Taxi blockade at airport

[WetInPortland]

On the other hand, if you don't like the above accounts, I offer the following alternative facts from semi-anonymous sources:

• Taxis are completing required federal registrations at the airport
  
• A taxi convention at the airport
  
• Victoria's Secrets models flew into Cozumel for a photoshoot and called in for a taxi
• Taxis were rescuing cute, little adorable kittens to prevent them from being sucked up by the jet engines

[For anyone else without a life, join the Cozumel 4 You Facebook group ...]

 

[ChuckP]

Taxis - whether it be Federal plates or State plates, is there some large fee to obtain those plates? Does the plate have some value that can be bought and sold, like the taxi medallions in New York?

 

[Brules]

Taxi Mafia strikes again. At least the sledge hammers haven't come out yet!

 

[ggunn]

I predict that whatever is happening won't last long. Without tourists, no one on Cozumel, including the taxistas, would be able to make a living.

 

[Okcdiver2]

I have many freinds who own and rent taxis. Many of them were born and have been here since the beginning and helped to build cozumel. Its like they feel they paid their dues and for these other federal companies to come in and take food outta there mouths its not right. I understand it. I compare it to here in ok they just passed a law so we can have eye doctors at walmarts. The optomotrists threw a fit of course but it passed. Most of my freinds are taxistas and they want to make a living. I do think they could use the little 3wheel trikes to transport locals back in neighborhoods because they all wait at the cruise ships for a $100 trip around the island and dont want to do $50peso trips to chedraui.
For people arriving i saw a video posted by taxistas saying they were giving free rides outside airport. I will look for the link.

 

[Okcdiver2]

Taxis - whether it be Federal plates or State plates, is there some large fee to obtain those plates? Does the plate have some value that can be bought and sold, like the taxi medallions in New York?

Yes the plates have great value. Many taxistas rent them by day or month. A few of my lawyer freinds own plates. There are a limited amount and worth alot. Its like marine park permits.

 

[DjDiverDan]

I have many freinds who own and rent taxis. Many of them were born and have been here since the beginning and helped to build cozumel. Its like they feel they paid their dues and for these other federal companies to come in and take food outta there mouths its not right. I understand it. I compare it to here in ok they just passed a law so we can have eye doctors at walmarts. The optomotrists threw a fit of course but it passed.

In both cases, the taxistas and the optometrists, the feeling that they have “paid their dues” and that makes them entitled to operate free from competition, reflects a belief that they somehow have a vested interest in the money of their customers. I regularly shop at Walmart Neighborhood Market. But that doesn’t give Walmart any right to continue to get my cash. If another store offers me a better deal, I have the right to leave Walmart behind, and I don’t owe Walmart a thing if I choose to exercise that right. Why shouldn’t tourists on Cozumel seeking transportation have that same freedom, the freedom to decide for themselves how best to spend their own money? You can’t talk about what the taxistas are doing without also considering the rights of their customers. Any claim that the taxistas should have a monopoly on providing transportation services necessarily involves a claim that consumers don’t have any right to decide where their own income is best spent.

 

[ggunn]

In both cases, the taxistas and the optometrists, the feeling that they have “paid their dues” and that makes them entitled to operate free from competition, reflects a belief that they somehow have a vested interest in the money of their customers. I regularly shop at Walmart Neighborhood Market. But that doesn’t give Walmart any right to continue to get my cash. If another store offers me a better deal, I have the right to leave Walmart behind, and I don’t owe Walmart a thing if I choose to exercise that right. Why shouldn’t tourists on Cozumel seeking transportation have that same freedom, the freedom to decide for themselves how best to spend their own money? You can’t talk about what the taxistas are doing without also considering the rights of their customers. Any claim that the taxistas should have a monopoly on providing transportation services necessarily involves a claim that consumers don’t have any right to decide where their own income is best spent.

People are talking about this as if it doesn't happen here. Try hauling goods onto or off the grounds of a seaport without having your union card sometime and see how far you get. Try watching a baseball game on your computer if you are in an MLB blackout zone for the team you want to watch. Cross a picket line to work as a "scab" when there's a strike going on and you might suffer reprisals for it.

Everyone does what he can to protect a revenue stream he depends on, and sometimes it gets nasty. It happens everywhere, even here. Speaking strictly for myself, I have no problem with the taxistas doing all the driving for me when I am on Cozumel. I don't care if Uber and Lyft never get there. As to what is "right" or "wrong", it's their country and none of my business.

 

[DandyDon]

I've had my gripes about taxis at times, but I generally get along with them ok. I even tipped one or two last trip for having clean cabs and not overcharging me. I am often unsure tho and wish I could read the rate maps.

 

[DjDiverDan]

People are talking about this as if it doesn't happen here. Try hauling goods onto or off the grounds of a seaport without having your union card sometime and see how far you get. Try watching a baseball game on your computer if you are in an MLB blackout zone for the team you want to watch. Cross a picket line to work as a "scab" when there's a strike going on and you might suffer reprisals for it.

Everyone does what he can to protect a revenue stream he depends on, and sometimes it gets nasty. It happens everywhere, even here. Speaking strictly for myself, I have no problem with the taxistas doing all the driving for me when I am on Cozumel. I don't care if Uber and Lyft never get there. As to what is "right" or "wrong", it's their country and none of my business.

I agree completely that it happens here, both with private action (i.e., striking workers blockading nonunion replacement workers), and by enlisting government to do the dirty work (cab unions getting city governments to prohibit Uber or Lift, state occupational licensing requirements that have nothing to do with consumer protection and everything to do with building a moat against competition, idiotic protectionist tariffs that deny consumers the right to buy from whomever offers the best deal, and any number of examples of special interest legislation). I would guess that it happens everywhere when government has the power to regulate economic activity and politicians have the economic incentives to use that power corruptly to enrich those with political connections.

As to whether or not it SHOULD happen, whether or not it is morally acceptable, is a completely different question than whether it does happen. And I have no problem expressing my view that it is wrong. In my opinion, human liberty of all types, whether political or economic, is worth defending wherever it is threatened, whether the issue is oppression of women in Saudi Arabia, human sex trafficking in Asia, or denial of economic freedom to consumers in Mexico OR in the United States. When you hear that 14 year old girls are forced into sex slavery by ISIS in Iraq, do you say “none of my business”? And YES, I realize that forcing tourists to use taxis is hardly equivalent to forcing young girls into sex slavery, but both are just different forms of attacks on human liberty, and if I have to draw the line of just how minor the interference with freedom has to be for me to ignore it, that’s a line I don’t feel comfortable drawing. YVMV.