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.
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.