Why should their licensing be different than for pilots?

With a private pilots license you can't fly for money, but you can take your friends and family with you.

With a commercial pilots license you can fly for money.

Neither of these are capped, a commercial pilots license just requires slightly more education and experience. Why should licensing for taxis be any different?

Flying isn't capped, but airport runway slots certainly are. As I see it, taxis are not different in this case.

For commercial airliners carrying hundreds of passengers, yeah.

For small private planes? Slots are hardly ever the limiting factor.

Taxis are more like private jets than Airbuses carrying hundreds of pax.

While taxis aren't as good for society as buses, they still reduce the total amount of car infrastructure required. The slot comparison doesn't seem apt.

> While taxis aren't as good for society as buses, they still reduce the total amount of car infrastructure required.

No they don't. They choke up the most costly piece of car infrastructure - road space in the very centre of cities.

Less so than people actually driving themselves around the centres of cities.

If I drive myself to somewhere in the centre, my car will sit there using up space while I'm doing my thing. If I use a taxi, the same car that delivered me will serve other people while I'm doing my thing.

Of course it would be even better if I used public transport, but I'm not going to do that because public transport is uncomfortable at best.

> If I drive myself to somewhere in the centre, my car will sit there using up space while I'm doing my thing.

In the absence of terrible laws, it'll be stored somewhere that's more space-efficient (e.g. in a multistory car-park) compared to a taxi cruising around the main streets looking for fares.

Works in America, but not so well in the old cities of Europe.

On the contrary, America tends to waste a lot of city space with surface parking and wide roads, so taxis don't make it appreciably worse, whereas the old cities of Europe are where we really don't have space for them.

FYI in my country, at the top of this thread, that is how it works. Drivers need a "P" licence and the taxi companies need to register and follow some rules. But apart from that there are no limits or artificial restrictions.

But uber ignored all that anyway.

Clearly your law enforcement just sucks if these people aren't getting in trouble for driving without a license, no?

Just like you'd get in trouble for driving a car with a motorcycle license.

That is one of the things that passes me off about all this. The enforcement agency did go after a bunch of drivers that were driving passengers for money without a "P" licence. Now, IIRC, Uber does require drivers to have a "P" licence.

But that same agency didn't do shit to Uber for operation of a taxi service without meeting the requirements.

Going after the little people is easy, but give up when the target has a bunch of VC money and lawyers.

We have a similar problem with our courier drivers. Everyone is "totally not an employee, they run their own independent business".

There should be no need to go after Uber, they probably shouldn't have to be the ones enforcing this. Uber can't verify if the driving license you've provided them is fake or not, at least the cops can do that.

Why should this enforcement be outsourced to Uber?