Carpooling in UAE

There was a recent post at the UAE Community Blog regarding new regulations on legal carpooling. The full details can be found at the link, but to make a long story short, in an effort supposedly aimed at cutting down on illegal taxis, UAE authorities have created a laborious registration scheme, by which normal carpooling workers can register a car and no more than a total of 4 passengers to be official carpoolers. The authorities will do background checks on all concerned, then grant a permit. Any carpooling outside of these restrictions would be illegal.

A few points:
-Let's assume that the big-brother-esque aspect of the background checks is just well-intentioned but overzealous bureaucracy.
-If the intention is to protect citizens from illegal taxis, wouldn't other measures be much more efficient and effective than the very laborious and bureaucratically-expensive registration process? Undercover stings on the taxis? Simple surveillance of likely pick-up spots? Provision of more official taxis to meet the demand?

This falls in on the previous post about Gulf branding. If UAE wants to become a global business hub, it has to quickly realize that it needs to make bureaucratic procedures and daily life more efficient and less intrusive, not more so.

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out and whether the bureaucracy is responsive to the moans of protest it is raising. If the government can be adaptive in this and many other situations, then the UAE business model has a chance. If the government keeps putting stumbling blocks in front of business and doesn't adapt to complaints, all those pretty high rises are going to be looking shabby and empty before too long.