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Well yeah, you can make the numbers square up if you ignore/offload a bunch of costs, but not everyone who is delivering for one of these companies is a student

Well yeah, you can make the numbers square up if you ignore/offload a bunch of costs, but not everyone who is delivering for one of these companies is a student or has another income stream, and wear-and-tear on a vehicle will manifest as a mechanical fault one day. This argument sounds like a lot like the argument against raising minimum wage ("it's not meant to be enough to survive on"), however the reality is that large numbers of these gigs/jobs are worked by adults who depend on it as a primary source of income, and in the face of the massive and sudden job losses we're seeing, it's quite callous to say they should "just choose different jobs". If the Instacarts and Ubers of the world cannot afford to pay these people appropriately then their business model is a failure.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Well yeah, you can make the numbers square up if you ignore/offload a bunch of costs, but not everyone who is delivering for one of these companies is a student or has another income stream Given that it's sustainable if they do, what's wrong with letting those people be the ones who do it? Why is anybody who needs a long-term full-time job required to do this instead of working at Walmart or going to college or learning a trade? Why should we even want to encourage that? It's low-paying work open to anyone who needs immediate income with flexible hours. Let it be what it is. > and wear-and-tear on a vehicle will manifest as a mechanical fault one day. Which, for a modern reliable vehicle, you amortize over many thousands of miles. If you're doing this in a 1980s Land Rover, you're doing it wrong. > This argument sounds like a lot like the argument against raising minimum wage ("it's not meant to be enough to survive on"), however the reality is that large numbers of these gigs/jobs are worked by adults who depend on it as a primary source of income, and in the face of the massive and sudden job losses we're seeing, it's quite callous to say they should "just choose different jobs". How is it any less callous than saying that most of them should lose their jobs and the rest of them should lose their flexibility? That's what happens if you start requiring a bunch of recurring insurance costs, which increases hiring costs and reduces demand for workers (which lowers overall wages across the economy), and induces the company to schedule the remaining workers during the hours that maximize returns to cover the higher costs instead of letting them work when and how long they actually want to. I mean, suppose you have millions of college students who need some income. For example, Bob has class from 9AM to 10:30AM, drives for five hours, then has another class at 3:30PM. He drives 30 hours a week like this. You force insurance on him and that job becomes 40 hours scheduled at the company's convenience, which doesn't fit his class schedule, so he needs a different job. The different job is working a contiguous 8 hour shift in an office from 6PM to 2AM -- which fits into his schedule, and actually pays better than driving did, but he preferred driving even with lower pay because the hours for the better-paying job stink. He doesn't get home until 2:30AM and has class at 9AM, and it's 40 hours instead of 30 when he had been using the other 10 hours to study. The people using the better paying job as an actual job also prefer that a million Bobs not need it, because Bob will work for $15/hour when that job used to pay $20/hour, so now half of them lose their jobs to Bobs and the other half get paid less. Constraining choices pretty much always makes workers worse off. It's worse for everybody. The choices they're forced into in the alternative already exist and they're not choosing them to begin with because the alternatives are not actually better.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> Well yeah, you can make the numbers square up if you ignore/offload a bunch of costs, but not everyone who is delivering for one of these companies is a student or has another income stream Given that it's sustainable if they do, what's wrong with letting those people be the ones who do it? Why is anybody who needs a long-term full-time job required to do this instead of working at Walmart or going to college or learning a trade? Why should we even want to encourage that? It's low-paying work open to anyone who needs immediate income with flexible hours. Let it be what it is. > and wear-and-tear on a vehicle will manifest as a mechanical fault one day. Which, for a modern reliable vehicle, you amortize over many thousands of miles. If you're doing this in a 1980s Land Rover, you're doing it wrong. > This argument sounds like a lot like the argument against raising minimum wage ("it's not meant to be enough to survive on"), however the reality is that large numbers of these gigs/jobs are worked by adults who depend on it as a primary source of income, and in the face of the massive and sudden job losses we're seeing, it's quite callous to say they should "just choose different jobs". How is it any less callous than saying that most of them should lose their jobs and the rest of them should lose their flexibility? That's what happens if you start requiring a bunch of recurring insurance costs, which increases hiring costs and reduces demand for workers (which lowers overall wages across the economy), and induces the company to schedule the remaining workers during the hours that maximize returns to cover the higher costs instead of letting them work when and how long they actually want to. I mean, suppose you have millions of college students who need some income. For example, Bob has class from 9AM to 10:30AM, drives for five hours, then has another class at 3:30PM. He drives 30 hours a week like this. You force insurance on him and that job becomes 40 hours scheduled at the company's convenience, which doesn't fit his class schedule, so he needs a different job. The different job is working a contiguous 8 hour shift in an office from 6PM to 2AM -- which fits into his schedule, and actually pays better than driving did, but he preferred driving even with lower pay because the hours for the better-paying job stink. He doesn't get home until 2:30AM and has class at 9AM, and it's 40 hours instead of 30 when he had been using the other 10 hours to study. The people using the better paying job as an actual job also prefer that a million Bobs not need it, because Bob will work for $15/hour when that job used to pay $20/hour, so now half of them lose their jobs to Bobs and the other half get paid less. Constraining choices pretty much always makes workers worse off. It's worse for everybody. The choices they're forced into in the alternative already exist and they're not choosing them to begin with because the alternatives are not actually better.