At the peak these licenses were going for a million dollars each.
I think Uber, Lyft, and others are serving a great good in substituting for taxis in filling the need for road travelers. Taxi drivers may argue that the drivers are being abused, but we can't all have (nor do we all want) jobs with lots of protections.
Being a driver should be a job anyone could take while on the road to reaching their dreams in life, and not restricted to a lucky few who demanded the government give them a monopoly on the gig.
Previously you'd get into taxi and then tell address. And refusing not-profitable-enough service was illegal. Now drivers see the route beforehand and can skip it.
A job should allow people to make a good wage and make a living out of it. It shouldn't be race-to-the-bottom for the profit of few by sacrificing quality of service.
In formerly-medallion markets, surplus value collection shifted from medallion rent seekers to VC and private equity rent seekers. In non-medallion markets, existing normally run companies had VCs price-dump an unbeatable competitor into their market. Software engineers (and what inherent "good" is there to "software engineers," anyway??) are also in the middle, albeit with more of an ownership stake thanks to RSUs.
