I'll stick with the cartel viewpoint thank you very much. It's up to the market to decide there's too many cabs, not arbitrary opinions - unfair competition is competition at the point of a gun - which is exactly what happens with government involvement.

Working a law into competition being a violation does not make a good business or government.

If there's a "regulation free monopoly" being that there's no regulations I'll upstart as the little guy and advertise not only are my cabs cleaner, we take safety seriously too. Not only that we're proud to say we are not part of big consolidated mega-butt-stench overlord corp and proud of it. I would be the designer cab company while everything else would be the department store cab company.

I've been trumpeting the treaty and it's problems (they're calling it "not a treaty") but all you get is "You're just an Alex Jones listening, tinfoil hate wearing conspiracy theorist!" around here. Then the accuser turns around, turns on the TV and watches a reality TV show, cheers about a rainbow flag replacing the confederate, and drools all over the Jenner story.

If they all have a bad reputation I start the good one, advertise myself as the less-fleas brand and cash in on that market.

So the state cleaning it up is the solution instead of establishing a brand with a good reputation?

If I have to call a taxi I'm going to call the one I'm less likely to get out of with a case of fleas.

Sadly there is something worse than the protection rackets that already exist. Too bad most of these people will just yell "tinfoil hat!".

Why?

Compensate them because their government backed monopoly in which they prevented hundreds if not thousands of others from profiting because they worked the system in such a way that guaranteed the laws of supply and demand didn't affect their business? They're lucky there isn't a lynch mob coming after them for the affront to the natural market, losing a protected monopoly is no reason to reward them.

Look, we're fucking that group of people with uncalled for protectionist laws, shouldn't we fuck the others also?

It's their own fucking faults. They lobby to make sure this is the system that's in place to prevent competition from companies like Uber. They got the laws they paid for, it's the people who bought the first wave of licenses/medallions whatever that made bank, now everyone else has to deal with it.

An upstart breaking that system is exactly what real business needs.

I've always hated the Fn key position, I use the Ctrl key way to often to like that.

That being said my W540 is the best laptop I've ever used.

Score!

Beautiful reply!

I really liked your approach on how to sell it to girls too. I'm going to try to figure out how to sell my daughter on learning a bit more. She's unfortunately part of the current 12 year old generation of thinking that she knows about technology because she can use it. I'm working on getting her interested in how it ticks, unfortunately as the parent that doesn't have her most of the time it's difficult to work into a couple of days at a time.

My story, while not as bad in many respects as yours was just as bad if not worse as far as learning was concerned. (Better home life thankfully) I lived in the deserts of West Texas, in a poor community. There were no computers I could use, and my parents actually said "we didn't have computers when we were kids, you don't need them now", so I had next to zero family support, and next to no opportunity to learn elsewhere as the industry of my town revolved around cantaloup, onions, and cattle. I couldn't even get something from a business trash pile because business trash piles in that are consisted of animal waste and rotten vegetation.

Despite that I read Discover Magazine, I read 321 Contact when I was young, I read Omni, I read Popular Science, I kept up with what was going on even if it was what was going on in what was practically a parallel universe. Every piece of electronic junk I could get my hands on I drug home and took apart, one of the first things I successfully fixed was 45 lb Sony Betamax. I had motors, batteries, LED's old telephones with asbestos and cloth insulators, microphones speakers, you name it hooked up with chewing gum and electric tape. Finally when I was 17 I was given an 8088 - this was right after the first socket 7 Pentiums came out. I was overjoyed to have it.

Within a year in the business world I was ahead of many peers my own age who grew up immersed in computers (yes I moved to a metro area). Within two or three years the country bumpkin origins story was nearly completely neutralized - with one lingering exception. I never really learned to program. I do alright when I need to alter some code, but I'm not a coder, and I never found time to really learn to do it well. I was always too busy doing massive amounts of sysadmin, cabling, hardware, various whatever else work. It's still on my to-do list but it matters less all the time.

You're a very fortunate man.

I too am fortunate. My wife is by no means a techy geek type, but her dad is, her brother is, most of the people around her growing up were at least a little on the geek side of things so she admires the fact I am one, but that was good enough in my case, especially since I was already mid-30's when we married. I'm well past my live and breathe geek things phase, having someone who is happy with what I do with it works great for me.