Equating outdated city-level taxi regulations to universal law punishing murder is disingenuous, to say the least.
FTC did a report [1] in 1984 about taxi regulations and pointed out why cities were not well-equipped nor incentivized to regulate for the purpose of market efficiency:
> There are, in fact, reasons to doubt that existing regulations are efficient. One problem is
that the analytical and informatiqnal problems involved in determining the efficient levels of the relevant policy variables are great. It is doubtful that regulatory authorities generally have the necessary expertise or information to determine these levels. Also, taxi ordinances and the government agencies that issue taxi regulations may not be motivated primarily by concern
for market failure and achievement of an efficient resource allocation. It appears that taxi regulations have often been designed to protect public transit systems and existing taxi firms from competition.
FTC did a report [1] in 1984 about taxi regulations and pointed out why cities were not well-equipped nor incentivized to regulate for the purpose of market efficiency:
> There are, in fact, reasons to doubt that existing regulations are efficient. One problem is that the analytical and informatiqnal problems involved in determining the efficient levels of the relevant policy variables are great. It is doubtful that regulatory authorities generally have the necessary expertise or information to determine these levels. Also, taxi ordinances and the government agencies that issue taxi regulations may not be motivated primarily by concern for market failure and achievement of an efficient resource allocation. It appears that taxi regulations have often been designed to protect public transit systems and existing taxi firms from competition.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/ec...