content: It's easy to say that, and true for the most part, but the city should be carrying a lot of the blame. Most people don't realize how fucking expensive it is to buy a cab license. It's insanely expensive, most larger cities charge $250,000 or more for a single cab license. And in most cases, the cab licenses are owned forever and can be passed down or inherited by generations of the same family. This leads to a closed market where you have a couple of rich fuckers buy up all the licenses and then lease out their cabs to drivers who work sweatshop labour conditions to break even. You'll lease a car and license for a day, you want to run that car 24 hours to make money, it's a shitty life and there was a time where you could actually make a decent living out of driving a cab but now all the profits go to the license owners. Then, the city dictates how much the fares are and issue fines to non-compliant cabbies, there are whole books of bylaws when it comes to cabs and cabbies are often harassed and fined by cab cops. The whole system was set up to create a non-competitive racket, but it was set up by the cities, not the cabbies or cab companies. Honestly, I'd be pissed if I was a license holder. The whole system needs to be overhauled - eliminate eternal ownership of cap licenses, hold public auctions once a year so that independents can get into the industry, and let the companies run on free-market prices.