I've heard from my San Francisco friends that Uber is superior in every way to yellow taxis. And main reason is that it's very easy to rate drivers and you don't pay them directly.
The thing here is that you are comparing US taxis to taxis everywhere. Not everywhere taxis are crap and prices are huge.
You developed a Mac App, so you paid the required fees to Apple (Developer license, 30% cut, passing through the sandbox hoops, etc.) What would you think if another developer could do exactly the same as you, without need for sandboxing, developer license and getting 100% of the money? Don't you think this would be, let's say, odd? Wouldn't you feel it was unfair?
I just looked it up to make sure (I'm from Spain,) and taxi licenses are unregulated in Sweden. So if I spoke Swedish and knew Stockholm well enough, I could go and get a license, by passing an exam and probably paying some kind of minimal fee. It's not like the government is asking for the Moon and Uber is offering a geostationary satellite. The government asks for the bare standard, and police comply with illegal taxi laws. Illegal taxis are illegal since they don't have a permit, just like an illegal driver is one without a driving permit.
> if I spoke Swedish and knew Stockholm well enough
With some of the drivers I've had, you don't even need those two. Not that it's actually a problem, everyone speaks english and they all have GPS devices.
That's fine, I'm just pointing out that dropping any/all regulation doesn't immediately make everything sunshine and roses, there are very real problems that regulation and registration seek to address.
It's not always (or not only) down to cartels and corruption.
