Well, you can call a cab in London too. What the drivers are understandably pissed off about is that they spent 2 years developing the navigational knowledge to get people from A to B quickly, so they could get their cab license, and now these other people are competing with them without havign had to had to meet any particular standard to start doing so.

The London cabs aren't just a monopoly as in a lot of other places, they have a very strong meritocratic basis. I was extremely surprised when I came to the US and cab drivers expected me to know how to get to my destination. I said to one 'isn't that what I'm paying you for?' and his response was 'I ain't no computer buddy, find it on a map.'

Of course the problem for London cabbies is that cheap GPS makes 80-90% of their knowledge redundant, so their hard-earned skills have literally been automated away. However, there needs to be a better response to this from the tech community than simply dismissing those skills as worthless. After all, it would be foolish to dismiss the effort required to get a medical degree just because of the existence of WebMD. This is more complex than a simple monopoly/disruptive competitor situation.