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This general line of reason is based on a flawed idea that all of these employers would be willing to offer the same number of full time, full-entitlement posit

This general line of reason is based on a flawed idea that all of these employers would be willing to offer the same number of full time, full-entitlement positions, if it weren’t for the option of contracting. Everybody who’s in a contracting position is benefiting from having the option to do so, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it at all. If you restrict people’s ability to freely enter into contracts with one another like this, you are absolutely guaranteed to be taking peoples jobs away from them. This is never discussed here, and it’s not obvious that the benefit to the smaller number of people who are left with employment after the fact is a worthwhile trade off.

ilaksh 7y ago
Obviously there are going to be fewer actual employees. Its not certain that the situation will be better if the companies stop misclassifying. However, how certain are you that the overall situation will be worse? Because we know right now the taxes and health insurance issue is a killer for misclassified employees. With minimum wage it's kind of the same thing. Should we set the minimum wage to $1 an hour to ensure as many jobs as possible? I agree that companies taking a hike creates a real problem. But it is hard for me to accept that the solution is to let them do whatever they want and workers have no protections from them.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  > However, how certain are you that the overall situation will be worse? It will quite obviously be worse for everybody who is left without employment. Also, as this article points out, jurisdictions that pass these laws tend to be competing with other jurisdictions to attract business. For the case highlighted in the article (freelance writers), the outcome was that nobody’s working conditions were improved, and that the residents of the jurisdiction in question simply all lost their jobs. Setting a minimum wage poses the same problems. Set it too high, and you kill jobs and business. All such restriction have the same consequences. The question that should be asked is whether it’s reasonable for people to enter into freelance contracts. I don’t think it’s reasonable to deny people who could benefit from them the opportunity to do so. I do however think it would be reasonable to deny people the opportunity to enter into a working arrangement where they’re paid $1/hour. I don’t think the two are equivalent at all, and I think that most discussion around ‘compassionate’ ideas like this do a very poor job of weighing up such pros and cons.
  - lstodd 7y ago
    > I do however think it would be reasonable to deny people the opportunity to enter into a working arrangement where they’re paid $1/hour. Why? Can you elaborate?
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      Because you can make an reasonable argument that prohibiting such arrangements would not cause much harm. Personally, I think that people should be free to enter into any employment agreement that they want to. Anytime you implement a minimum wage that’s higher than the market value of somebody’s labor, you’re restricting their ability to find employment. Of course there’s the risk that if there was no minimum wage, that large portions of the working class would only be able to gain very low wages. I don’t think that’s very realistic though. People won’t enter into an employment arrangement that doesn’t benefit them, and will tend to seek out the best opportunities available to them. But in any case, I don’t think a minimum wage in general is entirely unreasonable, but it can become so when it starts to have a significant effect on access to minimum wage jobs.
      - lstodd 7y ago
        That's two self contradictions and a reference to a 'working class'. No, no one gets to decide what others elect to do with their time. Especially here, where many people work for zero monetary compensation on open source projects. What next, ban open source projects? It's work and there are no benefits. Blasphemy?
        AmericanChopper 7y ago
        Is ‘working class’ an offensive term now? And where were my self contradictions? Contributing to an open source project isn’t necessarily an employment arrangement, neither is volunteering, or being an unpaid intern. This comment of yours doesn’t contribute much to the discussion.
        7y ago

ilaksh 7y ago

Obviously there are going to be fewer actual employees. Its not certain that the situation will be better if the companies stop misclassifying. However, how certain are you that the overall situation will be worse? Because we know right now the taxes and health insurance issue is a killer for misclassified employees. With minimum wage it's kind of the same thing. Should we set the minimum wage to $1 an hour to ensure as many jobs as possible? I agree that companies taking a hike creates a real problem. But it is hard for me to accept that the solution is to let them do whatever they want and workers have no protections from them.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
> However, how certain are you that the overall situation will be worse? It will quite obviously be worse for everybody who is left without employment. Also, as this article points out, jurisdictions that pass these laws tend to be competing with other jurisdictions to attract business. For the case highlighted in the article (freelance writers), the outcome was that nobody’s working conditions were improved, and that the residents of the jurisdiction in question simply all lost their jobs. Setting a minimum wage poses the same problems. Set it too high, and you kill jobs and business. All such restriction have the same consequences. The question that should be asked is whether it’s reasonable for people to enter into freelance contracts. I don’t think it’s reasonable to deny people who could benefit from them the opportunity to do so. I do however think it would be reasonable to deny people the opportunity to enter into a working arrangement where they’re paid $1/hour. I don’t think the two are equivalent at all, and I think that most discussion around ‘compassionate’ ideas like this do a very poor job of weighing up such pros and cons.
- lstodd 7y ago
  > I do however think it would be reasonable to deny people the opportunity to enter into a working arrangement where they’re paid $1/hour. Why? Can you elaborate?
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    Because you can make an reasonable argument that prohibiting such arrangements would not cause much harm. Personally, I think that people should be free to enter into any employment agreement that they want to. Anytime you implement a minimum wage that’s higher than the market value of somebody’s labor, you’re restricting their ability to find employment. Of course there’s the risk that if there was no minimum wage, that large portions of the working class would only be able to gain very low wages. I don’t think that’s very realistic though. People won’t enter into an employment arrangement that doesn’t benefit them, and will tend to seek out the best opportunities available to them. But in any case, I don’t think a minimum wage in general is entirely unreasonable, but it can become so when it starts to have a significant effect on access to minimum wage jobs.
    - lstodd 7y ago
      That's two self contradictions and a reference to a 'working class'. No, no one gets to decide what others elect to do with their time. Especially here, where many people work for zero monetary compensation on open source projects. What next, ban open source projects? It's work and there are no benefits. Blasphemy?
      - AmericanChopper 7y ago
        Is ‘working class’ an offensive term now? And where were my self contradictions? Contributing to an open source project isn’t necessarily an employment arrangement, neither is volunteering, or being an unpaid intern. This comment of yours doesn’t contribute much to the discussion.
        7y ago