I don’t think that’s a true condition. There are many situations where prices are not negotiated but are set by markets (easiest being eBay) and participants aren’t employees.

I used to do a bit of contracting and I always set a price with my clients as part of the contract. That didn’t make me their employee. And didn’t make my employees and contractors my client’s employees.

> many situations where prices are not negotiated but are set by markets (easiest being eBay)

Market is not a third party like Uber. Market is a collective name for the body of the dealing parties. Specifically, prices on eBay are set by sellers for fixed price offers, and by buyers for auctions.

> I used to do a bit of contracting and I always set a price with my clients as part of the contract. That didn’t make me their employee.

Exactly. But if someone else would set your price with your clients, and your only options would be to agree to the price or quit the job, I would probably say you’re an employee, and that third party who set your prices is your employer or manager.

“Exactly. But if someone else would set your price with your clients, and your only options would be to agree to the price or quit the job, I would probably say you’re an employee”

-This is actually precisely how about a third of my contracts worked. And reviews by my firm’s lawyers+theirs made sure it was legit.

There’s a bunch of case law on this and tons of companies with this as their business mode (eg, FedEx). It will be interesting to see how this settles out though. I know FedEx has been through a lot of lawsuits and Microsoft famously lost and had a bunch of contractors reclassified as employees.

How would that work in practice? Right now, in these apps, you can pick one of a few classes of cars, but if every driver has a different price, how do you allow the passenger to choose between dozens of drivers?

The value added by these platforms is exactly that, you don't need to negotiate with individual drivers to get a fare to your destination.

> how do you allow the passenger to choose between dozens of drivers?

Why do you expect that’s going to be hard to implement? Actual private contractors (myself included) do that all the time.

One straightforward method, a rider posts location + destination + price of the ride, accepts/declines offers from drivers based on price, vehicle model, reputation, personal preferences, etc.

Another straightforward method, a passenger posts his location + destination, drivers offer price, a passenger accepts an offer.

> The value added by these platforms is exactly that

Not “exactly that”, that’s just one part of it. Examples of e-bay or stock markets shows that an intermediary connecting buyers with sellers, processing payments, maintaining reputation of both parties, and solving disputes, can still add huge value.

> you don't need to negotiate with individual drivers to get a fare to your destination

With sufficient support from the service, the negotiation part can probably be streamlined to only take a couple of clicks/swipes. Like preference to filter drivers/riders by price or distance, ability to save routes or destinations with price information allowing for 1-click repeated orders, other convenience features.

Having tapped “Accept” over 1500 times for Lyft, I can tell you the idea af doing such an analysis of a fare is highly impractical and dangerous. And illegal in the State of California as you are allowed only 1 tap into an app while the vehicle is moving. In cities like LA or SF, rideshares have to keep moving in a lot of scenarios because there simply is no place to pull over and stop in between dropping off one passenger and picking up the next.

> is highly impractical and dangerous. And illegal in the State of California

It’s technically possible, and not that hard, to implement a voice-based interface for that, using e.g. Bluetooth + car stereo.

You setup your preferences while the vehicle is not moving to filter the offers you want to receive, by criteria like price/km, geography, min. total price. Then the software uses voice interface to read you the incoming offers, and listens to your “accept/decline” voice commands.

You could let the drivers script it (providing some canned - and well explained - scripts)

Curious about the 1-tap law. Do you have a link to the actual statute here?

They do negotiate prices with their passengers, collectively, by deciding to drive or not. Just because it's not an explicit pricing method, doesn't mean there is no pricing method that the drivers control.