Governments everywhere have overregulated transportation and travel. In typical regulatory schemes, a good-ol-boy taxi service lobbies for laws that prevent competitors from starting up and competing with them.
The laws are generally passed with assurances that the laws are needed to “protect the public” from dangerous, unsafe, diseased cabbies, etc.
Of course, the laws create the opposite environment. Studies show that government-approved cab businesses provide worse service, and are dirtier and less safe than services such as Uber and Lyft.
Little Rock, Arkansas has only one taxi business … and it’s illegal to start another.
The Institute for Justice has teamed up with taxi entrepreneur Ken Leininger to file a lawsuit, seeking to reinvigorate the Arkansas Constitution’s anti-monopoly clause, to open Little Rock’s taxi market to competition, and to remind the city that monopolies are un-American. See here.
