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A comment on Uber Is Hurting Drivers Like Me in Its Legal Fight in California. Parent comment

Re:Uber Is Hurting Drivers Like Me in Its Legal Fight in Cal... by blisterpeanuts on Friday September 04, 2020 @03:19PM (#24378033)
Why not let the markets decide? If Uber/Lyft win this fight over "gig" workers versus employees, then it becomes a question of how much the gig workers will tolerate. If ride sharing is just not a sustainable income, people will find other work, and the number of gig workers competing for riders will drop. If there aren't enough drivers, Uber/Lyft will be forced to raise the pay to attract people. Good old fashioned free market economics.
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Re:Uber Is Hurting Drivers Like Me in Its Legal Fight in Cal... by jayd16 on Friday September 04, 2020 @03:41PM (#24378239)
Market forces are imperfect. Market forces decided child labor and unsafe working conditions were just fine. You can argue that you don't like some specific regulation or that its failing to meet the moment but there's plenty of examples of why "let the market decide" wasn't good enough in the past (as well as plenty of examples it was the perfect solution).
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Re:Uber Is Hurting Drivers Like Me in Its Legal Fight in Cal... by liability on Friday September 04, 2020 @03:49PM (#24378305)
Markets should be considered a tool. Frequently a powerful and useful tool, but I don't think there has ever been a tool that's the right tool for every purpose. There are a lot of problems that markets just aren't a good tool for solving. If a problem calls for screws, put down the hammer.
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Re:Uber Is Hurting Drivers Like Me in Its Legal Fight in Cal... by r00fus on Friday September 04, 2020 @05:40PM (#24379156)
Not to mention slavery. In fact a large part of what happened world wide in the past few centuries revolved around the slave trade. That's one example of what happens when market forces are allowed free rein.
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Re:Uber Is Hurting Drivers Like Me in Its Legal Fight in Cal... by yibg on Friday September 04, 2020 @03:26PM (#24378097)
Yes that's one view of it. That if drivers aren't happy with driving for uber as it is well then don't drive for uber. On the other hand that's true for the general labor market too, yet we do have minimum wage in place for a reason. I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I don't think it's quite as simple as let the market sort it out.
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