do warrant a strong rational basis for regulation that are in common between taxis and lyft/uber, etc - a lot of the regulations that are in place do not carry over and those shouldn't apply to the lyft/uber.
To its credit, the state of california seems to be making an (if slow) rapprochement between the existing regulation set and a reasonable set... Don't know about other places.
1) you don't know who is coming to pick you up 2) the ability to contact your former driver in the event of a bad experience is almost nil 3) you have to trust the taximeter 4) taxis have to jockey for a visual hail 5) there is no guarantee that a dispatched taxi will actually arrive.
while there are concerns (e.g. safety, insurance) that do warrant a strong rational basis for regulation that are in common between taxis and lyft/uber, etc - a lot of the regulations that are in place do not carry over and those shouldn't apply to the lyft/uber.
To its credit, the state of california seems to be making an (if slow) rapprochement between the existing regulation set and a reasonable set... Don't know about other places.