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There is no such thing as a free market. The sooner Americans accept this maybe we can move forward towards a society where we don't allow businesses to engage in predatory practices under the guise of "free market ideology". Like Uber/Lyft price dumping for the past decade. We're ruining the taxi industry for what exactly? So a bunch of millionaires can lose money for 20 years because they are selling billionaires on the idea of having a monopoly.

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They "ruined" the taxi industry because it was anti-consumer and absolutely horrible. That's why it was so easy for them to "ruin" it (read: make it so much better).

Seriously, you think it's "ruining" an industry to have a convenient smartphone app instead of having to call someone on a phone and hope a driver shows up within 2 hours? And then have a driver that doesn't use a taximeter, drives around in circles, and just makes up a price on the spot? Maybe you never tried using cabs in the suburbs before the invention of Uber/Lyft.

The taxi industry ruined itself long before anyone conceived of Uber or Lyft. There was nothing stopping the taxi industry from creating Uber. They had the regulatory capture to make it happen much easier than how Uber and Lyft built themselves. Even without Uber or Lyft the taxi industry was busy pushing their customers into purchasing private automobiles because taxi service was so awful.

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