The medallion that cost a house

The prompt is the irony they notice hailing the cab: you can now order a taxi through Uber ▸ 15:48, the two mortal enemies merged, “si no puedes con tu enemigo, únetele” ▸ 23:10. So they run the live investigation on the medallion system and the numbers are the entry: a permit created to regulate the quantity of taxis on the street ▸ 21:08 that mutated into a tradable asset, New York medallions peaking at 1.3 million dollars in 2014, then crashing to about 136,000 by 2019 ▸ 22:12.

The human cost sits under the chart: people saved for years to buy into what he calls a mafia, a legal permit that was really a toll, borrowed cars on top ▸ 23:02, and Uber, by letting anyone drive from 2009 on and folding in the taxistas themselves by 2016, vaporized that life savings without buying it back ▸ 22:00. In Colombia the merger came in 2021, Uber Taxi via an alliance with Taxi Express ▸ 17:15.

regular la cantidad crea un activo especulativo; el mercado luego lo cobra →

The teardown’s thesis is the economic principle underneath, and it’s the diary’s recurring one: markets self-regulate, more demand draws more cars, more cars make more traffic, and the loop balances itself ▸ 23:38. Cap the supply artificially and “todo lo que termines regulando siempre termina siendo… cosas paralelas” ▸ 22:50, the intended fix becoming a speculative bubble that a single app can pop. The medallion is a monument to the idea that you can freeze a market in place; Uber is the receipt. Which is also, quietly, the wall Tencargo is built against: the incumbent’s friction is the opening, until the incumbent buys the disruptor and the cycle restarts…