A Reminder of Why We Need to Fight New Hampshire's Many Cartels - Granite Grok

A Reminder of Why We Need to Fight New Hampshire’s Many Cartels

Burning USS Raleigh on NH State FlagNew Hampshire has some obscene licensing rules that increase costs and prohibit or at least limit competition. Everyone agrees, except the cartel owners, and we’ve seen minor improvements in recent years. But we could do a lot better. So, I’m wondering if there’s leverage to be found in recent rulings against taxi cartels that deny them their monopoly.

In a resounding win for innovation and economic liberty, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled on Monday that taxi owners in Miami-Dade County have “no right to block competition” from ride-hailing firms like Lyft and Uber.

Taxi companies have been trying to prove that by allowing competition to proliferate municipalities have engaged in an unconstitutional taking in violation of the 5th amendment. Supply met demand when the regime of state-imposed artificial scarcity collapsed and so did the value of Taxi Medallions.  Taxi medallions worth as much as $400,000.00 (in the Dade County area) are only worth $35,000.00 at more recent auctions.  Medallion holders went looking for a bailout.

The court said, sorry. That’s not how this works.

Writing for the majority, Judge Stanley Marcus meticulously dismissed their claim. Although the owners have an “intangible property interest” in their medallions, “the medallions conveyed only a property interest in providing taxicab services in Miami-Dade County—not in barring competitors,” Judge Marcus explained. “Even the most cursory examination of the code reveals that the county did not give the medallion holders the right to enjoin competition,” he added, while “the code furnished no basis for the medallion holders’ assertion that they were entitled to, or could reasonably rely on a competition-free marketplace.”

If you have or have had a child interested in getting a license to drive you’ll have run into the Drivers Ed cartel. It’s a strange arrangement where parents of children under the age of 18 must enroll their offspring and get milked for driver ed training. Don’t expect to get past this without dropping half a G or more to the approved vendors (through High School Drivers Ed programs or otherwise).

It’s obscene.

Efforts to cut this regressive mandatory learning tax have met stiff resistance. And while there is no specific limit to the number of qualified providers of the service the law and the cartel have created a circumstance where a child who needs to drive before the age of 18 (or more likely their parents) has to pay a small fortune for mandatory training.

Training by a certified instructor who has completed a state-mandated certified training program.

To Obtain a Provisional Certificate (Valid for Two Years) You Must:

  • Have a high school diploma or certificate of high school equivalency.
  • Complete three, three-credit courses at Keene State College with a grade of 75 or higher:
    • Introduction to Traffic Safety.
    • Methods of Teaching Driver Education and Traffic Safety.
    • In-Vehicle Driver Education Methods.

Your decades of driving experience are not good enough, even though your student driver needs a minimum of 40 hours of on-road time with a licensed driver on top of their driver’s ed training.

If you think that sounds unfair it is but to my knowledge the law has not been challenged in court nor has anyone risen up to offer an approved service at reasonable rates (as a form of challenge) because the cost of entry into the cartel is mandated by the state and takes a lot of time and money. There’s no incentive to get too cocky about being competitive because there are more than enough kids who want to drive before the age of eighteen.

The kicker, of course, is that the Taxi case in Florida came after that State created regulatory rules that preempted local ordinances. In the Granite State, the New Hampshire State Government is the arbiter of the cartel, and local government can’t do anything about that.  I’m fine with that limitation, but as I noted, we have yet to come up with a legislature or a governor willing to lessen the regulatory burden.

Even though its presence has not proven to improve or reduce the incidence of collisions or fatalities on our roadways.

As with my earlier post on energy, residents need to organize and inform policymakers of their displeasure. That needs to translate into legislation and votes.

So, no, these Federal court rulings on taxi cartels have no particular bearing here except to remind us that cartels are expensive, keep costs high, and their members will work hard to prevent changes that interfere with their advantage.

That shouldn’t stop the local from organizing the end of this fiscal abuse.

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