How state run monopolies coopt new entrants to keep fleecing consumers

Almost inevitably any regulation of a service ends up restricting competition and costing consumers. No matter what the usually oh so progressive and pro poor politicos say they are almost always working for entrenched commercial interests. This piece (link below) demonstrates how Uber has been let into the DC taxicab cartel only to draw the bridge up behind it.

Thus the bullshit of "commonsense" regulation disguises the real goal of allocating the right to fleece consumers among the politically powerful. It's just that Uber has some of that power now and so the others had to accommodate it.

Before the progressives came and infected our minds with this notion that state manipulation was benign - indeed moral - this sort of inside running would have been recognized for the crooked scam it is. Thus laws intended to protect against monopoly and the exploitation of consumers instead serve to facilitate it. They also further entrench the politically powerful in their power.

It's all so progressive.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/10/28/dc-passes-burdensome-new-ridesharing-reg