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I think that's absolutely true, and it's one of the reasons that society benefits from the idea of an "employee" relationship, where you can rely on a single co

I think that's absolutely true, and it's one of the reasons that society benefits from the idea of an "employee" relationship, where you can rely on a single corporation, beholden to some kind of public consensus, to enforce a uniform set of rules. A world where everyone is a "contractor" is one where everyone is subject to the tragedy of the commons. (e.g. "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood") But part of the social contract is that employees, having given up that autonomy, need someone else to advocate for them collectively. Thus... labor rights and benefits legislation. Frankly this whole thing seems silly. They knew where this was going when AB5 was passed. Those features aren't a good faith attempt to comply with the law, they were an attempt to evade it (something very much in keeping with Uber's culture). The only real surprise here was that the final reckoning came sooner than expected via injunction.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> A world where everyone is a "contractor" is one where everyone is subject to the tragedy of the commons. (e.g. "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood") Well no, it's just the opposite. When everyone is a "contractor" you can get a ride in a poor neighborhood, you just have to pay the market rate for getting a ride there. When you try to legislate it, then you get avoidance. The driver gets assigned and then suddenly has "car trouble" or becomes ill. You summon a ride but it doesn't show up for 45 minutes because all of the drivers avoid being anywhere near that area if it means they could be forced to go there. Whereas if you just pay the market rate then a driver shows up right away because they're getting paid extra to do it. And if you don't like that rides cost more in poor neighborhoods then the government could subsidize it explicitly, instead of creating all of these perverse incentives by trying to force people to do something they otherwise wouldn't be willing to do for that amount of money. Which also puts a dollar value on the subsidy and makes it explicit, so that we can see how much we're paying in order to get it, instead of sweeping it under the rug by making the cost implicit even though it's still there.
- newacct583 6y ago
  So... most of what you wrote is just standard-issue libertarianism and I know how those arguments go. But this part intrigued me: > And if you don't like that rides cost more in poor neighborhoods then the government could subsidize it explicitly OK, how does that work? How do you write such a law such that it can't be exploited? Are there any examples of this kind of regulation you can point to from other markets or other legal regimes or nations or whatever? I mean, this seems crazy to me, but it's also an opportunity to get you to engage on a genuine issue of social justice (c.f. "it shouldn't cost money to be poor"), so I'm willing to make the effort.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    So the hardest part is calculating the amount of the subsidy. Once you know that you just make it a deduction from the fare the customer pays and the government pays the difference. Calculating the amount is finicky because the subsidy itself is going to affect the market pricing. But in the end, as long as there is a competitive market for both drivers and ride share companies, you know whether the subsidy is too high or too low because the subsidized cost of a ride there will be more or less than it is in other places (rather than exactly the same as you're trying to make it). Because if the subsidy was too high then there would be "too many" drivers and the subsidized price would fall below what's required, and if the subsidy was too low then the opposite.
  - Someone 6y ago
    Not the original poster, but the answer I can think of is the mail service. In many countries it guarantees the cost of sending a letter from A to B is the same, independent of distance between A and B or the popularity of A as a source and B as a destination of letters. That often even stays the case when the mail service gets privatized. I’ve never heard of such services to originally be privatized, though, or of the service to be privatized to multiple providers (say with one company serving the large cities and another the countryside, or one doing half the country, and another doing the other half) Also: are you sure this is libertarianism? I would think subsidies can’t exist in a libertarian world because the government doesn’t exist there.
  - julienb_sea 6y ago
julienb_sea 6y ago
I don't really understand this. Firstly before this whole contractor vs employee situation, Uber was extremely strict on drivers and enforced a high degree of rider privileges. Drivers were penalized for rejecting rides without reason, rider destination was hidden and surge pricing was uniform and purely demand based. These policies objectively improved availability to and from poor neighborhoods, and reduced the opportunity for profiling passengers. The employee debate has near uniformly turned into dialing back rider protections, removing up front costs and handing drivers more control. The employee requirements will unquestionably increase ride costs and decrease driver availability. This is going to worsen access to poor neighborhoods and add costs on people who cannot afford to pay them, making ride share further restricted to "good" neighborhoods and higher income folks.
smsm42 6y ago
Taxis have had "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood" for ages. If California kills Uber, we're back to the same taxis. So how exactly what is happening now helps solve the "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood" problem? > Those features aren't a good faith attempt to comply with the law There can be no good attempt to comply with this (completely terrible) law from Uber, since this law was meant to outlaw the whole business model Uber is using. Uber was founded on creating a novel working model, which didn't exist before. California decided to outlaw this model wholesale. The only "good faith attempt" from Uber to deal with it can be to stop operating in California completely. Of course the same goes for Lyft and any other company which uses "freelance employee" model.
- crooked-v 6y ago
  > There can be no good attempt to comply with this (completely terrible) law from Uber Actually, it's very simple: treat them as employees, including granting required benefits and paying them at least minimum wage for time worked (presumably at the higher of either minimum wage or per-trip earnings for the time period). Nothing about this is incompatible with allowing employees to pick their own working hours.
- unishark 6y ago
  > Taxis have had "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood" for ages. Also restaurants refuse to deliver to poor neighborhoods after their delivery person gets robbed there once or twice. I've seen this problem in New York.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> A world where everyone is a "contractor" is one where everyone is subject to the tragedy of the commons. (e.g. "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood") Well no, it's just the opposite. When everyone is a "contractor" you can get a ride in a poor neighborhood, you just have to pay the market rate for getting a ride there. When you try to legislate it, then you get avoidance. The driver gets assigned and then suddenly has "car trouble" or becomes ill. You summon a ride but it doesn't show up for 45 minutes because all of the drivers avoid being anywhere near that area if it means they could be forced to go there. Whereas if you just pay the market rate then a driver shows up right away because they're getting paid extra to do it. And if you don't like that rides cost more in poor neighborhoods then the government could subsidize it explicitly, instead of creating all of these perverse incentives by trying to force people to do something they otherwise wouldn't be willing to do for that amount of money. Which also puts a dollar value on the subsidy and makes it explicit, so that we can see how much we're paying in order to get it, instead of sweeping it under the rug by making the cost implicit even though it's still there.

newacct583 6y ago
So... most of what you wrote is just standard-issue libertarianism and I know how those arguments go. But this part intrigued me: > And if you don't like that rides cost more in poor neighborhoods then the government could subsidize it explicitly OK, how does that work? How do you write such a law such that it can't be exploited? Are there any examples of this kind of regulation you can point to from other markets or other legal regimes or nations or whatever? I mean, this seems crazy to me, but it's also an opportunity to get you to engage on a genuine issue of social justice (c.f. "it shouldn't cost money to be poor"), so I'm willing to make the effort.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  So the hardest part is calculating the amount of the subsidy. Once you know that you just make it a deduction from the fare the customer pays and the government pays the difference. Calculating the amount is finicky because the subsidy itself is going to affect the market pricing. But in the end, as long as there is a competitive market for both drivers and ride share companies, you know whether the subsidy is too high or too low because the subsidized cost of a ride there will be more or less than it is in other places (rather than exactly the same as you're trying to make it). Because if the subsidy was too high then there would be "too many" drivers and the subsidized price would fall below what's required, and if the subsidy was too low then the opposite.
- Someone 6y ago
  Not the original poster, but the answer I can think of is the mail service. In many countries it guarantees the cost of sending a letter from A to B is the same, independent of distance between A and B or the popularity of A as a source and B as a destination of letters. That often even stays the case when the mail service gets privatized. I’ve never heard of such services to originally be privatized, though, or of the service to be privatized to multiple providers (say with one company serving the large cities and another the countryside, or one doing half the country, and another doing the other half) Also: are you sure this is libertarianism? I would think subsidies can’t exist in a libertarian world because the government doesn’t exist there.
- julienb_sea 6y ago

julienb_sea 6y ago

I don't really understand this. Firstly before this whole contractor vs employee situation, Uber was extremely strict on drivers and enforced a high degree of rider privileges. Drivers were penalized for rejecting rides without reason, rider destination was hidden and surge pricing was uniform and purely demand based. These policies objectively improved availability to and from poor neighborhoods, and reduced the opportunity for profiling passengers. The employee debate has near uniformly turned into dialing back rider protections, removing up front costs and handing drivers more control. The employee requirements will unquestionably increase ride costs and decrease driver availability. This is going to worsen access to poor neighborhoods and add costs on people who cannot afford to pay them, making ride share further restricted to "good" neighborhoods and higher income folks.

smsm42 6y ago

Taxis have had "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood" for ages. If California kills Uber, we're back to the same taxis. So how exactly what is happening now helps solve the "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood" problem? > Those features aren't a good faith attempt to comply with the law There can be no good attempt to comply with this (completely terrible) law from Uber, since this law was meant to outlaw the whole business model Uber is using. Uber was founded on creating a novel working model, which didn't exist before. California decided to outlaw this model wholesale. The only "good faith attempt" from Uber to deal with it can be to stop operating in California completely. Of course the same goes for Lyft and any other company which uses "freelance employee" model.

crooked-v 6y ago
> There can be no good attempt to comply with this (completely terrible) law from Uber Actually, it's very simple: treat them as employees, including granting required benefits and paying them at least minimum wage for time worked (presumably at the higher of either minimum wage or per-trip earnings for the time period). Nothing about this is incompatible with allowing employees to pick their own working hours.
unishark 6y ago
> Taxis have had "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood" for ages. Also restaurants refuse to deliver to poor neighborhoods after their delivery person gets robbed there once or twice. I've seen this problem in New York.