Uber taxi settlement .

Most here will know Uber has settled a legal action by taxi owners ,that will se the owners get around $40,000 each..Some years ago ,Uber also came to a deal with the Queensland Govt that saw owners get around $40,000 compensation from the State govt.................Now the state has always had the power to crush Uber ,and initially fiddled around with a few fines on drivers,which Uber paid .....................Case of money talks ,BS walks  with crooked politicians...........Big losers are the taxi owners ,who saw licences worth $100,000 + dissolve into nothing overnight .......and that was in 1980 money ,where $100,000 would have bought five houses .

Taxis lived in the past with monopolies and fake Government restrictions on licences making them worth a fortune in trading ie the profits from owning a taxi licence were huge.

The service offered was not up to public expectations and you could wait for hours for a cab at peak times and their prices just went up and up. Fewer than 50% of owners drove their cabs (many owning several licences) and the profits were such that they could afford to employ drivers and still make a killing. They got their chance in "deregulation" to make an attempt to meet the modern mobile phone market.

Uber saw the opportunity to serve the public which wanted a service "right now" at any time. Yes they came in and gave thousands of ordinary Australians a chance to earn money but avoided the vehicle inspection, driver vetting etc regulations registered operators had. Of course many of the amateur drivers could play with their income to minimise their tax. But they tripled the transport options for all Australians.

The BS about the danger of amateur drivers is ridiculous. Who do you think will be safer, a bloke driving his own car or a recent arrival from Mumbai driving someone else's car?

Any time governments become involved in the free-market it results in falling efficiency, higher costs, runaway red tape and diminished service to the user.

Uber rightly have to pay for their illegal initial sidestepping of the rules to level the playing field but the taxis are slow learners and need to smarten up their footwork and give the public what they want, not what entrenched ideas and government regulation tells the piublic they can have. Uber have opened up the public transport options to thousands of Australians who live in areas where a taxi service is not economical.

Room for both, situations where one is clearly better than the other and keeping ahead of demand and technology will result in a much better overall meeting of  public expectations in 2024.

PS. In Mongolia everybody is a taxi. You just put up your hand and the first private  vehicle will pull over. You tell him where you want to go. If he has the time or inclination you jump in. At the destination you pay the non-regulated but standard accepted per kilometre price (no tedious haggling) and everyone is happy. There is absolutely no difference to our Uber except the government or a big company do not get a cut.

 

A lot of ordinary people bought Taxi licenses and leased them out as an investment ..........IIRC ,some taxi licenses were selling for around $1/2 million ,and in Queensland the state govt originally used to ballot out taxi licenses ,but then got into the act of selling them for inflated amounts...........A lot of people would have lost big when the uber pirates hit the scene..........The Queensland govt always had the power to crush illegal taxis ,and often did ........but did nothing about Uber.