8 ms·

The regulation that this article tries to pretend is the problem is actually what protects so many people. Uber drivers are not harmed because the government d

• SamReidHughes 10y ago
  The "rights" you describe are already priced in to the cost of an employee.
• RangerScience 10y ago
  I don't disagree with you that those are problems, but isn't the low friction to "hiring" an Uber driver, or renting your room on AirBnB, or picking up odd jobs via Postmate, part of what allows them to function?
  • Qworg 10y ago
    Just because it allows them to function doesn't make it correct.
    • brightball 10y ago
      Signing up for a job as an independent contractor agreed upon by both the contractor and the company...and then after the fact being told that they are actually employees isn't protecting either party involved in the initial agreement. It's using the government to protect OUTSIDE parties by by crippling the business with additional expenses.
      • wickawic 10y ago
        But the children in the mines contractually agreed to their positions! Who is the government to interfere with this business partnership?
        • biocomputation 10y ago
          Can't upvote you enough!
        • brightball 10y ago
          Are the children adults legally able to enter a contract....?
          • Spooky23 10y ago
            Before the overreaching government stepped in and got in the way, parents had the freedom to get gainful employment for their idle children. Some parents even took it upon themselves to increase their productivity by having the kids do piecework at home. For example, 6 year olds were able to roll cigars at home.
            • ZoF 10y ago
              What is the premise of your argument here? That bad things happened in the past so there's now no such thing as too much regulation? Because child labor existed we should now consider independent contractors employees...? Care to actually provide a somewhat coherent response instead of baselessly denigrating the parents ideology and implying it represents forced child labor. I find this kind of cheap, tangentially related strawman so intellectually lazy it's actually offensive.
              • Spooky23 10y ago
                I guess you're easily offended. Society reached consensus a long time ago about what an employee is and isn't. Companies have been nipping at the edges of this for years to push more risks on "independent" contractors, which in reality means pushing business risk to society at large.
      • hinkley 10y ago
        The thing about contract law is that a contract that requires one party to break the law isn't binding. If you build a business around invalid contracts that's on you or crappy legal advice. Not on the person who signed your predatory contract.
        • brightball 10y ago
          At what point does "I will perform this task for compensation in the amount of $X" become illegal?
          • danharaj 10y ago
            When it's illegal. There's no underlying abstraction. The law is ad hoc.
          • toomuchtodo 10y ago
            It has always been illegal if an employer tells you you're an independent contractor but without meeting the requirements of an independent contractor relationship. Last time someone ignored that, it cost them $240 million. I'm interested to see how much it costs Uber. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-fedex-settlement-idUSKCN0Z229Q http://www.reuters.com/article/us-fedex-settlement-idUSKCN0Z...
            • brightball 10y ago
              So what's the difference between that and using a personal LLC. It's legal nitpicking about a persons choice.
              • toomuchtodo 10y ago
                > It's legal nitpicking about a persons choice. That's actually what the law is: interpretation of statute, or what you call "nitpicking".
                • brightball 10y ago
    • LizardLarry 10y ago
      /n
      • rangibaby 10y ago
        ???
      • jsloss 10y ago
        This should be a place of constrictive conversation. Your post is not. Perhaps you want to give it another shot?
        • LizardLarry 10y ago
          My apologies. Here's another shot. Taxis and public transportation systems SUCK. At least within the Los Angeles area. It's obscene to pay regular taxi fares. You can take the bus but good luck getting anywhere within a reasonable time and with the risk of some stupid random event that slows the process down. Not to mention the cognitive taxation of being around strangers of varying quality. It's not something you think about until you're in the bus and you're standing up and the guy behind you smells and the bus is stuck in godamn traffic and you have 30 more godamn stops to go... Uber and Lyft and the other ride-sharing apps are positively godamn humanitarian in comparison to having to use the other options. I have strong feelings because discussions that focus on the needs and wants of bus drivers and taxi drivers ignores the heavy taxation laid onto the customer for the crime of not having a car (at least in LA). I would rather a hundred thousand more rides accomplishing the personal goals of a hundred thousand people than a thousand pensions for a thousand bus drivers.
          • RangerScience 10y ago
            As a fellow Angeleno, this mirrors my experience. Public transit is getting better, but it's still not there, and the taxis pretty much suck in all the ways it's possible to suck. Worse vehicles, worse drivers, worse prices, more hassle. (I think the next hurdle for LA Public Transit is express busses / trains, that DON'T stop everywhere.)
          • 10y ago
  • Retric 10y ago
    The problem is competitive market forces, uber does not increase the number of people who want rides enough to offset downward wage pressure. Supose you work 30 hours a week for minimum wage, uber unlike most jobs lets you back fill even sub minimum wages after costs. So now those workers displace people unwilling to work random shifts as needed and taxi drivers who can work below minimum wage creating an ever growing downward spiral. In the end when one player gets to ignore the rules they will do so making things worse workers industry wide.
  • _delirium 10y ago
    Some of these are a bit more like real independent contractor relationships than others, so I don't think entirely the same questions are implicated. For example, someone renting rooms on AirBnB can set their own rates, house rules, minimum/maximum stays accepted, etc., which makes them much more like an independent contractor merely using AirBnB as a storefront/marketplace, than like an AirBnB employee.
• darawk 10y ago
  Do you realize that these companies would never have existed in the first place if they had to do those things? It's objectively better to have Uber and not regulate it than to regulate it and not have it. And make no mistake, that is the choice that is being made here.
  • itaifrenkel 10y ago
    Could you please provide evidence/calc to substantiate this claim?
    • darawk 10y ago
      Uber, in its most profitable market, currently makes an average of $.19 per ride[1]. These regulations would substantially more than destroy that margin. And that isn't even addressing the fact that driver liquidity would be worse because it'd be harder for people to start/stop ubering at will. Which would create inefficiencies whereby they'd have to probably maintain an oversupply of drivers just to meet demand, further compounding their profitability problem. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-says-its-profitable-in-the-us-2016-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-says-its-profitable-in-t...
      • eli_gottlieb 10y ago
        >Uber, in its most profitable market, currently makes an average of $.19 per ride[1]. If Uber can't pay real wages and benefits to their employees because they make a margin of $0.19/ride, their business model is pathetic and deserves to be replaced by something more productive and efficient.
        • barry-cotter 10y ago
          Uber already produces enormous amounts of consumer surplus. Two examples would be making it possible to get a ride while black and making it possible to get a ride while in San Francisco. If you feel they should go out of business unless they can live up to your standards cool but taxi regulators will be just as effective at protecting consumers after Uber goes out of business as before it existed.
• natermer 10y ago
  Your argument might as well be "It's big brother acting in your best interest. Shut up, be thankful and just obey"
• dcosson 10y ago
  I agree a company like Uber and their workers' incentives do end up misaligned in certain ways, and when that happens the contractors often end up losing. But that is all because of this system that we continue to perpetuate, for really no good reason imo. As I heard it phrased by an economist once, why do we look to the government to create jobs and look to private corporations to protect workers? Surely the incentives & competencies would be better aligned the other way around. If all of the basic, expected workers' rights that we've come to expect were decoupled from full-time employment, surely removing that friction from both workers and companies would be beneficial to the economy. A couple years ago I left a full-time job to work on a new startup and the overhead was surprisingly stressful - making sure to set up COBRA correctly because it's all but impossible to find good health insurance as 3-person company, and if you do the process wrong you just won't have health insurance for the year. Your 401k was tied to your job so you can't keep contributing without setting up some other system. And this was just transitioning to a new, funded company, I imagine quitting to become a freelancer or independent contractor would be even more confusing. I suppose it's in companies' best interests to keep this stuff convoluted and keep themselves in the position of power by having built up the knowledge of understanding this stuff. But if we passed laws to change these expectations (Obamacare is at least a step in this direction) so that companies just paid cash and it was reasonable to set up these things yourself, it would make workers' lives so much simpler. And our society wouldn't have to keep having this argument, plus all the lawsuits that stem from it, about whether or not Uber or anyone else should be covering more of these "benefits" for their employees.
  • dalke 10y ago
    "Surely the incentives & competencies would be better aligned the other way around." Or, make it easier for Uber drivers to form a union or do other forms of collective bargaining. If there is a more equal balance of power, it should reduce the need of the government to be involved in setting the rules. I agree with your point that health and retirement benefits should not be coupled to the job.
  • rbanffy 10y ago
    > But if we passed laws to change these expectations (Obamacare is at least a step in this direction) so that companies just paid cash and it was reasonable to set up these things yourself, it would make workers' lives so much simpler You can go one step ahead and make it completely automatic: you get health insurance the moment you are born. You retire the moment you need to. You are automatically insured against unemployment and other mishaps. You get free schooling for as long as you need. It can all be funded by taxes, personal and corporate. It works in Europe. It should work for the US.
• elcct 10y ago
  Believe or not, there are people who like to have such relationship. The last thing I would like to see is the end of the freedom of choice how you want to be employed. There is a lot of advantages of not being recognised as employee - like minimal exposure to internal politics, zero red tape, tax efficiency, ownership of your time outside of contract and so on.