I can tell you for a fact that a big reason SuperShuttle failed is because the drivers were independent. They would consistently reject low cost trips and wait it out until they got one "mega" trip so that they only need to actually work for about 3 hours/day. Some days they wouldn't take any trips, just hang out in the van playing Flappy Bird.
This was a main issue for the SuperShuttle because they couldn't get their drivers to do adapt when Uber came around, including accepting work that more resembled Uber pool workloads.
A fully independent contractor like a SuperShuttle driver can treat each fare as a separate contract, pick only the best offers, and generally not provide the company an adequate service level to ensure a reliable stream of customers. Each driver prioritizing their short-term interests keeps that model from being a viable profession in many cases.
On the other hand, an employer is required to provide certain benefits to employees, especially if they exceed certain thresholds of hours worked. To make the fixed cost of some of those benefits viable, the employer will usually want to require the employee to work specific hours, and often limits those hours to stay within legal thresholds.
It's the flexibility of scheduling I that I think attracts people to gig work. They'll take the ability to cherry-pick the most profitable gigs if given the chance, but it isn't a core requirement.
It's probably desirable to add a third category to provide gig workers some protections without shoehorning them into the employee classification, which many of them actively wish to avoid.
Such a simple concept yet many ignore it. Nowadays it's trendy to call such concepts "mental models".
If a business was paying their workers minimum wage and couldn't compete on price with another business that came in and didn't respect minimum wage laws, you wouldn't say the main issue was paying minimum wage. You would say it was the business that didn't respect minimum wage laws.
It seems like if all companies treat drivers as independent contractors, then the market will naturally work itself out. Drivers will compete amongst themselves and determine what they are willing to work for, and prices will adapt as needed to support that. However, if some companies don't, then obviously it isn't a level playing field. That will only be exacerbated if the company that doesn't then also further depresses ride prices to the point of operating at a loss.
Whether the current legislation actually achieves the goal remains to be seen, but the whole point is to level the playing field. I don't think anyone actually thinks that the way forward is to treat drivers as employees. Instead, I think having to treat drivers as employees is a deterrent to the current way contractor laws are being skirted, with the intent of pushing all companies to treat their drivers as independent contractors in order to level the playing field.
How is this irrational? You offer me $X for Y hours of work. If X/Y gets too small I say "no" and do something with higher utility, even if that's playing flappy bird. I don't really care that my actions destroy the source of this opportunity because I've already rejected it.
You are right that this is simple, just not in the way you're interpreting it.
It's obvious to the drivers that if they don't take trips, then they don't make money. Clearly then, they've decided that below a certain dollar amount, it make more sense to them to play computer games than take a fare. How they arrived at that conclusion, I don't know. But I have faith that it made sense to them.
I do very small software projects for people I find online. I have a minimum fee. If I take on projects below that minimum, I'd have more work, but I have determined that it's in my best interest to hold out for that minimum rate. If this means that I don't make money on that side gig a particular day or week, so be it. I have my reasons for doing that and they won't necessarily make sense to anyone looking in from the outside.
There's a minimum time cost to them for each ride or delivery. There's the time you spend finding out exactly where the person is, there can be a delay between jobs, there's delays when picking up an order.
Someone who drives 10 miles for one job will spend much less time than someone who drives 1 mile for 10 jobs. And since they have X units of time to spend in the app, they'll start making less and less per mile driven.
They also don't get paid for the time spent going to a pickup unless it exceeds a certain length: https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/24/16533940/uber-long-picku...
It's easy enough to see how, at some point, they start to get paid so little that it's in their best interest to just not drive and spend the gas and their effort
__
Here's a severe case showing someone go through that exact experience:
> I accepted the pick-up and app informed me that the customer was 13 miles away I drove there[...] pressed my App for the drop-off Destination [...] and saw that drop-off was 1 mile away
> Total time of trip, back and forth, 45 to 50 minutes and 29 miles , and I earned $8 dollars
> So, after thinking about it, I have decided to ‘decline’ all trips that are more than 10 miles away from me and do not say that it is gonna be a ‘long trip’
https://ride.guru/lounge/p/uber-drivers-how-far-will-you-dri...
1. them complaining about short fair or straight up driving off before I could get in because I wasn't going far enough (lesson learned in Vegas: get in before answering questions) 2. The constant, relentless dance about their "credit card machine being broken" "you can pay cash!" "there's an ATM machine inside"
Uber and Lyft were god sends when I was traveling a lot for work. click button, get in car, arrive at place. None of the adversarial nonsense.
But that never stopped drivers from playing that game anyway.
At the expense of the security of the drivers serving you. You get convenience, they get a subsistence lifestyle.
Most low-paying jobs aren't known for having lots of angry/rude people working them. Probably because in most jobs you have to work with other people or interact with customers within view of your co-workers/manager.
It seems like allowing a proper market, where both riders and drivers could bid on rides, would solve both this problem and the SuperShuttle problem.
They're also unsafe, my brother was robbed at gunpoint by a fake taxi. I've heard multiple women who had to jump from a moving taxi to escape a potential rape.
Uber is more expensive in Panama, but I use it nearly exclusively.
For me to have real choice as a rider, I need at least a few different offers from drivers on the table, at which point I can pick the cheapest/fastest/highest rated/whatever.
Likewise, for the driver to have a true choice, he has to have multiple ride offers in front of him to pick the best.
The reality is that in most local markets, most drivers spend the majority of their time sitting around because there are no riders (and therefore would never turn down any work), and riders are frequently so far from drivers that there is only one driver to choose from within 10 minutes waiting time, so they would be forced to accept the ride, whatever the price.
Yeah, $20 and about 1 in 3 were visibly angry and not shy about letting me know it.
Context: I took this route almost weekly for a few years.
Then you are lucky. I can't count the times the drivers called me before picking me up, asking me where I want to go and then cancelling if it was nearby (or no answer at all).
I never cancel, but they do.
And when they don't do that, they are extremly annoyed when it's something close to the airport.
This is to keep drivers from cancelling based on an out of the way pick-up location.
When they call, it's almost always to get information that the app won't give them.
I've gotten burned by both.
I suppose the only thing preventing the adversarial behavior is that the driver needs your five-star review.
[1] in the context of why women Uber drivers make less.
Because these companies are VC and investor subsidized, and apparently breaking labour laws. It isn't a functioning market. If they had to cover the full costs they would face the same issues as taxis.
Most were longtime drivers and knew historical fare. We just couldn’t get them to change their mindset.
It was more profitable for everybody with this way.
I'm seeing Supershuttle availability right now (not in California but in the U.S.)
Wouldn't most companies keep performance stats for their contractors, and if one started refusing lots of jobs, stop giving them work? Seems like Uber is just automating what is a normal part of working with a contractor.
With regards to unemployment insurance, this is really a hole in our safety net. Regardless of whether Uber drivers should be considered independent contractors, we should have a solution for independent contractors being put out of work.
The easiest way to allow drivers to set rates, and I'm not sure if there is some reason they haven't already done this, is to just let the driver tell the app their rate, so that they wouldn't even be offered rides below it (which naturally might mean they don't get as many), and the service would just give the ride to the driver in the area with the best rate. Obviously that would mean that if you set a lower rate you'd get more rides.
> we should have a solution for independent contractors being put out of work.
It's kind of non-applicable to the situation though, because when you have market pricing like this, you never really get put out of work, it's just that the amount you get paid may vary (and fall below the point where you seek other employment). Does Uber even do layoffs of contractors?
We have one age old solution for this problem. It's called savings.
There is a power imbalance here, and that's the root issue. The employee and the employer are not on the same level in terms of negotiating power. Hard for tech people like the HN crowd to realize, but in most areas outside overpaid overdemanded software engineering that's reality.
The first industrial revolution showed this pretty dramatically. The solution was workers rights, unions etc. Those things that others here call bureaucrats with a those-people-just-want-to-destroy-the-free-market negative subtone.
However, don't forget that it's usually the same for a business and its customers: Ride-hailing itself is a buyer's market. Lyft and Uber are unprofitable. The only way for them to stay "in business" is to constantly burn money.
Supply and demand is not a free market ideal, it's a law of nature. Worker's rights or unions can't raise market prices above demand by fiat, all they can do is limit supply so that prices naturally rise. That means more people are out of a job, but those that are in the job might make a little bit more, if the overhead of running the union doesn't eat up the difference.
You can make the argument that limiting supply is justified, just like forcing people into pension or health care systems may be justified because people are fundamentally irrational. You just have to be able to phrase it that way and acknowledge the trade-off, otherwise you're just fooling yourself.
In which nature? Not this one...
Maybe that's an acceptable trade-off, but we should be clear about it, not pretend we can just pump money from an empty well.
Maybe it’s not a viable business model.
Preventing people from becoming destitute is a public good. People not having money to provide for their basic needs leads to increases in crime, which is bad for everyone. It leads to increases in disease, which is bad for everyone. It leads to decreases in economic activity, which is bad for everyone.
Arguing against the basic social safety net is just plain foolish and short sighted.
[0]: https://www.fool.com/retirement/2019/12/18/the-percentage-of...
Cost of living found to render savings unrealistic for many. Single accident, equipment failure, medical emergency or other such unforseeable found to wipe out meagre savings without warning. Precarious nature of employment market and inadequacy of social protections found to eradicate savings at horrific rate upon losing job, such that they become a countdown to destitution rather than a bridge.
Solution rejected; cannot be broadly implemented without other changes to the system. What else you got?
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-to-Lyft-Yo...
My understanding is that the rider is presented with a range of possible fares before searching (e.g. $9-10). If they are matched with a driver asking for a higher fare than that range they have the option to decline.
...yet!
I'm not convinced that having price and ride quality standards invalidates the contractor relationship.
As a kid I refereed soccer games. There was a set cost structure for each game depending on age group and whether I was assistant referee or center referee.
There was a system where I could sign up in advance if I wanted the work or not. Uber drivers know exactly what they are getting into and they are free to quit at any time.
I was not an employee of the soccer leagues, I was an independent contractor who was able to work for multiple leagues if I wanted to and who was able to quit at any time.
There is a fundamental role in society for temporary work.
The employer will always set the price in any kind of business relationship. If I hire a contractor to remodel my house for 4 weeks does this mean he is a full time employee of mine and I need to provide him benefits. If he doesn't want the work, he doesn't need to be there.
Actually you were an employee, just misclassified. If you took them to court you would likely win.
Being able to set your own hours, working part time, working for other employers, quitting at any time - these are all possible in an employee relationship.
Also, length of relationship is judged on how renewable it is not how long it lasted. You can fire anyone on their first day.
It’s really a question of how open ended the work is not how long someone spends doing it. A restaurant always needs people to cook food and a league always needs a referee as an inherent part of it’s business model. On the other hand a company might only need an architect when designing their new office, aka it’s inherently a finite business need. That architect can largely work at a location and time of their choosing, the referee needs to be where and when the games are taking place. Similarly, an Uber driver needs to be picking someone up at a specific location and specific time going somewhere else or waiting 1 hour doesn’t work.
In general, flexibility in classification of workers almost always plays out poorly for the majority of workers.
A contractor is someone you hire to perform a particular piece of work. An employee is someone you hire for their skill who is then expected to do many (sometimes varied) pieces of work.
New Uber drivers don’t know what their pay will be. They can eventually keep a running average to get some idea, but that’s only meaningful as part of an ongoing relationship.
Surge pricing seems like a benefit to the drivers, but as they can’t simply decline endless non surge prices that’s not an individual price negotiation. Essentially, their options are quit the platform or accept the vast majority of whatever is being handed to them.
https://www.axios.com/amazon-price-practice-antitrust-elizab...
Of note the way it’s implemented is actively designed not to be used. Effectively Uber lets those drivers multiply their existing calculation by some number but not for example simply set a minimum charge or actually negotiate individual trips. Further, regularly declining trips is not accepted.
I get the design. And of course uber wants to encourage lowering prices. However, the point remains: driver set prices, even if the design makes it less obvious. Eventually, if a driver has a number in mind, the driver flips a button to get that number.
As for negotiate individual trips, I don’t understand the point here. You set the prices for dollars per mile / per minute. The trip price is reflective of what the driver set already.
Why negotiation is important is overhead. Dollars per mile / per minute doesn’t cover time to pick someone up. If someone wants to go 1 miles and it’s going to take you X minutes to pick them up that’s much worse than a trip that’s 10 miles long and takes the same X minutes to pick them up. Uber really doesn’t want drivers to be able to decide such trips or people left for hours end up going to other platforms. However, Uber is pushing these losses to their drivers.
Now, if Uber is pushing people to take such unprofitable trips that’s fine if drivers are employees. But, it clearly breaks the model of drivers as independent contractors with each trip being independent.
PS: in term of breaking the law that’s not an automatic prosecution. Enforcement tends to be extremely lax on such issues.
As a contractor I can set my rate, but the company can also simply not hire me. As a contractor I can act as I wish, but the company can terminate my contract. As a contractor, I pay for my unemployment insurance if I want it.
So... What's the practical difference? How is this any different than someone who decides to make a living by selling goods on eBay?
When I sell you my Smurfs collection on EBay, I set the terms of sale and you bid. You and I come to agreement on the terms of the transaction, within some limits that EBay, as the platform, sets.
When I sell a ride to you on Uber, Uber sets the price, tells me where to pick you up, and even dictates the route I should take. I don’t even get to see where I’m taking you until after I accept the ride.
On EBay, you and I are negotiating with each other. On Uber, the driver has no say in what the offer to the passenger is.
"Uber sets the price"
In California, the driver sets their own price.
"tells me where to pick you up"
Given that this is a taxi service. The driver has to know where to pick up. In fact, how is this different from EBay? Does the seller become an employee because ebay tells the seller where to ship the goods?
"even dictates the route I should take"
No it doesn't. Most drivers use google maps.
"I don’t even get to see where I’m taking you until after I accept the ride"
That's also categorically untrue in California. The driver gets to see the trip before accepting.
Of course, all of these rolled out because of AB5. The question is: can you tell me why the driver is an employee?
How interesting. That inverts expectations: you need a reason to fire a contractor but no reason to fire an employee.
Ah, I see it:
> Whether the employer has a right to fire at will or whether a termination gives rise to an action for breach of contract; and...
You can't fire a contractor when you haven't written in end-of-contract terms in there. i.e. when you contract with someone and you say "I hire this person from time X to time Y for money Z for delivery of A" you can't just abort sometime in the middle and be like "welp! off you go then".
However, it is perfectly reasonable for you to have exit clauses in your contracts to say that you pay per ride and that either party can exit the contract at any time.
i.e. it determines whether the 'firing' is a breach-of-contract situation
Okay, that makes sense, but it's not a factor in this case. Only a naïve reading makes it work that way but that won't work if you have the exit stipulations.
The independent contractor model works both ways. Uber has the right to avoid working with contractors who continually refuse work. You can't be picky about your work but also demand the company keep contracting you like you weren't.
The independent contractor model doesn't map perfectly to gig work but it's much closer than traditional employees.
If that's the case, then Uber has no right to avoid working with contractors simply because they continually refuse work. That indicates a non-independent agency arrangement between Uber and the driver (aka "employee") and that's what they're claiming they don't have.
If I know driver X rejects all rides from a certain area, I'm going to stop showing them rides in that area. That way the user gets their driver faster.
And if the driver is their agent, it matters whether the driver is classified as an employee or independent contractor.
If Uber wants to be a transportation marketplace, they can be, but they actually have to act like one. (And in fact, in CA they've been run a small trial in the Bay Area to make that shift. The trial will supposedly be expanded to all of CA this year.)
How is that relevant? If you are an agency, you are advertising availability both ways. If you filter on behavior, you are no longer acting as an independent agency but as an agent for one side.
Disclosing pattern behavior (has rejected 12 rides this hour) is the correct way to provide value-add, not silently making decisions for parties.
Clearly agencies do discriminate who they match with each other. I would say that is the entire point of agencies infact.
I expect to be matched with every available role and an attempt to be made to represent me to them (and they to me). The disclaimer that they are looking for X Y or not Z is part of that. There is a practical issue muddying the metaphor which does not apply to the rideshare matching technology.
> Clearly agencies do discriminate who they match with each other.
That needs to be explicitly outlined in your contract with an agency. An employment agency is legally prohibited from doing that. This is the heart of the legal matter, imo.
Agencies don't match based on their own internal criteria. That would recharacterize the relationship between the agency and the contractor, flipping it around so that the contractor becomes their agent.
User experience is incredibly relevant. The entire purpose of the platform is to match drivers and riders. If it can do that more effectively, it has become better as an independent platform.
That's fine, but we're talking about legal relationships here, not the facilitating product. If you are going to assert you are legally acting in an impartial role, turning around and claiming partiality for one party (the riders) invalidates that position.
Why? Uber has a right to do whatever they want for whatever reason or without any reason. Just like the other party in the contract, the driver, can stop accepting any rides and drive for lyft if he so wants. No reason required.
More so, not accepting to sell your item (labour) at the first price offered becoming a cause for delisting in a marketplace is very shady and stretches the definition of "marketplace" really hard.
The essence of contractor model is that your future offers are based on past work, not past declines. If you as a driver were giving quality ride and decided to take 6 months break, there shall be no impact on your rating.
Does the model of IC have to imply that every ride is a new, independent contract? Is there no other reasonable model in which multiple rides are part of one contract? Why?
The obvious answer: perhaps more similar to the way it looks like right now? I just don't see why IC implies "let them decline rides without facing penalties by the platform".
This is the indie version of being salaried. Very common among software engineers, for example.
If a contractor had a contract to accept or decline every jira ticket (although I don’t see anyone ever forming that contract), if they declines too many tickets they would no longer have the option to pick.
Most customers will search for a range of rating + price - so the market can regulate itself. I mean we accept amazon displaying user ratings - so I don't know why this won't work.
The state could also pay for it, through tax revenue. Unemployment insurance seems like a great fit for a government, since any kind of massive correlated unemployment, as we're experiencing now, would absolutely wipe out any private insurer.
And I absolutely agree, divorcing healthcare from employment is the single best thing the US could do to help fix several different issues.
But "We could massively restructure the US economy" is only an answer to "how should rideshare employees be classified" if you want to ensure nothing changes.
This would immediately solve half of the problems with healthcare in this country if everyone had to use the health insurance exchanges to buy insurance.
It’s not bad, but no better than my jobs before the last one.
In Germany, neither health insurance nor unemployment insurance are paid through taxes. Both are deducted from your salary.
It is true, however, that the government subsidizes the public health insurance so that low-income households can afford an insurance.
Also, we have similar laws in Germany (and most European) countries like AB5 that prohibit misclassification of employees as independent contractors:
It's seems so obvious to me that we need to create a third kind of worker: not an employee, not a contractor, but a new category that has some of the extra freedom of contracting and some of the benefits of employment.
It's important that we maintain integrity in our legal system. Uber drivers are not employees, and saying "we need to classify them as employees so they get insurance" is fundamentally backwards.
Employees can have literally every single freedom that Uber drivers have. Nothing is disqualifying.
I agree that once we reform Healthcare and Unemployment, we can create a third category if we want, but there are actually no inherent disadvantages in freedom of being an employee in this case. The classification as contractor only really benefits Uber and hurts the common man.
Your optimism is inspiring, but there's been "bipartisan support" for meaningful healthcare reform going as far back as Nixon. Probably further. If the people who actually make the rules wanted it done, it would be done.
Also, neither unemployment insurance nor healthcare are paid through taxes here in Germany, for example, yet the system works very well.
If the business models of Uber and Lyft cannot be profitable without misclassifying workers as independent contractors, then the business model is broken.
I don't understand why so many people, in particular from the US, have such problems understanding the reasoning behind laws to prevent the misclassification of employees as independent contractors.
It's actually very simple:
- If you're employed, you don't get to choose how you do your job and when, that's done by management. In return, the company pays your healthcare, pays unemployment and various other benefits. You are also protected through your company's liability insurance in case of an accident.
Your company basically pays you compensation for stealing your time but they are responsible for your well-being and safety during that time.
- If you're contractor, on the other hand, you get to decide how you do your job and when. You are free to decline offers, set your own prices and work with multiple partners at once. You get the maximum business freedom and are your own boss. In return, that also means you are responsible for your health insurance, your unemployment insurance and the liability insurance. You usually also can make more money as compared to being employed for the same job.
Being an employer and a self-employed contractor are fundamentally different work models with both advantages and disadvantages on their own. What Uber, Lyft and similar companies do is that they want both the benefits of an employee (being able to tell workers what to work and when) without the associated disadvantages and costs for them, shifting the risks and costs towards the workers as if they were independent contractors without the workers having the usual benefits of being an independent contractor.
And that's simply neither fair nor ethical. It's just exploitation. And that's why German (and most European law) protects workers against this misclassification.
If you turn down some projects and/or get back feedback most companies will give you less work .
Consultants have to be really niche and highly skilled , hard to replace to be able to meaningfully negotiate their own terms .
Riders can choose their own rates, which leads to users being offered a "closer but more expensive" option. They also got rid of the decline penalty iirc.
https://www.uber.com/blog/california/set-your-fares/ https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-makes-majo...
I think it's a fair regulation for it will casually lead to the discrimination.
Also, in my country, being a taxi driver requires special license and certified car so Uber/Lyft doesn't offer the service. They don't want to pay the cost of checking if the contractor satisfy the requirements of license and car.
https://gothamist.com/news/undercover-taxi-fare-investigatio...
FedEx uses independent contractors with established rates and requirements to carry.
There are many independent contractors who can’t set rates or choose not to do parts of the job.
Even my local barber shop co-op makes independent contractors have price ranges and doesn’t let them refuse walk ins if they are on duty.
When I was an independent contractor I paid into unemployment insurance so all these Uber drivers should have unemployment insurance that they pay themselves.
Part of the market making function is matching prices offered and taken. Theoretically Uber is chopping off all the drivers with too high a price and riders who want too low of a price and “forcing a rate” is really just matching all the compatible rates that fall into a close range (“the algorithm”).
Maybe Uber could do more to show all the incompatible rates. But I think they delist drivers who would ask too high.
Yes, they can. If not, they're not independent.
If you’re a plumber and you’re charging $1,000/hr, you’ll certainly be punished for your high prices and for rejecting work after you’ve already accepted (your public reviews on Yelp, etc will take a hit).
“Real independent contractors” have much less power than you think in a competitive market.
Mandated employment benefits are a completely unjustifiable imposition on private contracts.
Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid).
The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid schemed aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it.
You actually see this sort of dynamic in startups where you have two people at the top. One is the creative one who pushes all the boundaries and stuff. The other person is the more pencil pusher/lawyer/business type who makes sure the bills get paid on time.
Lots of good things happen when you can get these two types working together instead of hating each other.
Coming together is tricky when there is no common grounds.
One side wants wealth to be fairly Evenly distributed to help the poor.
The other side helps the poor by creating so much wealth that that most poor people have a lot of wealth.
These days you can be considered poor and have housing, ac, heat, tv, video games, maybe a car, and weight problems because food is so cheap.
This only leaves those who truly can not or will not work. Severe physical or mental illness, etc.
Some can’t stand that inequality exists. Others “know” that destroying inequality means we create more poor people.
That’s not even touching right to own body vs right to life crowd. There is almost no middle ground in that battle. Either it’s removing a sac of cells or killing a baby. Maybe some wiggle room at the start, but none by end
Being able to afford a meal service or go to Whole Foods is also much harder when you live in a food desert. Yes we do give people EBT or something but then it is spent on junk food/soda.
So how do you fix that? Maybe if you’re overweight medically speaking pay more in insurance/taxes? That would never fly tho so we are in the current national predicament.
Skinny woman meant poverty.
Difficult to carry fat on a diet of turnips.
I'd say the reason poor people are unhealthy is the same as the reason they're poor - unwillingness to work.
Living in safe neighborhood to walk in isn't cheap, nor is a gym membership, nor is having time to drive to a nice neighborhood or trailhead to hike.
> Being unemployed provides more time to do healthy things than having a busy job.
People who are chronically unemployed but physically able often have a serious mental health issue that prevents them from holding down a job.
> I'd say the reason poor people are unhealthy is the same as the reason they're poor - unwillingness to work.
The working poor usually have little time in their day to exercise for health, especially when they are working multiple low wage jobs to make ends meet. Many of them work physically demanding jobs that are bad for their health, and are exhausted by the end of their work day - and not a "good" kind of exhaustion at that.
Also having to work multiple jobs to break even. The problem isn't "inequality" it is that the floor in the US is so low compared to other wealthy nations.
Stoicism teaches us that all negative emotion is rooted in a lack of understanding. So when someone says they don't want to raise the minimum wage, or doesn't want universal healthcare, or whatever... it's helpful not to have that knee jerk reaction of "This person is bad and wants people to suffer." That's almost never the case.
Second, even if we granted the premise that UHC leads to less healthcare innovation, this doesn't mean that there's "infinite harm" in to people in the future. Unless you're claiming you have a crystal ball, there is absolute 0 epistemic basis on which to make this claim. For all we know, not having UHC leads to nuclear war and we all die. Or, having UHC leads to the singularity. Etc.
Third, even if we grant that there's an innovation advantage to for-profit medicine AND we grant that you can predict the future, that still doesn't mean that there's "infinite harm", precisely because "harm" is comparative. I would argue that we've picked most of the low-hanging fruit of human medicine and that the marginal utility produced by new treatments is far outweighed by the human suffering of our for-profit system.
Either you believe humans respond to incentives or you don't. It's that simple.
> Second, even if we granted the premise that UHC leads to less healthcare innovation, this doesn't mean that there's "infinite harm" in to people in the future. Unless you're claiming you have a crystal ball, there is absolute 0 epistemic basis on which to make this claim. For all we know, not having UHC leads to nuclear war and we all die. Or, having UHC leads to the singularity. Etc.
I'm not making a "butterfly effect" argument where there's no obvious direct line between choice A and impact B. The only axiom I need is that humans respond to incentives, and then what happens when you reduce or remove incentives is obvious. You tend to get less of that thing.
>I would argue that we've picked most of the low-hanging fruit of human medicine and that the marginal utility produced by new treatments is far outweighed by the human suffering of our for-profit system.
If you believe we're basically near the end of potential for human medicine, would you support cutting subsidies and funding for research in the healthcare field?
Fine. I don't, at least in the simple model you present. And I hae 40 years of behavioral economics to point to.
Being in favour of single-payer, I can still appreciate arguments against it I guess. But this particular one isn't very effective.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon#Regulation
Regardless, even if you can find some legitimate counter-examples it doesn't negate my premise in the same way that anecdotes are not data.
It's sort of price controls, but not the usual sort. Trump decided to enforce most-favored-nation pricing. Any price can be charged, except that the USA always gets the cheapest price. The drug manufacturers are understandably livid, so they are now funding attack ads.
This is a lazy take - plenty of systems have been created by "the right" that don't work, even according to their stated goals. Moreover, how do you define "work", and why are things like gender and racial equality framed as extras rather than integral to evaluating whether a system works?
> This is just a case where the first group has run amok
How did you determine someone has "run amok" here? Uber/Lyft were shut down for a day - we have yet to see the long term effects of AB5 and that's where the proof is. To take a historical analogy, of course when we outlawed child labor some businesses that relied on it shut down. If we'd just said "oops, let's reverse that decision right away" we might still be left with the impression that child labor laws had failed.
I don't think you understand what the word "prioritize" means.
>Uber/Lyft were shut down for a day
Uber/Lyft is not the only industry impacted.
>66% of drivers said they wanted to be independent contractors vs 15.8% who wanted to be an employee
So I guess I'm not really sure what your point is. Is your point that companies shouldn't be required to follow labor/tax law? What's the difference between this and saying that you don't want to pay payroll taxes on employees? Or that you want to pay a lower rate? Or that you don't want to pay import taxes or that you don't want to follow required laws in what you may put in the products you sell? What exactly makes Uber and Lyft so special that they should get to choose what rules they are to follow?
1. Do you want to be CEO of your own company or a peon employee?
2. Do you want uber to set your hours?
3. Do you want medical, vacation days, or unemployment insurance?
For some people these are all basically the same questions. For most folks, I don't think they are.
In this particular case it was so easy that it really makes me wonder.
I can think of a couple of reasons:
* Uncertainty with where in the primary source the content is
* Concern that you're being Gish Galloped with citations
* Lack of skill at skimming
Anyway, the source is particularly weird with the way it links to things and stuff but it wasn't that hard to find. I went through it and then decided to screen record the interaction afterwards. It's my second time going through but not that different from the first.
Using headlines, pull quotes, and pictures as the things I'm aiming for, I got there in 30 s. I think your comment would have taken longer for me to have written than 30 s.
This reward exceeds the reward from learning the actual information.
Many platforms are plagued by people more interested in being heard than learning facts.
> "What type of employment relationship would you like to have with rideshare companies"
> (A) I don't know the difference: 3.3%
> (B) I'd like to be an employee: 20.8%
> (C) I'd like to be an independent contractor: 75.9%
https://therideshareguy.com/california-sues-uber-and-lyft-fo...
Not saying they aren't, but I... just don't know.
Here's a simple anecdote: suppose you want to measure how often a coin comes up heads. The true answer is 50% heads. If your "sample" is a single coin flip, the answer will always be 100% or 0% (both wrong answers!). Maybe you do this experiment and get 100% and I do it and get 0%. But since the magnitude of the error will be the same on either side, on average across many repetitions of the experiment (this is called a "sampling distribution") we'll get the right answer.
What adding additional sample size does is reduce the variance of the estimated statistic -- that is to say reduce the degree to which the estimate of the parameter moves around across samples. If I flip the coin 100 times and you flip the coin 100 times, we're both likely to get very close answers to one another.
The bigger concern here is not sample size, it's whether the sampling was random (it was not) and whether the sample frame -- the population from which they were sampling -- matches the population of interest (it does not, as you suggest in your post, so your instincts here are good!).
There is very little reason to believe the people who chose to reply to the email are as-if random with respect to the question being asked. Rather, I would expect diehards of RideShareGuy (who likely converge on RSG's approximate editorial position on this issue) are more likely to reply. There is also likely to be confounding based on age, hours worked per week, geographical location in the country, etc.
There is also very little reason to believe RideShareGuy's mailing list represents rideshare drivers as a whole; again, selection based on age, tech savvy, English competency, SES, geographic location, etc. all likely to be confounders.
If this were a classical random sample of a valid sample frame, the parameter of interest would have a classical margin of error +- 3.6%, which is small compared to the overall story being told. This speaks to your concern. A simple rule of thumb is that classical MOEs are +- 1/sqrt(n) where n is the sample size. This comment is too long so I won't get into the derivation here.
I actually think this question presents a lot of interesting problems for a survey statistician. In particular, I would guess there is extreme subgroup heterogeneity -- that is to say there are classes of people who overwhelmingly want to be contractors and classes of people who overwhelmingly want to be employees. My guess would be that the population-wide parameter is of little interest compared to identifying those groups. If we discovered that, say, every person above 40 hours a week wanted to be an employee and every person below wanted to be a contractor, it'd be an error to present a weighted average of the groups versus exploring policy solutions that reflect that heterogeneity.
> The bigger concern here is not sample size, it's whether the sampling was random
This confuses me a little. Aren't both of those things pretty important? To go back to your first sentence, a sample size of one could be perfectly random, but it will be pretty useless at telling us anything interesting about the population. Obviously that's a silly case, but what about 10 people? 100? I would venture to guess that a random sample of 100 out of 80,000 people would be unlikely to tell you anything useful about those 80,000 people, at least not without a margin of error much higher than the effect being measured. So that suggests to me that sample size is pretty important too.
> If we discovered that, say, every person above 40 hours a week wanted to be an employee and every person below wanted to be a contractor, it'd be an error to present a weighted average of the groups versus exploring policy solutions that reflect that heterogeneity.
That's a really good point. It's possible, and likely, that any single chosen classification is going to make a lot of people unhappy. Better might be to develop new rules and classes that fit the situation and different drivers' needs better.
The full population size is generally irrelevant statistically (it applies to a "finite population correction"). Almost all the statistics you see presented publicly ignore FPCs by assuming the population is infinitely larger than the sample. Even when people take census reads of a full population they typically assume the population is a realized sample of a larger meta-population.
In general if you are seeing publicly presented poll data, sample size is not the thing that should be sending up red flags. Differential non-response and selection bias; sample frame matching or not matching the population; underlying noise in the conceptual measure; design effects caused by weighting; and many other components are all part of "TSE" (total survey error), which dwarfs the impact of sampling variation as a concern.
Now, mind you, subgroup analyses often do cut samples too finely... e.g., an N=500 sample subset to Men 65+ and people trying to make inferences but not properly reflecting either the sampling considerations or reduced subgroup sample size).
Let it also be noted from those classical calculations that larger samples are diminishing returns: N = 1000 -> 3.1% -> N = 5000 -> 1.4%. Five times the cost of surveying if not more, only a halving of the margin of error, and limited extra power to answer most real questions of interest.
If Uber wants contractors they need to make sure the terms of their employment follow the law, including classification.
The drivers seem to like the situation they are in.
I could really care less about the "technically..." type of arguments. The drivers don't think they are being exploited, they like the job and the freedom it gives them. Any law that puts an end to that is _bad_ for those people.
Just because these laws were put in place to help people doesn't mean they always help people. The people who are supposedly being helped by the law here think it's hurting them. The law is supposed to serve the people, not the other way around. The law needs to change to allow these people to continue the situation they enjoy.
It drives me crazy to read people arguing about the technicalities of the law and ignoring what the supposedly exploited people are saying.
Yet when you explain to them what they are missing, what employees get, they also like that.
1) Payroll tax revenue 2) Unions feeling threatened
The implication is in either case it’s an explicitly hostile action by the government in favor of special interests, and the majority of drivers did not want this.
Can anyone more knowledgeable on the topic pitch in — is there any truth to these arguments?
Then, they got pissed about Uber, and had a rule enacted that forced passengers to take a bus to an external lot which turned the world's worst airport congestion into a way worse situation.
It is not unrealistic to think that they are a driving force behind this situation as well. California is corrupt as fuck, from GM paying LA to take out way more efficient train lines so they could sell buses to Beverly Hills preventing LA from building a subway. It makes living here absolutely miserable.
By the way, we're paying $4 billion for that. $4 billion to carry passengers less than a mile from the airport so they can then take a cab...
LA cab drivers are all unionized now and they had their entire hand stuck in this process. It was corruption as an art form.
Our government sucks.
This is false to the point of being deliberate FUD.
The LAX people mover is $4 billion because the FAA requires a fuck-ton of care to be taken so that construction and the people-mover itself doesn't interfere with the operation of the airport. It is a 2.25 mile system with 6 stations: the terminals, the rental car facility, the parking lots, the metro station, and two employee-only facilities.
The shuttle you speak of will only operate for 2-3 years, between the parking facility (expected completion 2021) and the terminals, while the Peoplemover is built out to the terminals (expected completion: 2023).
LA taxi drivers had literally no influence over the design of the airport or public transportation to it. I don't understand the bizarre logic required to think that a few hundred people making just above minimum wage have the political leverage to block a multi-billion dollar project.
LA taxi drivers were actively protesting outside of the airport when the original train was proposed. Stop lying.
I agree with you. It is bizarre that they have any influence whatsoever, but they do, and they have been forcefully exerting it for decades.
Again, that is completely false.
Only the parking lot facility is less than a mile from the airport terminals. The public transportation hub itself is 1.25 miles away from the airport; the same facility will provide access to rail, bus, taxi, and apptaxi (fka rideshare), and the rental car facility at the end of the people mover is roughly 1.5 miles away (across the street from the transportation hub), or roughly 2.25 miles from the other end of the peoplemover in front of tom bradley. https://www.lawa.org/-/media/lawa-web/connecting-lax/lamp-bu...
LA taxi drivers were actively protesting outside of the airport when the original train was proposed. Stop lying.
Yes, they were. And their protests accomplished nothing. Because taxi drivers have no leverage.
It is bizarre that they have any influence whatsoever, but they do, and they have been forcefully exerting it for decades.
No, they have not. They have had literally no influence on public transportation to the airport.
Think about it: they couldn't even stop Uber and Lyft from operating at the airport. And you think they had the leverage to stop public transportation for decades?
(Another example: Uber complained about the new temporary pickup lot for taxis/apptaxis, and LAX made changes the next day to accommodate apptaxis. The taxi drivers made the same complaints...and got no changes at all...Almost a year later, the regular taxis are still complaining about those same issues.)
I'm not arguing the measurement of 1 mile versus 1.5 miles with you. You are nitpicking to confuse the argument and it doesn't change the point in the least.
I have lived in LA long enough to see proposal after proposal made, the taxis protest, and the proposals get canned. You can talk about lack of influence all you want, but they have gotten their way every time they made a statement for the last several decades by threatening to shutdown airport traffic. They are nothing but thugs.
Regardless, you couldn't have this effect without the corrupt politicians that ARE supposed to represent your interests, unlike the taxi union. What's the point of raging at perfectly understandable lobbying?
This is false. Pure FUD. The LA taxi union isn't a very powerful union, and was never the primary roadblock to building the Green Line all the way to the airport. The FAA was the reason: they thought the power lines for the rail line would interfere with landing paths of planes. https://www.dailynews.com/2008/01/09/why-green-line-stopped-...
California is corrupt as fuck, from GM paying LA to take out way more efficient train lines so they could sell buses to Beverly Hills preventing LA from building a subway. It makes living here absolutely miserable.
This is also a fraudulent representation of history. The old rail lines (i.e., Pacific Electric) were never profitable because they were intended as loss leaders for suburban housing developments. The lines ultimately went bankrupt when cars became popular because they had a max speed of approximately 15 mph. When LA formed its nascent public transportation system in the 50s, it acquired the few busy/profitable lines remaining. Some of those rights of way were used for new rail construction (for example, the E line to Santa Monica).
GM most definitely ran a campaign through the '50s and '60s designed to increase the use of buses as a replacement for street cars. That's not anywhere close to debatable and LA was not the only city that went along with it.
And if you're going to continue to claim that corruption is not the driving force behind these decisions then I would love your explanation for BH doing everything in their power to prevent and delay a rail line because they didn't want homeless people to be have easy access to the area. It's all about money, not the common good. Nobody here is planning for anything other than their own pocketbook.
It's literally the truth. You can't build a rail to the airport if the ultimate governing body for airports in the country won't let you build the rail to the airport. It took decades to get the FAA to withdraw its opposition, and that didn't happen until a Democratic president took over.
I would love your explanation for BH doing everything in their power to prevent and delay a rail line because they didn't want homeless people to be have easy access to the area.
That's not corruption. That's residents of the city of Beverly Hills being opposed to having a rail line in their city because they don't want homeless people having easy access. (And they're not wrong to be worried about it; the homeless use the E Line daily to shuttle between Santa Monica and downtown LA.) It's not corruption simply because you disagree with them. That's how democracy works.
Notably, the businesses in Beverly Hills were very much in favor of a rail line station terminating in the city. However, businesses aren't voters, so if the rail station had been built over the objections of the voting residents, that would be an example of corruption.
To your comment about rideshare pickups at the terminals. Just no. Pre-COVID I was flying for work weekly and Uber & Lyft pickups were awful for congestion in the circle, in addition to taking forever to get to you. It was often faster to walk off-airport and get a ride from the Hyatt. And that was with normal level of traffic, not the expected Olympics-level. I'm sure the taxi union was involved, but the decision to switch to LAX-it made a whole lot of sense.
I live in Playa Vista and had a 1.5 hour trip to LAX in November. I was this close to driving through there at 3am and stealing every one of their traffic cones.
There may well have been industry lobbyists fighting this but until very recently (the last five years) almost no taxi drivers in Los Angeles were unionized.
Yea, over 25 years late.
The Green Line (opened 1995) was originally supposed to have a real LAX station, instead of the (current) station-near-LAX-with-a-bus-transfer. The Crenshaw Corridor train (which connects to the Green Line) will open an LAX station sometime in 2021, if it isn't delayed.
...until the FAA intervened and said the Metro couldn't build all the way out to the airport, due to the potential danger from crossing existing flight paths. (In a nutshell: the Green Line would have crossed perpendicularly to the existing runways, which would be fine normally but a huge risk in the event a plane overshoots or undershoots the runway.)
I suspect this will happen ultimately with the drivers - although I can't imagine the drivers will be thrilled with a 20% cut in pay.
Sometimes it comes up naturally (see the benefits of being a software engineer) but when unemployment is high those protections tend to go away especially for jobs that have minimal barrier of entry (ie ride share driver). Right now drivers have very little leverage or power over Lyft/Uber except for not participating in their market.
The question of AB5 is the right protections and classifying them as employees is I think the debate. I believe most drivers want independence b/c most drivers only drive part time. But the drivers who drive full time want better protections.
I recall thinking it would be great for adhoc rideshare commuting to/from work.
Somewhere it turned into a money sucking business platform. Maybe because it required funds to run the servers required and went off the rails from there?
In NYC, the Taxi and Limousine companies were one of the top donors to the Mayoral race and, naturally, the Mayor strangled Uber/Lyft soon after.
Because, that's not the argument. The argument is the precedent it sets. We've seen companies utilize weak independent contractor regulations in the past to take advantage of individuals (most specifically, the Dynamex case that lead directly to this), despite many of them not knowing/not complaining. This is why California is so hard on independent contractors. I would prefer a state strong on worker's rights than vice versa.
> From my experience the drivers are perfectly aware of the costs that go into driving so I really don't buy the exploitation argument.
Your anecdotes don't mean anything, sorry. We have vast evidence that companies will take advantage of worker's in an independent contractor situation to their benefit. We have evidence that Uber had requirements in it's worker interactions (route penalties, hour requirements, etc) that do not fit independent contractor ideals.
> Seems like a loss for everyone except bureaucrats.
The bureacrats gain nothing.
> Also don't see how it's realistic to expect them to be able to adjust to this on a dime.
I can only assume you don't live in California. This isn't on a dime. They were notified over three years ago. The FTB and legislature have been on them about it constantly. The law was introduced in 2018-12-03 and signed into law on 2019-09-18. I know operations can be slow, but two years should be plenty of time, considering how fast they were able to adjust to failing markets like Germany that they ultimately lost anyways.
> Although large, California is still a minority of their revenue.
It makes up 16% of Lyft and Uber's users. It has the highest valued rides, lowest effective overhead (driver retention, driver acquisition, passenger acquisition) and most effective mileage.
But you're right, they should give up their most established and profitable market or California should shut up. Because you talked to some people.
Why would you bring this up every time you get in an Uber? Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, these people are concerned about complaining to a stranger about their "employer"?
Imagine someone walking into your office and asking you, "hey, do you like this company?"
The further allowance of classifying people as contractors will only expand until companies can further use this as a tool to pay people less and avoid taxes (where based on federal judicial precedent, the healthcare premiums both individuals and employers pay are considered taxes under federal law). Today Uber drivers, tomorrow nurses and teachers, ect. Also people are absolutely being forced into working as rideshare and delivery drivers, the alternatives are often destitute poverty.
These companies had a long time to get their act together on this issue, they just decided that a capital strike was more favorable to them at this time.
Until we live in a country where healthcare is separate from employment, hiring someone on as a contractor just so you can avoid healthcare costs for them is absolutely exploitative (both of the law, and to the workers themselves).
that sort of big brother behavior is the antithesis of independence and throws out any argument that Uber is somehow just providing drivers with lead gen software like they’re Salesforce or something
Both Uber and Lift should lower their cut and stop these practices if they really want the drivers to remain independent
1. Valid survey questions are very hard to phrase. Asking someone about their job when their job depends on your goodwill in not conducive to truthful answers.
2. Given the corporations' behavior, the driver's job depends on their following the corporate script.
This change didn't happen overnight. AB5 was passed 6+ months ago, after over a year of political negotiation.
Currently, we all paid for their Covid unemployment benefits that they did not pay into.
We pay for unpaid hospital bills after accidents because they did not pay into workers compensation.
We’ll pay for disability after those accidents that they did not pay into.
Uber and Uber drivers a freeloading off a system we are paying into.
If they want to pretend they are not employees, then they should all have to pay into all these things themselves.
Imagine that you held an opinion that was counter to a major legal and public option battle that company was engaged in.
In the situation, what would you say if someone approached you while you were on the job and started asking for your opinion on this topic?
I live here, pay taxes here, and vote here. I am actively rooting against the state right now.
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-and-Lyft-r...
Pre-CVOID, according to their SEC filings, SF, LA, and NY were Uber's only profitable markets.
Would you if some random person, who for all you know could be an Uber/Lyft employee, and even if not, is someone who uses Uber/Lyft and therefore is likely happy with it, asks you a question about it?
This whole business has nothing to do with the drivers, neither what they want, what's good for them or even what's good for customers.
It's about a class of politicians (unions and the leftist politicians they back/finance) scared to death to see their historical grip on power disappear because of a paradigm shift and who are using the people's goody-two-shoes knee-jerk reflexes to try and regain said grip.
There are some issues though; for one the state ends up subsidising workers who don't have good unemployment and health insurance.
The best solution would be UBI - give people enough money to live on while removing worker protections like minimum wage and mandatory insurances.
To those of us not living in US, America just feels like a nation that constantly shout at each other, and now it is amplify by its a dominant media platform; Twitter. Considering lots of news media quote, find new information and use Twitter.
And no one wants to compromise.
Why should a supposedly free society be free to accept only how Uber or Lyft might have it?
It isn’t just bureaucrats but the public that votes them in. You’re cherry picking bits n pieces from the broader social narrative to highlight. Why should anyone care what any random poster on HN thinks is just as valid and vapid a question once you take 5 minutes to think it over.
HN is just as knee jerky and shallow as Twitter and Reddit. Don’t kid yourselves folks
In this case, California created new laws in response to employee abuses at Uber and Lyft.
This notion that Uber and Lyft drivers can afford to quit and find a new career is infantile. The real world does not work that way, and people who labor for low wages should be protected from abuse.
Besides, what you are actually stating is that Uber riders should pay for Uber driver's health insurance, rather than the general population.
Ideally health insurance should be decoupled from employment status, but until then, we should all play by the same rules.
(This seems to be more about minimum wage, workers comp, UI, etc. which they would get)
So what? People without jobs also get their healthcare covered by MediCal (with zero out of pocket expenses). Is that also a problem? Wouldn't it be better if we had universal healthcare?
And we subsidize employer-provided healthcare also, hence its existence.
Everyone who works for Lyft or Uber is making an active choice to work for Lyft or Uber. It isn't surprising they would choose to continue working for them rather than risk losing that job entirely. That doesn't mean these people aren't being taken advantage of by these companies.
It is comparable to someone being paid below minimum wage under the table. If that person entered into that arrangement voluntarily, they likely did it because that is their best option. If that person is given the choice of supporting a lower minimum wage or being fired, they will likely support the lower minimum wage. That doesn't mean that society as a whole would benefit from a lower minimum wage. We should instead enact laws we think are best for society as a whole (I'm not convinced that AB5 is necessarily that, but I am speaking generally here) while also implementing social policies that can take care of the people like this who are caught in the transition of raising labor standards.
In any idea that these folks resemble independent contractors in any way is bullshit. They can't set the rates of the rides or that they give to Uber or Lyft. They can't set the basic terms on when and where you accept rides. When someone doesn't want to drive me across the bay, I can hardly blame them, but they have no leverage to dictate their own employment except by quitting. I guess these people end up accepting some kind of opaque, kafkaesque punishment to their livelihood. Independent my ass.
Granted, single payer healthcare would ameliorate some of the problems here, but it's very difficult to categorize the cut that Uber or Lyft takes for the commodity service they provide, protected by absolutely massive moats of capital, as anything but exploitative.
However, I overwhelmingly don't want to pay for their healthcare or food stamps because they aren't earning enough money.
I personally think that AB5 doesn't go far enough. If you employ people for more than 40 hours, you should owe healthcare and benefits, period. It doesn't matter whether those 40 hours are one person or 10 people or whether the people are contractors or employees. If you can't deliver benefits, fine, then you owe as payment to the government to provide that.
We WANT people to have stable employment, not gigs.
Not every business model is economically viable, and (at a guess) rideshare-drivers-as-employees might be one of those un-viable models.
You can ban exploiting labor, you can force companies to share more with the workers, but you can't legislate well-paying jobs into existence. You might view Uber as an exploitative employer, but it isn't some wildly-profitable company that is failing to share its bountiful profits with the workers.
I don't care whether Uber and Lyft stop doing business in CA as a result of AB5, but I think that's a fairly predictable outcome.
And that's fine. We have minimum wage laws for a reason.
A "contractor" who is earning near or below minimum wage isn't a contractor--they're a mechanism to skirt labor law.
I want to see every layer of "contracting" have to pay benefits. If the contractor is expensive enough (aka $100K+ a year), people won't care. But, yeah, if the "contractor" is skirting labor law, they'll lose--big time.
> I don't care whether Uber and Lyft stop doing business in CA as a result of AB5, but I think that's a fairly predictable outcome.
I'm willing to roll the dice on this one. The last time Uber and Lyft pulled this stunt (Austin), a whole bunch of companies stood up to take their place. Uber and Lyft then went to the state to override Austin--so we never got to see the end evolution of that.
Maybe the business model isn't viable. However, I'm willing to let a bunch of people try competing against it without having to compete against VC subsidy.
1) They are driving because it's the best opportunity available for them, and losing that possibility would force them to work less desirable/paying jobs, have less disposable income if uber is just a side gig for them or just end up unemployed. Which would lead to them contributing even less to their healthcare/education/etc costs.
Or
2) You are assuming that they are driving even if they can get 40h jobs with good benefits but just choose... not to? Or that if uber inevitably ends up closing their California operations, they will magically find those cushier jobs & those who drive to add to their income will just find an extremely flexible side gig that can net them hundreds of dollars a month?
I don't understand how unemployment is a more desirable outcome. Because uber will absolutely not pay for each of their driver's benefits. And that's even if they were able to afford it (they absolutely can't).
So you response is to support a solution where they can't earn any money because it's not enough money? Congratulations, now these people are idle and you're now paying even more to cover their needs whereas previously your taxes only had to cover some of their needs and they could participate actively in the economy, working their way up to better opportunities.
I don't believe this. I also pay for the negative externalities due to them driving: increased traffic, increased pollution, increased accident rates, hospitalization (driving is one of the most dangerous acts for people under 30), etc. I don't believe that the tiny amount they get driving for Uber/Lyft even slightly offsets this.
> working their way up to better opportunities.
Unfortunately, Uber/Lyft are a trap because they sink time in return for not very much money and give you nothing in return. I would rather support those people idle--so they can go to school, learn English better, learn a trade, work a job that has a promotion path, etc.
Why? Why should personal healthcare be coupled to employment? You are responsible for your health, not someone else.
From my experience the drivers are perfectly aware of the costs that go into driving so I really don't buy the exploitation argument. Seems like a loss for everyone except bureaucrats. Also don't see how it's realistic to expect them to be able to adjust to this on a dime. Although large, California is still a minority of their revenue.