> I feel very badly for the people in the article who lost their life savings on a failed investment.
San Diego did a good thing with this. They bought back the medallion at some price relative to what was paid minus some amount for time owned, interest, etc. Then when they redistributed those bought back medallions, they slightly increased the medallion count.
That sequence stopped a lot of the problems. Anybody who got caught out by medallions collapsing could just get out. Anybody who bought in at this point knew what they were getting into.
Given the limited resources of government and the large number of people who need help, it seems strange to ration that aid on the basis of previously making a bad financial investment.
The medallions exist in a government-created market. If the government offers a buy-in to a regulated business, then ceases to regulate the business in the same way, it's harming its own partners in the regulated industry. Offering to buy back the rights that it sold, well that's simply a way to reduce this harm to its partners.
If you look at like purely a financial instrument, yes. Maybe not if you look at it like a social contract between the city administration and its populace. The aim - keep the taxi situation OK.
When that medallion system started to fail, I don't think it's unreasonable for the city technocrats and or politicians to take a step back and say to themselves - OK, this is clearly not working like it used to. How can we scale back without disrupting and hurting too much those, who were partners in this (now failing) implementation of taxi regulation?
San Diego did a good thing with this. They bought back the medallion at some price relative to what was paid minus some amount for time owned, interest, etc. Then when they redistributed those bought back medallions, they slightly increased the medallion count.
That sequence stopped a lot of the problems. Anybody who got caught out by medallions collapsing could just get out. Anybody who bought in at this point knew what they were getting into.