April 21, 2015 12:37 PM

Bearse: Uber Alles

From the Right: Quorum Report’s conservative Republican columnist argues that too many issues are being couched as “local control” issues; on ridesharing, he says it should be about personal choice and free markets

In America, we believe in free markets – that is, unless you provide an efficient, technologically-savvy alternative to taxi service, and then you have to fight the taxi cab oligarchy to enter the marketplace.

Uber is now in more than 300 cities. Apparently it meets a certain demand. During South by Southwest in Austin, it provided a quarter million rides over ten short days. The local cab oligarchs – three companies operate all the cabs in Austin – have a different business model than Uber, Lyft and other rideshare companies.

Those cab companies get paid a few hundred bucks a week by a driver to operate a car. It’s up to the driver to make enough stops to pay that fee and make a living. There’s nothing wrong with this business model per se, but it’s not exactly a supply and demand model. The ability to respond to a surge of consumer demand is limited by the cap on licensed cabs – 755, to be exact, in Austin. For five years Austin has maintained this limit on cabs despite a growing population.

If cabs were meeting the full demand, why would a quarter million people grab a lift from Uber in a ten-day period? If you need a sober ride, think of the simplicity of the rideshare alternative: you don’t have to stand on the street to track down a cab, you just click the app and a driver comes and gets you.

The full column by Eric Bearse can be found in the R&D Department.

By Eric Bearse