I have never been to New York, but the cabs I have taken elsewhere were very hit-and-miss. London cabbies are great - they follow the laws, they know the shortcuts, and they aren't complete assholes. San Francisco cabbies are a mess - some of them are great but most are crap. Seattle cabbies are very good - at least the ones I've dealt with. Denver cabbies are awesome - because they're high as a kite.
In places with shit cabbies, I'd be up for an alternative. Free markets breed competition, which breeds progress. The only people that don't want competition are those that have a corner on the market already. Google for instance - as great as Google is in a lot of regards, I think if they were able to nudge out their competition in their various markets, they would be horrid. When I lived in Houston, we had a single electric company that had god-awful policies, rates, service, etc. Then the voters opened up the market to allow anyone in. It became a feeding frenzy and prices went down, service went up, etc. But without some sort of regulation, there were a bunch of fly-by-night companies that just came in and took money and gave nothing back. They could afford to close up shop because they had no intention of sticking around to begin with.
What I'm saying is that a free market is better than a non-free market. But we do need to have standards. Uber seems to be trying to shaft their drivers in the only way they legally can. But I still support the idea of adding competition to the taxi business. The taxi unions have kept people out of most markets for decades - and you can see the effect in places like San Francisco.
