Steven Greenhut: Taxi Deregulation Removes Cabbies’ Economic Shackles

After the Civil War, newly freed slaves and poor
whites in the Deep South often became “sharecroppers” who
farmed land owned by others and paid a share of the crops. Barely
able to eke out a living and unable to buy farms, they became
indebted to the owners and locked into a life of poverty. It sounds
strange at first, writes Steven Greenhut, but San Diego’s taxicab
system — like such systems elsewhere – has parallels to that
antiquated economic model. Eighty-nine percent of the city’s cab
drivers rent cabs. Because of a city-imposed cap on the number of
cabs, these drivers cannot go out on their own. There is no an
opportunity to remove these economic shackles. 

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