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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (22762)	8/18/2010 5:31:08 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 86356

You ever wait two hours in a cab line for a fare? I have. Which doesn't suggest that supply isn't kept down by government policy. You have, as have many others but that isn't a typical fare. Ask someone trying to get a cab at night in a bad area of New York. Got nothing to do with a cab shortage. That's a shortage of cab drivers that want to get robbed/killed. The risk of crime reduces the desirability of the run. The limited supply (and also price limits, esp. ones that don't factor in risk) result in less desirable runs being under-supplied sometimes to the extent of not being supplied at all. If you didn't limit supply there wouldn't be any need to regulate prices (other than perhaps to prevent fraud, where the advertised prices per time, distance or zone, isn't what's actually charged). So if there really is no supply limitation (or the limit is so high it doesn't affect the market) than we can do away with price controls on the industry. And if supply wasn't limited no one would every pay over a half million (or even the $75k in Chicago) to get the right to run a cab. That is itself proof of an imposed limit low enough to affect the market.