Suddenly, the light came on. He had done what no one else had done before: he created the first commercially available light bulb. In 1879, Thomas Edison succeeded in patenting the first light bulb that could be sold to the general public. While the public remained skeptical at first, Edison did not have candle companies coming out of the woodwork to sue him for creating a new source of light. In the same way, he did not receive close scrutiny from the government, nor was he threatened with fines and other legal actions.

Unfortunately, this is not the case today. Many times innovation and new ideas are met with harsh opposition. One of the most recent examples of this opposition is the City of Madison’s response to the ridesharing company, Uber, expanding its operations into Madison.

For those of you who do not know, Uber is a company that provides transportation for those in Madison. However, Uber takes an innovative approach to transportation. First of all, instead of providing its drivers with cars, it asks the drivers to use their own cars. Also, it has developed an app that allows customers to ask for rides whenever they want easily and quickly. Likewise, they have integrated a way to pay for the ride through the app to make travel even easier for those it serves.

Despite this innovative approach to transportation, Uber has been met with large opposition from the taxi companies in Madison and the local politicians. Since Uber is not technically a taxi company, it does not need to be licensed in the same way that a taxi company is, allowing them to provide much cheaper rates to their customers. As a result of this, taxi companies lobbied to take down Uber, and they succeeded in convincing the politicians in Madison to work against Uber’s cause. In fact, their efforts have been so successful that one of Uber’s drivers was recently fined nearly $1300 by an undercover officer for operating without a taxi license.

While it would make sense to require a new taxi service in Madison to be license like the other taxi companies, Uber is not a taxi company. It is just an app that connects drivers with their own cars to riders who are looking to go somewhere. Putting it a different way, this would be like getting fined for giving a friend a ride after he offered to help you pay for gas. This may seem like a ridiculous example, but it is also comparable to getting fined for carpooling or requiring your friend to acquire a taxi license before he drives you to Woodman’s.

Without a doubt, Uber offers an alternative and more unique service than the taxi companies of Madison, and it should not be fined for providing this innovative service. Imagine if Thomas Edison would have been fined for selling the first light bulb. Are we going to let the government and large taxi companies stifle innovation and tell us which services we can and cannot use? That is a dangerous road to go down, and we personally could not live in a world without light bulbs.

Written by the College Republicans Communications Committee.