What’s the government’s role in regulating Uber and Lyft?

The Washington Examiner discusses the government's role in regulating ridesharing services with Marc Scribner. 

"Municipal taxi regulators are often captured by the entities they were supposed to be regulating," argues Marc Scribner, a transportation research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "The most promising alternative has been to move transportation services regulation up to the state level."

[…]

From a more optimistic perspective, Scribner suggested, federal regulators could preempt anti-competitive municipal regulations by employing antitrust laws. "There may be a role for the Federal Trade Commission to police municipal governments' policies when they rise to the level of an antitrust violation," Scribner said.

"In 1984, the FTC filed antitrust lawsuits against Minneapolis and New Orleans over anticompetitive taxi regulations," he pointed out. "The suit against Minneapolis was withdrawn after the city revised its ordinance to permit more competition, and the suit against New Orleans was withdrawn after the city convinced the Louisiana legislature to pass a law recognizing their anticompetitive practices and shielding New Orleans from antitrust lawsuits."

Read the full article at the Washington Examiner.