Government really is just public sector organized crime. And after 16 years as a commentator, you’d think I would have gotten used to this by now.

But honestly, I still find myself shaking my head sometimes. Uber arrived in Australia in 2012, and it took 5 years for the Victorian government to abandon its taxi protection racket, which was a protection racket in the most literal and criminal sense, complete with intentional under supply, artificially high prices, and stand over men to keep any competition out. And so it took until 2017 before Uber and ride sharing was legalized in Victoria, which along with South Australia was the last Australian state to do so.

Now, Rod Barton, the taxi driver with a chip on his shoulder, turned Transport Matters MP, the guy who screwed Victorians over by supporting Daniel Andrews permanent pandemic powers in 2021. Yeah. He went on to play a pivotal role in this class action lawsuit in which thousands of taxi license owners from Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia sued Uber for the crime of being better than them. Uber literally broke up the government-run protection rackets in each of those states by being better, cheaper, more available, more responsive, cleaner, and ultimately more popular. But when you’re up against a government-run mob, sorry, a government protection racket, being better than them is a crime.

In March last year, the taxi industry were awarded a whopping $272 million settlement against Uber.

And last week, the appeal period ran out. So now it’s official. These salty taxi drivers have won the lottery again. And I say again because the Victorian taxi industry already got half a billion dollars in taxpayer funded payouts back in 2017 when ride sharing was legalized in Victoria to compensate them for their losses. And that was just Victoria. In New South Wales, their compensation is over $900 million, plus a few hundred million more in Queensland and WA for a total of nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funded compensation that has already been given out to the taxi industry, including the ones in this class action lawsuit for the loss of their protection racket.

My name is Topher Field. This is the Topher project, and I help busy people like you to keep up with the world as it changes around you. I am 100% viewer supported. So, please buy me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net and check out my books and merch from goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. Ironically, in Victoria, it was Premier Jeff Kennett who actually created this particular protection racket during his time as Premier. He got a hold of the taxi industry, which he felt was unprofessional and messy and dirty and perhaps not as clean as it could have been, and he standardized prices, removing the ability for taxi operators to compete on price. He made all the taxis be painted yellow allegedly to foster a sense of professionalism in the industry because yeah that’s worked well.

But what really sent the industry off in the wrong direction was that he created obscenely expensive licenses which were intentionally restricted in number so that there would always be too few to meet demand. And he did this so that the taxi industry would be okay with paying extortionate license costs to the government. See, the government was basically saying, “Hey, this license will cost you a fortune but look at all the money that you’ll be able to screw out of taxi consumers.” And of course, he created a special enforcement arm to protect the taxi industry and find and prosecute anyone who was offering a taxi service illegally. The government provided the stand over men so that the taxi operators could make obscene super profits in a protected industry. And in return, the taxi operators paid obscene, extortionate fees to the government mob who were the ones providing them with the stand over men to keep their protection racket protected.

This is legalized mafia behavior. And in case anyone is in any doubt about what I mean, what I mean is this is literal, actual, indistinguishable from actual mafia behavior. It is literal, pure and simple organized crime which has been given a false aura of legitimacy because the government were the ones doing it. And for a time the taxi operators rate it in as a protected industry with easy money and no competition. The taxi operators got fat and lazy, literally. The cars became dirty. The the drivers were smelly, not to mention rude. They would drive off on you if you weren’t going far enough to be worth their while, as if they had somewhere better to be. And because the supply was deliberately restricted, you could very rarely get a taxi if you needed one during a major public event.

Jeff Kennett’s reforms, which were supposed to professionalize the taxi industry, actually made them arrogant, greedy, dirty slobs. The fact is that Uber did us all a favor by smashing that government-run taxi protection racket. Uber were cleaner. They were cheaper. The app was unbelievable back in the 2010s. The idea that you could book them and then you could see how far away your car was, what time they would arrive, what the driver’s name was, what their star rating was, all before the cars even arrived. It was mind blowing. The fact that you could rate your drivers meant that they actually cared about you having a good time while you were in their car. Crazy stuff. Basically, Uber delivered on what Jeff Kennet said he was trying to do. They made the industry professional again, ironically, by lowering the barriers to entry and getting the professionals who were actually doing a terrible job out of the way.

But the taxi industry were understandably pretty pissed because they felt like the government was no longer upholding their end of the protection racket bargain.

They paid all these extortionate licensing fees in order to be protected. But now Uber were operating and the taxi industry had real competition for the first time in decades.

Now fast forward to 2019 when this class action court case was lodged and the lead plaintiff is a man by the name of Nick Andreanakis. Now he tells a bit of his story in an ABC article from the time. He talks about the moment when he knew that the taxi industry was done. He says it this way. My family has always been into taxis. My father drove taxis. My son drove taxis while he was at uni. But Uber came to our shores illegally like pirates. They broke every law, every regulation. He said he was forced out of business after Uber entered the Australian market, and he remembered the night he had to walk away. It was a Friday night after an MCG game. I was outside the Swan Hotel and normally this is a very busy time for taxis. I was one of many other taxis outside the pub waiting for a fair, Mr. Andreanakis said. It was raining and I saw Ubers picking up and dropping off, picking up and dropping off. I must have been there about an hour. My back door finally opened and a young lady got in and she said, “Look, I’m sorry. I’m not going far.” I said, “That’s okay. You got in my cab. I’ll take you anywhere you like.” She said, “I would have got an Uber, but my phone has gone flat.” And that was like a stake in my heart. I took her home. I rang my wife. I said, “I’m coming home. The taxis are finished.”

And Nick was right. Yeah, you bet. You’re finished. You got beaten at your own game. See, if the taxi industry had been the one innovating, then this would never have happened. The taxi industry had a monopoly. They owned the entire market. And instead of responding with gratitude and a sense of responsibility and stepping up to do an amazing job and to stay on the cutting edge of the industry worldwide, giving everyone the best possible experiences, instead the industry got fat and lazy and took consumers for granted and then as soon as competition arrived, the taxi industry couldn’t compete. And I get that it sucks, but the taxi industry did this to themselves.

And the reason why everyone was using Uber that night, by Nick’s own admission, the Ubers were picking up and dropping off and picking up and dropping off, the reason they were busy, and the taxis were not, is because Uber is better. In the same article, a spokesperson for the lawyers who ran the case, Morris Blackburn, said that Uber came in and exploited people by operating outside of regulations. Uh, no. The taxi industry exploited people by profiting from those regulations that created a criminal protection racket.

But where this gets really dark is that if some of these people get their way, disruptors are out, and protection rackets are coming back in in a big way. Take for example Dr. Nichols from the University of Sydney who is quoted by the ABC as saying, “Dr. Nichols says the hefty settlement speaks to an overarching trend of regulators catching up with industry disruptors. Businesses that enter almost any jurisdiction with that move fast and break things type of approach which was so popular 10 to 15 years ago are just going to end up having to pay for the breakages. He said, “Instead, it’s much better if you’ve got a new business model, work out how you want to be regulated and work with the states, territories, and Commonwealth government to have that in place to provide certainty for you and certainty for your consumers.”

Now, I don’t think Dr. Nichols intends to be encouraging people to participate in mafia style cartel protection racket behavior. But that is what he’s saying here. What he’s saying is come in gently and don’t break up the protection racket. Become a part of the protection racket instead. But think about it. If Uber had taken that approach back in 2012, do you really think the taxi cartel would be broken up even by now? Do you really think that regulators would have allowed people to use their own vehicles to transport strangers for money via an app on their phone? Forget about it.

And let’s not forget that at that time back in 2012, 13, 14, 15, you booked a taxi by phone and then you prayed that it would turn up within three business days of the time that the booking was made. And you knew in advance that whoever showed up, you’d just have to ignore the chocolate wrappers strewn around the floor and the pie pastry on your seat and the smell coming from the front. Do you really think that that industry and those regulators were ever going to do the right thing and embrace change and technology and deregulation and competition for the benefit of consumers at the expense of the protection racket? Of course not.

Uber are being punished again, not for doing something bad, but for doing something good. And it’s clear that they’re being used now as an example, as a warning to the rest of us. Don’t you try and break up the government run protection rackets because even if you succeed, you’ll still be paying for it a decade later. When it comes to government cartels and protection rackets, we absolutely need disruptors to come in, move fast, and break things. Specifically, we need them to break up the cartel. But more than that, we need to become good people who break bad laws.

My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher project, and I help busy people like you to keep up with the world as it changes around you and also to see behind the headlines and to truly understand what’s really going on. I am 100% viewer supported, and I appreciate each and every one of you who has bought me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you’d like to check out my best selling book on the topic of civil disobedience in the modern age, which is Good People Break Bad Laws, or its sequel on the theology of civil disobedience, Good Christians Break Bad Laws, or indeed my award-winning documentary, Battleground Melbourne, or my t-shirts and hoodies with a range of different designs, then you can do so at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com.

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