Big Apple cabbies are on strike.

Against whom? The companies leasing the cabs and licenses?

Nope, it’s the New York City government, seeking to impose onerous GPS and credit-card machine requirements. The cabbies fear they’ll end up paying the cost individually.

Of course, as in other towns, New York’s cab market is oppressively controlled. Licenses are expensive. Cabbies are often ordered about. They may not even refuse fares to neighborhoods they deem life-threatening. One New Yorker, commenting online, says all this bureaucratic breathing down the neck of the cabbie community is fine with him. He claims: “It’s a tremendous privilege to use NYC streets to ply your trade. We have the right to regulate you.” Yikes.

This notion, taken to its logical conclusion, would destroy the rights of anybody who regularly uses public spaces — in short, everybody. So, no, the extent to which government is already running our lives and roads does not justify forfeiting whatever freedom of action remains. The liberty to peacefully make a living is a right, not a privilege to be revoked at will.

So I’m with the cabbies on their stike. It’s a cause well worth a long work or two.

And I’ve liked it when customers have protested arbitrary caps on the supply of taxicabs. But instead of tweaking decades of coercive controls that hurt everybody, let’s throw out all these burdensome regulations, and try some free enterprise.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.