A ‘digital dispatch’ taxi company has won the right to continue operating despite the opposition of traditional taxi companies.
The interesting aspect of this for me is the concept of full service in a regulated industry. If a new entrant can pick the good jobs and can ignore old regulations re needing to supply services to the disadvantaged (wheel chair taxis for example) then the ‘old’ industry is left with no way to cross subsidise those minority services.
Reading here….. http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/4/3728850/washington-dc-taxi-uber-regulations

The parallel industry for me is insurance. New entrants put more qualification rules in place to weed out “higher risk” consumers. This leaves old insurers with a higher risk profile and therefore need to increase premiums to reflect the slightly higher risk. Take this process through multiple iterations and then to its logical conclusion and we end up with sick people basically paying premiums that are indistinguishable from self-funding.

Is the function of insurance not to spread the risk across everyone so that a small amount of cross-subsidisation is a small premium to pay for peace of mind?

Is the taxi article the same as the insurance example? Would be interested in your comments, private, public or otherwise.