I think the strongest argument against this point of view is that the drivers can opt to work for multiple car services to get a handle on their price structures. It's certainly possible for a traditional employer to allow that arrangement, but you have to admit it is an uncommon thing.

It's much more analogous to a contractor working for a general contractor -- if I'm a plumber I can take gigs from multiple general contractors, and my ability to negotiate with the customer directly is very limited; instead I'm usually left negotiating with the general contractor, often just with a take it or leave it price. The general contractor is not the employer in this case.

If target allowed you also work for Walmart that wouldn't transform their employees into contractors.

Target pays workers hourly wages. It would be quite something if they allowed you to work at Walmart during the hours you're being paid an hourly wage by Target.

Well one can't simultaneously drive a passenger obtained via Uber, and a passenger obtained via Lyft either.

Neither can a contractor build a gazebo for one client at the same time as they're building a gazebo for a different client. But there is a difference between getting paid for hours and getting paid for tasks.

Your analogy is not very good. General contractors take bids, they don't set the price, they take the best offer for them. And as a sub contractor or GC you can have as many jobs open as you want. I see no similarities between uber driving and sub contracting, aside from both being task based. Contractors get to set their rate, is built into the bid process drivers don't.

Rideshare drivers are paid by the task, but that task is time-bound. Building a shed isn't. You can take on two shed contracts simultaneously, not so as a rideshare driver.

> Rideshare drivers are paid by the task, but that task is time-bound. Building a shed isn't.

Why not? You could take a contract to build a shed by the end of the day and then not have time to build any others that day.

You are not forced to make de shed.

if it's a shared car, you could pick up customers from multiple apps on the same trip?

no

Waiting for a ride with both apps turned on is actually pretty common.

Drivers aren't paid while they're waiting though, right? It seems to me like this is just holding two separate jobs of the same type (which I don't think is uncommon for the types of positions one might have at Target or Walmart), with the only difference being more flexibility of which hours to work.

It's not just which hours, it's also how many.

If you're a contractor hired to build a shed and it takes you 8 hours, you're there all day. But if you can build it in 2 hours, you get to go home, and you still get paid the same.

If you're a Target employee brought in to do inventory and it takes most people 8 hours but you finish in 2, you're only going home if you don't want to get paid for the other 6 hours. Otherwise you're going to be stocking shelves or sweeping floors or working a register until the clock runs out.

Driving works like the first one. If you can make a 45 minute drive take 42 minutes, you get to keep the other 3 minutes. (In theory if you can make a 45 minute drive take 15 minutes you get to keep the other 30 minutes, but good luck with that.)

Can't they? What happens if they're driving an Uber passenger and do pick up a Lyft passenger who happens to be on the same route?

In theory it's possible to, if you're doing pool rides

I’ve had drivers accept a ride on the other app while still driving me. So I’m a way they kinda can.

Worker protections exist to ensure that employers don't exploit their position of power to take advantage of their workers. Full stop. Obviously that doesn't apply to the plumber you hired to fix your toilet or the painters the company hired to paint the walls but anytime you have a continuing open ended relationship when you alone provide at least a substantial fraction of the employees total income I have to wonder how on earth the same protections don't apply.

The situations where a contractor relationship applies are plain and obvious. Any time you have to ask if someone is an employee you are probably exploiting the fine line to avoid having to follow the law. Kind of like if you have to ask if you are actually committing fraud you probably are. Depending on which side of the fine line a judge comes down on you may or may not be punished for it but you aren't a better person for it.

If people were taking home $100k driving for Uber I would accept this argument, since I wouldn't want to interrupt the good opportunity with regulations.

As it is, I see the preponderance of arguments on the side of it being regular employment without the expected benefits.

For what it's worth every Uber ride I've taken I would have taken at double the price, it's possible they could afford to pay their full time drivers benefits.

> As it is, I see the preponderance of arguments on the side of it being regular employment without the expected benefits.

Let's evaluate this for a moment.

Suppose the people driving for Uber could get a job somewhere else as an employee. In this case they willingly chose the driving job with e.g. more flexible hours over the other job with employment status, so why are we second guessing their choice and trying to take it away?

Now suppose the other job isn't available to them. Job prospects for unskilled workers are pretty bad, so it's either Uber or unemployment. Then it's the same thing -- they'd rather drive for Uber as a contractor than be unemployed, so why should we take that option away from them?

The theory behind forcing them to be employees is that it's "better" for them. If they're employees they get employee benefits. But then they can't work part time anymore, because if the company is going to pay full time benefits then they're going to want full time hours. Flexible hours go away too, because if they're forced to pay benefits they can use them to attract people who don't need flexible hours and no longer have to accommodate people who do.

Then the benefits cost money, but the company's margins are pretty thin so the only place to get the money is by making rides more expensive. That hurts all the working class people who have to pay more for rides, but it also lowers demand for rides. Lower demand, fewer drivers.

So a lot of the existing drivers, and specifically the most vulnerable of them who can't find another job or need the flexible schedule, lose their jobs.

They might be better off if we don't "help" them like this.

One of the issues here is about Uber getting away with paying the same type of taxes than other businesses, which creates an unfair situations with other companies & a race to the bottom for workers rights.

"Workers rights" are things like the right not to be refused a job because you're a woman. I don't think anybody is accusing Uber of doing this, nor would doing it give anyone any apparent competitive advantage in modern markets.

Classifying things like unemployment insurance under that banner is silly, because anybody who wants it can go buy it with money, so it makes no sense to require it rather than letting workers and companies negotiate over whether they'd rather have that or some other thing like higher pay. Every company has to convince their workers to work there and not somewhere else, so everything like that which they don't provide requires them to provide something else instead.

Imposing those requirements hurt workers by taking their options away -- somebody who knows they're only going to be a driver for four years as they work their way through college may very well be better off to have the money that would otherwise be paid to the insurance carrier than to have the unemployment insurance, which they'll not use anyway because Uber doesn't do "layoffs" of contractors and it's very unlikely demand for rides is going to disappear in the next four years.

great point

Sounds like a bug with the tax law to me. Maybe there should be a services tax which is used to fund benefits, or something of that nature? Not a fully considered suggestion, just pointing out that this isn't obviously a fault with uber rather than the way taxes are structured.

> Suppose the people driving for Uber could get a job somewhere else as an employee. In this case they willingly chose the driving job with e.g. more flexible hours over the other job with employment status, so why are we second guessing their choice and trying to take it away?

Who's taking it away, though? There's no law that a company can't offer employees flexible hours, and nobody's arguing that there should be. If Uber decides employee drivers can't have flexible hours, then that's on them. This argument is a non-sequitor with regard to employee/contractor status.

> Now suppose the other job isn't available to them. Job prospects for unskilled workers are pretty bad, so it's either Uber or unemployment. Then it's the same thing -- they'd rather drive for Uber as a contractor than be unemployed, so why should we take that option away from them?

Is it "Uber or unemployment", though? Are unskilled workers without a car just completely screwed? No, because those aren't the only two choices. Do you know of an actual case where a person has had no other choices than Uber and unemployment? It's a red herring.

> The theory behind forcing them to be employees is that it's "better" for them.

I can't speak to France, but in the United States the difference has a lot more to do with taxes and social security than it does with any immediate, direct benefits to the employee.

> If they're employees they get employee benefits. But then they can't work part time anymore, because if the company is going to pay full time benefits then they're going to want full time hours. Flexible hours go away too, because if they're forced to pay benefits they can use them to attract people who don't need flexible hours and no longer have to accommodate people who do.

Again, I don't know about France, but in the United States "employee benefits" have almost nothing to do with employee/contractor status. No company is required to provide any benefits other than wages. If Uber decides employee drivers don't get flexible hours, that's on them, not the law.

> Then the benefits cost money, but the company's margins are pretty thin so the only place to get the money is by making rides more expensive. That hurts all the working class people who have to pay more for rides, but it also lowers demand for rides. Lower demand, fewer drivers.

In the United States, the "benefits" are things like unemployment insurance, social security, income tax, and things like that, which the drivers should already be paying for themselves. In theory this is already coming out of the driver's earnings, so having the company pay it instead shouldn't make a difference to the end user's price.

> There's no law that a company can't offer employees flexible hours, and nobody's arguing that there should be. If Uber decides employee drivers can't have flexible hours, then that's on them. This argument is a non-sequitor with regard to employee/contractor status.

The flexible hours come in exchange for contractor status. If they paid employee benefits they could attract employees who don't need flexible hours. Which means if you force them to pay employee benefits either way, they take those workers instead of the ones who need flexible hours and the ones who need flexible hours are out of work.

> Is it "Uber or unemployment", though? Are unskilled workers without a car just completely screwed? No, because those aren't the only two choices. Do you know of an actual case where a person has had no other choices than Uber and unemployment? It's a red herring.

It's one of the two possibilities. The other is that they had the option of working for someone else as an employee but willingly chose Uber, e.g. because of flexible hours. Or maybe they like driving a car better than cleaning toilets. Whatever the reason, you're taking away that option.

> I can't speak to France, but in the United States the difference has a lot more to do with taxes and social security than it does with any immediate, direct benefits to the employee.

In the US the employee and employer each pay half of social security. Contractors are "self-employed" so they pay both halves. But everybody knows this, so you have to pay a contractor that much more (or provide some other valuable consideration like flexible hours) to get them to work for you instead of somewhere they're an employee. If you make Uber drivers employees, more people want the job and by supply and demand the wages go down.

> Again, I don't know about France, but in the United States "employee benefits" have almost nothing to do with employee/contractor status.

There are a bunch of rules and incentives with respect to employer-provided health insurance, unemployment insurance etc. that apply to employees and not contractors. If there was no difference then why would anybody care about how the drivers are classified?

In general you could expect a reclassification to negatively impact everyone involved, because being an employee involves a lot more paperwork and bureaucracy but the value in any advantage from it should then get reflected in correspondingly lower compensation (or loss of employment if that level of compensation falls below minimum wage).

> The flexible hours come in exchange for contractor status.

You keep saying that, but there's nothing backing it up. Contractors typically have more flexible hours, but companies are free to allow flexible hours if they want to. If the drivers were employees, it would be Uber's choice to give them flexible hours or not.

> If they paid employee benefits they could attract employees who don't need flexible hours. Which means if you force them to pay employee benefits either way, they take those workers instead of the ones who need flexible hours and the ones who need flexible hours are out of work.

That's all speculation, though. Maybe the displaced employees will start an Uber competitor that does give flexible hours, beat out Uber, and become the next unicorns. It could be the best thing that ever happens to them...

Really, it's a wash. One group loses a specific job option because they need flexible hours and Uber (supposedly) won't allow it , and another group gains that option because they need regularity.

> There are a bunch of rules and incentives with respect to employer-provided health insurance, unemployment insurance etc. that apply to employees and not contractors. If there was no difference then why would anybody care about how the drivers are classified?

Who is paying for the driver's insurance right now, though? If each driver pays for their own then they'll collectively save a ton of money on a corporate group plan. Employees working under 30 hours a week aren't even required to get employer provided insurance, though, so there may not be a change for people taking advantage of those flexible hours...

> In general you could expect a reclassification to negatively impact everyone involved, because being an employee involves a lot more paperwork and bureaucracy but the value in any advantage from it should then get reflected in correspondingly lower compensation (or loss of employment if that level of compensation falls below minimum wage).

There's not more paperwork and bureaucracy - the existing paperwork and bureaucracy is just concentrated into Uber's HR and finance departments, instead of being done by thousands of drivers.

> You keep saying that, but there's nothing backing it up. Contractors typically have more flexible hours, but companies are free to allow flexible hours if they want to. If the drivers were employees, it would be Uber's choice to give them flexible hours or not.

The reason they give them flexible hours is in exchange for not having to do the things that come with classifying them as employees. It's what allows them to attract drivers even when they're classified as contractors. If they paid benefits then they could attract drivers without offering flexible hours -- but that doesn't help the drivers who need flexible hours and not benefits.

Not only that, they would be less able to offer flexible hours. When they're hiring contractors, they don't have to care what hours people want to work. If you're an employee, 30 hours is not an option, because if you're working enough to require benefits then they're going to want to make the most of it by having you work 40 hours. But 60 hours is out too, because as an employee you're not going to be approved for overtime. Choosing your own schedule is also out, because for contractors they'll take anyone at any time they're willing to work, but if they're paying benefits and need you to work a specific number of hours a week then they'll want to schedule those hours at times that maximize the number of rides rather than whenever is easiest for you.

Saying that they could still allow flexible hours in a theoretical sense doesn't help anybody when reclassification as employees gives them all these incentives not to.

> That's all speculation, though. Maybe the displaced employees will start an Uber competitor that does give flexible hours, beat out Uber, and become the next unicorns. It could be the best thing that ever happens to them...

Maybe they'll win the lottery five times in a row and then get elected President of the United States. That's speculation.

It's not speculation to say that if Uber pays benefits, it makes it easier for them to attract employees, which allows them to do other things that are less attractive to employees and still find workers. The thing they choose to claw back may be the flexible hours or it may be something else, but it'll be something the drivers currently have which Uber will no longer have to offer because their job would be competitive without it if they paid benefits.

> Really, it's a wash. One group loses a specific job option because they need flexible hours and Uber (supposedly) won't allow it , and another group gains that option because they need regularity.

Work with flexible hours is a lot more scarce than shift work, so making it unavailable in exchange for much more common shift work is not a wash. It's a huge problem for people who need flexible hours.

Also, regularity is a subset of flexible hours. If you want to work 9-5, a job with flexible hours allows that. So you're not adding an option, you're only taking one off the table which was hard to find to begin with.

> Who is paying for the driver's insurance right now, though? If each driver pays for their own then they'll collectively save a ton of money on a corporate group plan.

For a normal corporate group plan, maybe, but think about the context here. You have a group which is inherently at high risk of medical bills due to car accidents. Then this is a job where they accept anyone with a valid driver's license. First thing that happens to that corporate group plan is that everyone without health insurance who gets diagnosed with cancer or cardiovascular disease or diabetes signs up as a driver and uses the "new job" condition to immediately take the insurance.

That group plan would cost more than what you could get on the exchanges.

> Employees working under 30 hours a week aren't even required to get employer provided insurance, though, so there may not be a change for people taking advantage of those flexible hours...

The people taking advantage of flexible hours aren't necessarily the people working less than 30 hours. If you want to work 5 hours while your kids are at school at 2 hours after they go to bed, you'll have a hard time negotiating that schedule at Target, but it's still 35 hours a week.

The people who work under 30 hours may not see much of a difference, but "this change may have no real effect on a particular subgroup of people" is not actually an argument that it is benefiting them.

> There's not more paperwork and bureaucracy - the existing paperwork and bureaucracy is just concentrated into Uber's HR and finance departments, instead of being done by thousands of drivers.

In other words, there is more paperwork and bureaucracy. Because there are still thousands of drivers, but now there is an extraneous middle man between the drivers and their insurance carrier, making choices on their behalf that they might not prefer and processing paperwork that the insurance carrier will only have to process again.

>For what it's worth every Uber ride I've taken I would have taken at double the price

I would have taken a ride at double the price. But, for example, on the rare occasions I've used a ride-share from my house to the airport for personal travel, it's purely been because of price. Were it double the price, I'd just book a private car like I do for business travel.

> If people were taking home $100k driving for Uber I would accept this argument, since I wouldn't want to interrupt the good opportunity with regulations.

So only rich people should have opportunities?

How did you get that conclusion? What he is saying if there were advantages over normal employment, it would be more palatable

Evidently, there are enough advantages for people to voluntarily take on those jobs.

And 'normal employment' means 'unemployment' for a lot of people in France these years.

France should encourage more companies to enter and contest the market that Uber is in.

See https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2019/05/uber-and-wages-in... for how when Uber and eg Lyft are both operating in the same market, the result is almost a textbook case of perfect competition.

That building contractor can generally set hours, sub out the work, etc. Pricing negotiation is only one of several tests to determine whether or not a worker is an employee or contractor.

Now they will probably lock a driver to their service and then a new fight will ensue when courts try to rule that is not allowed and find a new class to these drivers in.

My prediction is that this backlash won't happen. At least not in France.

Imagine ride-sharing companies bidding for different drivers in real-time where drivers would set their minimum fare.

But do general contractors in your example punish plumbers if they are found to be working for multiple general contractors?

When does that happen? Almost every Uber/Lyft driver I've seen lately has both logos on their car...

This might depend on jurisdiction though. I too have seen cars with all kinds of stickers at the same time in some countries, and in others they are exclusively one or the other.

Whenever I've asked why a driver is only driving for one its usually for one of two reasons.

They don't know they can do both and went with what they believed to be the most popular. These are usually uber only drivers.

They had a bad experience with too many customers on one platform. These are usually Lyft drivers that are actually using the platform for the occasional side money instead of a full on job.

Why do the drivers usually have two different phones?

Ease-of-use, and iPhones don't have multi-use.

To have both HUD's on all the time?

Say John make a platform right now and set the rule that there's no negotiations permitted. Builders accepting the proposal must accept at the listed price. Obviously there remains a variation in the quality of the different proposals (some builders may be more polite, or use better wood). Obviously, the key difference here is that I would be able to choose what builder I want, but the customer on Uber doesn't get to decide that. So let's place one more restriction: the platform decides which builder gets the job behind the scenes.

Now, would you say that builder is employed by this website? If so, at what point did this turn from self-employment to employment?

> Similar argument for changing toppings on a cake - a caterer can negotiate changes to the cake - an Uber driver has no such flexibility.

If the customer wants a cake for wedding: vanilla with 3 layers and a cherry on top it seems a bit inappropriate to contact them saying "I can't make a vanilla cake but how about chocolate?"

It's a limitation of the platform (limitations made to improve customer experience - imagine if you had to negotiate for every taxi ride, you don't do this for local companies). I'd argue that the hypothetical platform described can set any number of limitations, as long as the builder can hop off and get his work elsewhere at any point.

Really, imo, the key here is how much control the Uber driver has to refuse tasks, and if they can seek the same work elsewhere (eg is Lyft available in the city?). You wouldn't tell your boss "eyy sorry chief, bit tired, gonna head home, give the fare to someone else, byeee!! hangs up" -- but you can on Uber.

I'd argue that in the builder-app, the builder has now been transformed into an employee, same as an Uber driver. To me, "setting prices" is more than just refusing/accepting prices set by an algorithm/app, but the ability to negotiate those independently.

In the cake example, a baker absolutely could attempt to negotiate for chocolate. They might not "win" the negotiation, but they have the option.

Edit - in the taxi driver (traditional taxi in US), I'd argue that most of them should be employees too. Sometimes they are employed directly by "Acme Cab" or whatever. But, in the case of the local airport taxi company (Washington Flyer), the company has a monopoly on airport transport, but drivers are independent contractors - this always struck me as a very lopsided and questionable arrangement. If a driver wants to pick up at Dulles, they have to contract for Wash Flyer at fixed rates, renting a company car, etc.

And I'll freely admit this all can be a bit ambiguous. And that I'm not a fan of the "gig economy" in general - I'm convinced corporations are using it to reduce wages and benefits and effectively foist the cost of those lower wages/benefits on society as a whole.

Sure, corporations are using it to reduce wages and benefits, etc. But gig economy is not really a new concept -- almost every tradecraft profession has a similar dynamic; as an electrician you are generally not paid by an employer, you instead go out and get work. This gives you the freedom to set your own hours and tune the amount of work that you take on to support your lifestyle.

I think the problem with a lot of these gig economy services is that they are often pumped by VC/PE money in an attempt to generate monopolies by over-capitalizing. If we got rid of that dynamic (which is a difficult problem) then this disappears. If there are a hundred different Ubers, operating in different cities, then gig workers are put in a better position to bargain by selecting a service to use.

The cost here is that the customer is inconvenienced; a single app with a single payment system seems like a better deal. But distributing this responsibility actually makes the overall system more robust and leads to interesting solutions throughout the stack, rather than converging on whatever terrible systems have been hard-coded by the over-capitalized market leaders.

- I'm convinced corporations are using it to reduce wages and benefits and effectively foist the cost of those lower wages/benefits on society as a whole.

The customer demand (customer being the drivers) tells a completely different story of people being more productive than legacy taxi systems by taking responsibility themselves.

I think a lean "gig economy" without the full load of bureaucracy is largely positive and really dislike how it is torn down here in Europe...

I would be more inclined to agree with you if there was clear evidence that people really understood all the “responsibility” they’re taking on when picking up gig-economy work.

Responsibilities like the value depreciation of their vehicle, or paying for sick leave and time off.

Full time employment provides strong protection against unexpected illness. The gig-economy doesn’t.

Companies like Uber seem to prey on large pools of semi-innumerate drivers who either don’t realise they’re operating a loss and too desperate to care.

The result is your productivity gains, which only exist because some of the costs simply aren’t accounted for and ignored. These aren’t real productivity gains, that’s just socialising costs and clever accounting to justify it.

- Companies like Uber seem to prey on large pools of semi-innumerate drivers who either don’t realise they’re operating a loss and too desperate to care.

Without hard data this is just a far fetched claim. You are implying that „a large part“ (how large?) people are too dumb to make this decision for themselves. Even though I do not doubt that these people exist, what is the relative threshold where all others should be restricted by rules made for that geoup? Also I would argue that there is a learning effect if someone notices he operates at a loss and can learn from others who are making a profit. This might be very valuable in fighting „learned helplessness“. But as you might notice: I am always in favor of doing things the hard way, with short term pain than obfuscating the price signals for short term ease only compensating the symptoms.

The legacy taxi system, at least in the US, was ripe for disruption. No argument there. However, disruption doesn't necessarily require shafting "employees" out of wages and benefits. Reform to medallion systems (at least in the cities that have them) might have had similar benefits, without the negatives associated with "gig" employment.

>And I'll freely admit this all can be a bit ambiguous. And that I'm not a fan of the "gig economy" in general - I'm convinced corporations are using it to reduce wages and benefits and effectively foist the cost of those lower wages/benefits on society as a whole.

I think it's ambiguous too. Though I disagree with the criteria set by this court, I'm not entirely sure on what the right criteria is. I think Uber play a line between employment and self-employment to keep it ambiguous, and I certainly agree it's to make sure they don't have to provide full employment benefits to their drivers, but I still think the classification/distinction is tricky.

If drivers are indeed employees, as I mentioned in my other comment, I think Uber gain a lot of rights over their drivers that they don't currently have.

As a counter example I bring you the Italian taxi system

Cab drivers have to receive a public license from the city to work in that city (and can only have one)

They can't decide the price, which is fixed according to some rules and are all the same for every cab in the city

The shouldn't sell the licence even if most of them do (gray legal area)

But they are not considered employees of the city but as freelancers

How do they "negotiate" the price?

They try to follow the most rewarding route for them and, unless the customer knows which is the fastest route, they get away with it

I'm not a fan of the gig economy either, but Uber drivers look to me are willing to work at their rules, their hours and on the gigs they like, which is different from what we consider being regular employees in Italy

That's similar to the taxi system in many (European and proabably traditionally US) places. The big differences compared to Uber there are:

- The rates are rather high, so the e.g. the costs for the car are taken into account and still the driver earns a decent living

- The city does not take a significant share of every fare paid

As long as the system is somewhat balanced and no turbo capitalism exploiting drivers in a weak position nobody tries it up to the supreme court. (In the US the legal system is less balanced, so I don't think Uber drivers would make it to the supreme court, not even dreaming of getting a similar verdict.)

Home Depot sets prices for services like carpet install. They sub it out to various installers. AAA subcontracts out to local tow operators to provide nationwide coverage. Huge segments of the economy would fall apart of we made all of those kinds of people employees.

> Huge segments of the economy would fall apart of we made all of those kinds of people employees.

I don't think that's really a relevant argument to whether they should be classified as employees. Huge segments of the economy have already fallen apart, and more will fall apart in the future.

IF we can't send kids into coal mines the economy will collapse.

The point is this category of worker is not just made of a small fringe of poor victims. Many of these people are legitimate entrepreneurs who become millionaire small business owners. You're going to destroy an important path to wealth creation for the poor and middle class by forcing them to be mega corp drones. This is an awful idea. You will destroy their lives by pulling up the ladders blue collar workers are using to climb out of poverty because you're upset that some Uber drivers are poor.

It's not only about opportunity for gig economy workers, it's about us all paying the price of gig economy business operations. Uber's business model can be extended to virtually any job, if we lower the barrier to entry just like Uber is trying to do for the taxi business.

Their model is to be a gatekeeper to customers via their platform - if they are successful, none of those blue collar workers trying to climb out of underemployment will have a chance at running a small ride business, because only large platforms have access to customers.

If everyone suddenly becomes a freelancer, companies are free to push externalities onto society because there will be enough people willing to take the hit to their rights/benefits for any kind of employment. It's a race to the bottom that benefits only the company that has access to the customer base.

We have to choose whether we want that or not.

Something that keeps popping back to my mind since the late 80's is to wonder to what extend government could or even should deliver type FOO services. Coding a taxi service wont cost anywhere near as much as the damage Uber is looking to deal. We spend crazy amounts of money designing, implementing and configuring labor protection and Uber obviously wants to work around it.

I think you've created a false narrative where workers have no power to demand wages or benefits. If that were true then Google engineers would be making the legal minimum wage. When you understand why Google engineers don't make minimum wage, you'll understand the flaw in your analysis on wage pricing.

Yes, it is all true, I find poverty a fascinating puzzle. I've solved one part of it already. Opinions from people who don't share that fascination cant contribute to the answer. The situation is even worse than you can imagine. I see excessive wealth render people unproductive. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see wealth come out of equally valuable contributions to civilization. Driving a car from A to B to C, well, I'm sorry, that ain't it. That would be a task ideally fit for someone who just wants to work, pay bills, buy a house, get married, have kids, go on vacation 2 times per year etc. It would be valuable to society to do it cheaply, perhaps we should even subsidize it. If you buy a bunch of cars and hire a bunch of people, then I could see the purpose of an opportunity for wealth creation.

You don't see a difference between an independent carpenter or tow truck company and an uber driver?

The primary difference is the state generally doesn't allow poor people to legally offer basic carpentry/roadside services at a rate commensurate with their skill. Things like licensing requirements create a barrier to entry unavailable to the poor, not unlike what traditional taxi companies are fighting for in their war against gig economy drivers. Such laws do help the wealthy incumbents because they have the ability to overcome those barriers, but it's at the expense of the poor.

Fields like accounting and legal services operate this way too. A friend of mine made a lot of money as a contractor during major acquisitions. I'm pretty sure he was of legal age to work in his state.

> Now, would you say that builder is employed by this website?

Probably yes. The terms are being set by the platform.

> It's a limitation of the platform (limitations made to improve customer experience - imagine if you had to negotiate for every taxi ride, you don't do this for local companies).

I've never used Uber. Does the customer get to choose the driver? On this hypothetical platform, does the customer get to choose the builder?

With Uber (or Lyft), neither party can select the other. The app dispatches drivers as rides are requested.

This is in general...

A driver can decline rides before accepting (because destination is out of their desired area or time exceeds 45 minutes), but that can impact driver rating (or at least, it used to do so). Drivers can also refuse drunk passengers, unaccompanied minors, and a few other things like that.

I'm not aware of any way for a passenger to refuse a driver, short of cancelling the ride completely (which has a fee associated if done close to actual pick-up). And, if you make another ride request, you might get the same driver again.

Another difference is that the Uber app is not an ad board. It also manages the monetary transactions. This effectively removes the ability to negotiate the price. If you in your example include that aspect it starts to resemble the Uber situation.

I'd add to this that both Uber/Lyft try and hide the price from you before you accept and penalize you for declining/canceling too many ride

Not true with Uber. It depends on the jurisdiction/market. The way it works in California is not how it works country- or worldwide.

So it is true with Uber, just not everywhere.

> That's not possible with Uber - there is no price negotiation - only declining/accepting a ride.

That is price negotiation. The market price changes all the time in response to supply and demand. If you're not willing to do it for a lower price and someone else is, you lose business to them. An hour later there is more demand and you can get some business at your price. Or you can lower your price (accept both rides) and get business both times.

Narrowing the choice to "accept or reject" isn't really removing the price negotiation, it's just simplifying it down to what it inherently always was to begin with.

> Similar argument for changing toppings on a cake - a caterer can negotiate changes to the cake - an Uber driver has no such flexibility.

They get to choose what kind of car to drive, where to buy gas, what hours to work. What would you say is the equivalent thing they don't get to choose?

> Regardless, given corporate (human?) nature is to leverage any power differential to self-benefit, it seems reasonable that regulations be interpreted in the most protective (of the party with less power) manner possible.

But what does that even mean in this case? Isn't the party with less power the one that would be out of work if reclassified as an employee, because employees have less flexibility etc. than contractors?

This is not price negotiation really at all because uber can and does kick people off the platform for not accepting rides. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-uber-drivers-get-deactiv...

That says they get kicked off for canceling too many rides. Accepting a ride and then canceling it is different than not accepting it to begin with.

They can also get kicked off for not accepting enough rides. When you're online and available you can't ignore what comes along.

Do you have any evidence for that?

Kicking people off for accepting rides and then canceling them makes perfect sense because once you accept the ride, the customer is waiting and they're not looking for another driver. It also discourages drivers from looking at the destination and then refusing rides that legally they're not supposed to, like trips into black neighborhoods.

Accepting in the first place either happens or doesn't in only a few seconds, and if you don't they immediately go on to the next driver. At best they have the incentive to make you manually re-enable your availability to drive if you neither accept nor decline more than a couple of rides in a row, so they can stop routing rides to you if you're not actually there. In makes no sense to kick you off over it, so why would they do that?

Because the added delay for customers is bad UX, and so is the increased price customers face when there are fewer drivers willing to accept rides.

Only anecdotal. I have an Uber driver friend, and other drivers have told me the same. I live in a very suburban area that's basically shut down for the winter season. There is often only one driver even active within 10 miles. It's not a problem in a city.

Getting switched offline after too much inactivity, from which you need to actively affirm intent to work by going online again, is not the same as getting kicked off the platform.

the bottom line is Uber can kick you off the platform for any reason or no reason. If it walks like a duck...

> The market price changes all the time in response to supply and demand

The 'market price' changes as Uber decides it should. There is no actual market where agents can set their prices present.

They decide it in response to supply and demand. Would you really expect them to raise prices when there is less demand and more supply and lower them when the opposite?

Which is what allows agents to set their prices. If prices are too high, some riders exit or more drivers enter which causes prices to decline. If prices are too low, some drivers exit or more riders enter which causes prices to increase. Is this not the ordinary mechanism of market pricing?

I'm not an economist or a laissez-faire capitalist, but I don't think that's the ordinary mechanism of market pricing. My understanding is that the individual actors on the market independently price their goods in competition with one another. In this case Uber is the sole authority in setting the price of rides, while in a market this would be more distributed. To quote Wikipedia on the free market:

"In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities."[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market

What Uber is in this context is basically an intermediary, like a retailer that sits between a manufacturer and a consumer, or a general contractor that sits between a subcontractor and a property owner.

What you have then isn't a transaction between the driver and the rider, it's two transactions, one between the driver and Uber and another between Uber and the rider. Each transaction is negotiated. Uber changes their offers to each party based on supply and demand, and if either party doesn't like it they can hold out for a better offer or go use Lyft. And since Uber does actually adjust pricing based on supply and demand, the better offer actually comes when enough people hold out.

The way you negotiate with them is by delaying your purchase/sale until they meet your price. It's a functioning market.

Take it or leave it isn't really negotiation, though, is it. There's no counter offer or alternative terms to work with. As I understand too many declines get drivers kicked off the platform, so their autonomy in this regard seems fairly limited.

Take-it-or-leave-it is good enough. That's how eg groceries are priced.

Competition does the rest.

It's not a direct negotiation, it's a negotiation by proxy.

> In your shed example, a builder could contact you and negotiate the price (perhaps the $100 price you set is completely unrealistic).

The argument presupposed that you refuse to negotiate. To say "but you can negotiate" sidesteps the whole thought experiment. You post the job at a fixed price. It's in writing on your posting, "fixed price". A builder accepts it. Or maybe they try to negotiate and you refuse and they do it anyway, or someone else accepts it. Either way someone ends up doing the job at your fixed price. Does the builder now have grounds to sue you for benefits and maybe a pension plan because you don't like haggling?

Anyway I think price negotiation is a bad criterion to use. It is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove anything.

In this shed scenario, if the first 10 builders to come across the ad think it's unrealistic and either ignore the ad or try to negotiate and get rejected, they walk away unscathed and quickly take other higher paying gigs. With Uber, I believe ignoring or rejecting customers is detrimental to your ability to continue finding higher paying customers.

... But not detrimental to your ability to find other ride-sharing apps, or non-app methods of discovering customers...

This seems like a rather different direction of argument. The analogy had a known price before you decide. Allowing you to cancel without penalty wouldn't rate as negotiating anyway. Now you are talking about having to commit to work without knowing what you'll be paid (except in general terms presumably). There are other contract gigs where that happens, as well as full-time employment where that happens.