However, I think that trying to place market restrictions on two parties making an agreement is not the right way to go about it.

If we had a stronger social safety net (either something like a UBI, or some other form of economic assistance), we wouldn’t need to try to manipulate the market with blunt restrictions on trade.

There are a LOT of things a market economy is bad at, or simply won’t address... externalities, extreme poverty, taking care of people who don’t produce something that the market will pay for, etc.

Attempting to force a market to address these issues by passing blunt laws is extremely inefficient. If we want to support poor people (which I want to do), we should tax everyone and pay to support them. Then we can let the market do it’s thing and set prices and wages and contracts without having to guess at what policies will force the market to fix the issue we see (without also causing unintended consequences like we see here)

The company will be around next month if they don't contract you. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you may not be. Thus, you're not meeting on a level playing field and these rules are built to prevent you being taken advantage of.

This is particularly relevant to Uber drivers, as driving for Uber is unskilled labor. It's not you freelancing as a $200-500/hr software engineer. After all if you are, you can just incorporate a contracting business and pay yourself benefits out of the take -- then this whole conversations is moot.

> If we had a stronger social safety net (either something like a UBI, or some other form of economic assistance), we wouldn’t need to try to manipulate the market with blunt restrictions on trade.

This is my free-market argument for UBI and socialized medicine also. I believe UBI and socialized medicine promote, not detract from a true, a free-market economy.

There are other easier ways to address that differential. Namely: unionization. In many European countries, there are no minimum wage laws. There is no government agency equivalent of OSHA. Instead, they have unions, where workers themselves band together and collectively bargain to ensure they're adequately compensated and given a safe working environment.

Instead, we in the United States, have chosen to make the government our union. Then we're shocked and surprised when it does a bad job, or when its blanket policies have disproportionate impact on certain industries.

US PTO: 0 days (!!), CA PTO: 16-30 days, EU PTO: Up to 36 days.

It was only 50 years ago that the Republicans were the party of labor unions [4]. How times changed.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

[2] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=141001...

[3] https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/labor-force-part...

[4] https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/07/la...

Also, be very careful in comparing unions in Europe with the US, the systems are very different. Unions in Norway for example are not "per company", they are usually working across a whole industry or even across all industries for a particular education/work-role (like engineers). Employees chose freely whether to be member of a union, or which one to pick - and membership is independent of an employeer/contract.

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

The UAW theoretically got involved in the employment contract negotiations, but none of the RAs could get in touch with them despite paying union dues. There was a group trying to organize action to leave the UAW and form an independent union.

Large organizations tend towards incompetence and corruption over a prolonged period of time.

This is only true if the employer is a labor monopsony. Otherwise you can still refuse them and go work for another one, and they have to be the high bidder to receive your labor. You may have to work somewhere but you don't have to work there. Even the software engineer has to work somewhere.

And if the employer is a monopsony, fix that.

You say that as if they're mutually exclusive, but they really solve two separate problems.

If you have a monopsony on labor (note that this is not very common for unskilled labor; think company towns), it means that people are being compensated unfairly, in the same way that monopolies overcharge customers unfairly.

But even if you don't, there may be people whose fair market wage isn't enough to live on. Even if there are thousands of employers who need unskilled labor, it's still possible for the supply to outstrip the demand, which is the exact scenario that a UBI works well for -- the market wage may be $4/hour, but supplemented by a UBI it's enough to live on. Meanwhile in the same circumstances some other policies, like minimum wage, do the opposite -- when there is a glut of labor, price controls increase unemployment and make the problem worse, because then people don't get $4/hour plus a UBI, they get to collect unemployment until it runs out and then starve to death.

Being effectively prohibited from working on my own terms - even if the best terms I can negotiate are poor - doesn't give me any power.

It makes me a subject to the crappy welfare system, which now has far more power over me than any employer would have ever had.

The majority of people, who happen to have a job, who don't want to pay for people who do not have a job, but who also have no interest in more competition from the bottom, are effectively in control of the welfare system, immigration law, and many other regulations that prevent people from exercising their right to work. It's a racket.

No, it isn't. Every citizen has the same share of ownership and control as every other. One person, one vote and all that.

Also I’d argue that even if technically everyone only gets one vote, some people exert much more control than that by influencing voters, politicians, etc, through their wealth or other sources of power.

It is rather apparent that some people - and certainly some groups - have a lot more power than others in any country. Voting just means the power is a little more mobile, and can shift over time.

1 randomly selected citizen has, practically speaking, no ownership or control of the welfare system.

This also provides a reasonable explanation for why existing policies are so ineffective -- politicians still want your vote (5% is 5%), but they also don't want to lose the votes of the other 95%, so if they can convince the 5% that they're getting something when they're really getting nothing (or worse than nothing), they get elected again.

A new worker classification between contractor and employee would be a real solution, but a real solution was not the goal of this legislation.

People need to eat and have housing. Some folks have to pay child support or risk going to court. Some folks have to pay for medicine or risk dying.

You really aren't free to work or leave until we have the choice to work. An actual choice - as in, me, an able-bodied human, can decide to just stay home and make artwork (without selling). And I wish folks would stop pretending this isn't the case. So long as we have poverty and poor folks that are just-over-poverty, we have people that can be exploited.

That's where we are at, and the laws keep the exploitation from going further: Without those laws, what is to stop folks from doing such things? The market doesn't correct for it - if it did, we'd see better wages now.

A low-wage worker is basically powerless, and can be made more powerless by things like a past felony conviction or court-ordered child support and things like that.

Tell me how limiting their power and opportunity further helps them exactly? What were they doing before ride-sharing and other contract work? What jobs are suddenly available for them? Wouldn't creating new opportunities be better? Wouldn't creating a new classification be better? Wouldn't creating a general health and benefits pool for everyone be better?

Yes, better situations can/should exist, and yes, this legislation is terrible and helps nobody. The opposition is that a real solution was never sought after and instead we have unintended consequences, not that things were fine before.

the underlying assumption is that these companies _still_ would want people to do work (as that is how they make profit). So by forcing these companies to take workers on at a less advantageous terms, the workers gain more.

Of course, in reality, these legislations don't have the right effects, because companies' profit motive is stronger and more creative. After all, legislators' motives are to appear good to their electorate, not actually achieve results where as companies' motives _is_ to achieve results.

Whether or not it actually affects you as an individual is a different story.

There's no power differential, you can choose to live or die. See, easy.

Maybe instead of feeling proud that millions have lost opportunity, it would be better to create legislation that actually does improve their lives for once.

I can refuse because I know if I get fired over it, there's always UBI? And UBI will also abate my fear that I'll be blacklisted from getting another drywall job? Or even a painting job. Or really any labor job ever again.

That's the kind of UBI that would be abused in exactly the way its opponents predict.

But this specific issue is whether you can avoid micro management legalization by providing a social safety net. I don't dismiss the idea out of hand, but I do have some questions. It's the perfect topic to explore via a civilized debate.

Edit: added motive of exploration

I would also argue that our safety regulations should not be tied to whether a person is an employee or a contractor. Safety rules should be the same regardless.

I do think some regulation will still be needed, even if everyone had enough that they didn't have to work to survive. It is simply too easy for an employer to hide the danger from their employees; without regulations and inspections, it is likely that a lot of employees wouldn't even realize the danger until something bad happened.

There are restrictions placed around how much you can charge in interest for taking a loan. Imagine if someone were to place a 1000% loan because they knew the people taking them were desperate enough for their next meal that they would take that that.

These laws exist for a reason. That they inconvenience you (or anyone else) is irrelevant.

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edit: well, not irrelevant... it's the entire point.

If we instead simply ban 1000% interest, it doesn't mean those people suddenly have better options than they did before... if means they are forced to pick an even WORSE option.

Is this really what you want? To have your economy become less able to sustain social welfare, and to have the least moral companies become a greater and greater part of the economy? Because with the policies you are advocating that is what you are selecting for.

Poverty is terrible, and I agree it should be dealt with. But how has this law helped? Uber and Lyft are more than willing to leave all of California rather than stay and deal with the regulation. They’ve made that clear. It’s more economical for them for halt business in California rather than adhere to the regulations. That’s a rather poor incentive set for on behalf of the California regulators. Regulations don’t exist in a vacuum.

Given that Uber adjusted their platform to adhere to the ABC test in jurisdictions where the justice system upheld the law, I doubt that they'll leave.

If they were to leave, though, that would be a good thing. There are dozens of companies that do follow the law and do pay their taxes that are champing at the bit to eat Uber's lunch.

The key was they were LOWER COST than a taxi, if everyone had to be full employee's with all of the costs that entils it is likely the fare will be at or higher than taxis,

And given there would be less competition between drivers, the service would also drop

It would just be a taxi service which was universally hated as too expensive with poor service.

AFAIK in mature markets they made a profit

Ok. And why is that bad? The office work / engineers will stay. If there's need for transport, the drivers will work for transport in other ways. If nobody wants to pay for better conditions of drivers, then we just exposed the VC funding as unsustainable in a long run - it would happen sooner or later.

Like I mentioned in the post above, regulations don’t exist in a vacuum, just because you say something should be a certain way doesn’t mean it will be. There are costs, and Uber and Lyft have determined that it’s not economically feasible for them keep operating in California under those regulations.

If we’re ok with California regulators dictating what jobs should exist regardless of what the market can support, then this is the result.

That’s what they did with AB5, and also decided to regulate lucrative freelance gigs while they were at it. The result however wasn’t that companies hired former contractors as employees; no they just farm all their freelance work to out of state freelancers.

I'm down.

I never really understand some arguments with people who think most regulation is bad and not voted in blood.

I don’t see how that would help the poor. Fighting poverty is done by giving the impoverished more opportunities, not less.

Simply put, regulating all jobs to pay a livable wage won’t make those jobs suddenly do so. It will instead make those jobs disappear, as the employer no longer making any money.

That's demonstrably not true as written. UK requires paying over living wage at 25yo and minimum wage before. The low-skilled jobs have not disappeared.

But think about what it really means as you wrote it: you don't think people doing low skill work deserve to not live in poverty. That is what living wage means. If we can't afford people to earn living wage as a default, it's a problem with general economy that needs to be addressed - if killing jobs that can't afford workers is a first step, it will have to happen at some point. (Ideally we'd have a different approach, maybe a UBI, or another highway network project, or something else)

This is a nicely worded "let them fight for scraps" when contrasted with the idea of living wage. This is the hill I'm willing to die on. A job opportunity under living wage may help separate people survive today, but it's a terrible idea for everyone long term.

At any point Vietnam or Cambodia could mandate that all jobs must pay US or Europe level wages. But doing so would not be an instant shortcut to people actually making those wages and being a developed country. If it really was that simple at least one country in the world would have used that trick.

Certainly some economic arguments can be disingenuous (some of the promises around tax cuts come to mind). But some arguments around which policies are effective are reasonable and I think the minimum wage issue is one of them.

I think the idea behind high minimum wages actually is to create more good jobs, by squeezing business that employ minimum wage workers and hoping that they can cut profits and/or raise prices (and if they raise prices, that it doesn't reduce their customers too much and cause them to lay people off or go under).

An alternative is wage supports like the earned income tax credit, where instead of squeezing businesses that employ minimum wage workers specifically you just tax everybody, and use that to artificially boost up the income of low wage workers. This has less risk of forcing low-income people into unemployment than raising the minimum wage and can provide them the same income, at the expense of high-income people having to pay more taxes.

Another alternative is trying to drive down unemployment super low, so businesses have trouble finding people and actually need to start bidding up wages to get anyone. This will cause businesses that can't afford higher wages to close, but that doesn't cause unemployment because those employees have moved on already. A labor shortage also makes it easy to find a job and employers can't be too picky (helping people fresh out of college, etc). This seems like the most ideal scenario but also the least straightforward to get via policy.

IMO living wage is an important goal but there are reasonable criticisms about strategy (1) compared to the others (especially wage supports which provides the same immediate benefit without risking forcing people out of a job).

Politicians, political interests, corruption, graft and many other factors influence legislation and most regulation has not had the intended consequences, often creating more problems than it solves.

Do you know that's the case, or do you just mean "that's what they said!" It's in their interest to say they just can't afford to treat their workers better- that they'll be forced to shut down- regardless of whether or not they can afford to.

Remember, there's a history of just this kind of stunt with these particular actors. So, personally, I'm very wary of taking their statements at face value!

And yet, here we are, years later, with the 40 hour work week and companies somehow successfully surviving.

But we did ensure that workers at the low end aren't allowed the same flexibility as the higher paid employees, along with a nice demeaning time clock to punch every day.

Is it your contention that taxi's didn't exist pre-Uber? Or that Taxi's weren't jobs done by ordinary people?

I can tell you as someone who is over 40, I would regularly form relationships with Taxi drivers so that I could simply call them up and ask them if they'd be available on X day, X time, and if they could use the "special" rate, and the answer was yes. Where special rate meant paying just them and not the taxi company I met them through.

There is nothing special about Uber or Lyft, and if they leave California the existing Taxi company's will fill in the gap.

Pretty sure that is illegal, if not it is unethical

> if they leave California the existing Taxi company's will fill in the gap.

Clearly there was a demand for something other than taxi's, while you seemed to like it, and did unethical things to get your rate lower. For most people they found the taxi service to be unappealing and over priced, Thus uber and lyft where born

The point is that that if Uber goes away, it won't stop people from paying for rides.

It's a bit like claiming if Hershey's claimed that people would stop eating chocolate if they couldn't abuse their relationship with local governments to get water rights they have no business having.

Noooooooo, people will still like Chocolate, it's just that more "moral" companies will replace them.

If anything, the value of chocolate will go up and that's perfectly acceptable.

It will stop some people, The number of people that use Uber and Lyft massively exceeds the number of people that used Taxis before them

There is a reason for this, and if your solution is well people will just use taxis" clearly that was not the case.

>>If anything, the value of chocolate will go up and that's perfectly acceptable

I see you are speaking from a position of Wealth Privilege..

I wonder if you would feel the same if that price increase was in something less of luxury good like Wheat or corn where a price increase would be counted in lives not dollars

Oh nooo!?!?! How dare I hire that blogger directly, I'll go to jail/be fined for not going through a hiring agency!?!?!

You realize that stupid opinions exist, right?

Does the blogger have an exclusive agreement with the agency?

Is the blogger using agency resources to complete your work?

The blogger had to be scouted by the agency, which used agency resources, therefore the blogger is totally liable for that risk!!!!!oneoneoneneoneshiftoneshiftoneshiftoneshiftone.

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Imagine a world in which the risk is taken on by yourself and not others... but of course that's totes not possibru...

This is going to happen one way or another.

So no, I don't think it is.

If poor people are whom these meddlesome laws are supposed to protect, then draft the laws that way.

Someone who is not poor doesn't want to be screwed over by some protect-the-poor labor law.

E.g. it could be that a freelancer must be considered an employee if they are paid peanuts. If they are amply compensated, then not.

Various other kinds of labor laws could be sensitive to compensation. Nobody should be required to work without a break. But some consultant taking $200/hr from you should probably not be entitled to 8 hours pay for 7.5 hours work, with a paid 30 minute lunch period.

Work safety should be non-negotiable. Anyone working on your site should be safe, highly paid or not.

Do you REALLY believe that laws that, say... limit how much interest you can charge on a loan CREATE vulnerability and marginalization?

Seriously?

What should be had is sufficient welfare programs and still let people work as they want (mostly).

A private company shouldn’t be worried about providing a “livable wage”. A “livable wage” to my 18 year old son staying at home is not the same for a single mother of two doing the same job - that reality was part of the structure and purpose of the EITC. It’s just implanted badly.

I don’t need big government to make decisions for me.

Why? Do they not benefit from the same healthy society that's created from this?

And if we as a society decide that people should have health care, food to eat, and shelter, and that we should put the burden on private companies, we should do so in the form of corporate taxes.

Exhibit A: Take most countries in south America, like Peru, Bolivia or Ecuador. They have labor laws that mandate workers should receive x (usually 3) months severance for every year worked.

As a result massive underemployment which means people are literally working the streets to make ends meet.

Minimum wage is the least of your worries when your wages will come from selling produce in the middle of the road.

You havent seen poverty until you see people living on top of garbage heaps picking up traah to survive.

Thats the kind of stuff you see in countries swimming in labor regulations.

These laws are not protecting anyone, they're preventing opportunities for them. A new classification between employee and contractor would've been a real solution. That would've been real progress to create benefits while maintaining flexibility. But that's not what happened.

Why would I pay an uneducated, inexperienced person to sweep floors $20 per hour? I’ll do it myself first. But at $8 am hour, the numbers make sense. So rather than one job at $8 per hour, now there is no job paying $20 per hour.

What’s better for the poor? $8 per hour at an entry level job, or $20 per hour for no job. And presumably when that $8 per hour worker gains experience and can provide more value, he either gets a raise or goes to another job that will pay what his skills are worth.

This has the effect of making people even more dependent on college, btw. And can effectively make certain types of career paths disappear entirely.

Thing of a greeter at Walmart. How easily can Walmart just do away with greeters?

1. There exist jobs that are not worth paying someone X/hour, but are worth it at some number less than X. For the purposes of this discussion, X is "a livable wage".

2. There exist people who work, but do not need to X to survive; retirees who just want to be out of the house, mentally handicapped individuals for whom being out doing work and meeting people is helpful, etc.

Those two points are facts.

Requiring that every job pay a livable wage means that the combination of the above two will no longer be available. Those jobs just will not exist if they need to pay that much. As a result, some subset of group 2 will no longer be able to work (this part is opinion, but seems a reasonable conclusion).

So, the tradeoff is being made to make live worse for some of those people in group 2... in order to make life better for people in a different group. That may or may not be a good tradeoffs. But just the fact that it exists as a tradeoff means that "no job may pay less than a living wage" is not a black and white topic; there's a grey area.

But to take your implication head on, I once worked for a company whose owner decided to do this stuff himself.

It resulted in several instances of people going unpaid for a few days and the owner sending out an email basically saying "if you don't get your paycheck on this friday and need money, come talk to me, I'll fix it".

The result?

The owner finally started paying someone who was competent enough to ensure everyone got paid on payday!

These laws exist for a reason, and those reasons generally involve people being affected by it.

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My learnin's from watching all of that happen is not to take it lightly.

Or maybe not depending on how much I cared about the company, but most likely I would.

So for these companies, it's required.

That's a mighty strong presumption to make. What skills exactly does one build up sweeping floors? And who is going to be incentivized to give out raises, when they could just hire a new person at the base wage?