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Kudos on that moral victory California. You robbed my mobility-impaired younger sister of her legs without providing any alternative. Fuck your sorry excuse of

• baggy_trough 6y ago
  Why do you assume good intentions? It's more likely that this law was the result of campaign bribes from unions. Unions want to have fewer (unionized) people employed at higher compensation. Gig workers go against that because there is higher employment at lower compensation.
  • sergiotapia 6y ago
    "You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you."
    • Seasonwreckage 6y ago
      well said.
    • bl0b 6y ago
      (Quote from character Lester Freamon from The Wire)
• fdshgaerfhe 6y ago
  Where in California does your sister live that doesn't offer Paratransit services?
  • fred_is_fred 6y ago
    Or taxis.
    • jMyles 6y ago
      I find it a little vulgar to suggest the regulatory capture variant of a service to a disabled person who was benefiting from the more libre configuration.
      • michaelmrose 6y ago
        Maybe deregulate taxis instead of letting companies bypass labor restrictions with a polite fiction.
  • tick_tock_tick 6y ago
    Where in California does that service even come close to what Uber/Lyft offer?
    • fdshgaerfhe 6y ago
      Rides subsidized by folks desperate enough to sacrifice tomorrow in order to eat today? I hope nowhere.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  • seankimdesign 6y ago
    I think she still uses it when there's no alternative. I don't know much about it myself, but from what she tells me it's a fine service for when she needs to go to the library on a lazy day, but meeting a friend or having to make a schedule on a certain time? It's practically a coin flip.
• PHGamer 6y ago
  moral victory? this is government overreach. people set their own hours. they are contractors not employees. the government changed the rules not because they care for you but because they collect more taxes from employers than contractors.
  • mike00632 6y ago
    But they can't set their own rates.
  • enumjorge 6y ago
    How is enforcing worker protection government overreach? It’s what they’re supposed to do. And there’s lots of gig workers who aren’t happy with the setup. It’s not like the government took this up on their own accord. As someone else mentioned Uber and Lyft impose restrictions on these workers that a typical contractor would not have. The litmus test isn’t simply whether you can set your number of hours.
    • OCASM 6y ago
      And there's plenty who are fine with this setup. Why should they get screwed over? Calling the removal of worker choice a right is truly perverse.
  • heavyset_go 6y ago
    > people set their own hours. they are contractors not employees Millions of employees in the US have flexible schedules and work part-time.
• codefreakxff 6y ago
  It's called a Taxi. They will drive to your location, pick you up, and take you anywhere you want to go.
  • jedberg 6y ago
    You've clearly never tried to use a taxi in California.
    • extra88 6y ago
      For the majority who haven't tried to use taxis in California, what's the informative version of this comment?
      • michaelmrose 6y ago
        Taxis everywhere are expensive due to constricted supply and are often unreliable. Man I could tell some stories about that.
        • extra88 6y ago
          Rideshares have their own cost and reliability problems for riders. No one is saying taxi services are fine as-is, in addition to rideshare ride being artificially cheap thanks to VC money subsidizing costs, they did offer real user experience improvements. But the rideshare services have also shirked a lot of duties and created new externalized costs for others to bear.
      • renewiltord 6y ago
        > They will drive to your location, pick you up, and take you anywhere you want to go. The corrected version of this is "they will drive to your location some time within the next 24 hours, pick you up if you want to go to the places they want to go, and maybe accept payment in credit card". Go on. Ask a brown person who lives by Lake Merced what it's like to try to get a taxi there from downtown. Also, to be clear, I don't have a problem with this. I think you should have a right to transport whomsoever you desire if you can reach a consensual agreement. But I don't think it's consensual if you ban the alternative.
• extra88 6y ago
  > without providing any alternative Taxis still exist. Given the history of Uber and Lyft drivers denying access to riders with wheelchairs, decrying the loss of their services seems weird.
  • acchow 6y ago
    Uber and Lyft were made in San Francisco because the taxis here sucked so badly. Extremely unreliable. Always late. Not enough of them. Taxis have not gotten better since then.
    • narrator 6y ago
      True Story: Before Uber and Lyft, a nice guy, who worked at a company in my building in SF, got so desperate to hail a cab he stepped off the curb to attract the cab's attention, and got killed by a Muni bus.
  • Pro_bity 6y ago
    Taxis, even in San Francisco, were woefully inadequate prior to Uber. Further, it not as if taxis were driver friendly. The majority of the money went the the medallion holder. The medallion holders artificially constricted service to keep rates high via a monopoly. So, there was no pre-rideshare paradise to return to.
  • strbean 6y ago
    Taxi drivers pay the company for a shift upfront and absorb the risk on not getting enough rides to break even. And they are independent contractors without benefits. So yeah, what parent was talking about doesn't exist.
  • ghshephard 6y ago
    HAHAHA. OMG - as one who doesn't drive, and took taxis in the Bay area (South Bay - Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Redwood City) for 7 years (2003 - 2010) - pretty much everywhere - let me tell you that taxis on the Peninsula are the most poorly managed, poorly responsive, and incredibly bad service imaginable. Fully 30-40% of taxis just never show up when you call them. That number gets even higher after 9:00 PM if you are down near Fremont. . Taxis took an absolute minimum of 30 minutes to arrive - I never understood how that was possible given they worked on a zone reservation system, and I presumed you would check into the zone you were geographically present in. The drivers were, as a class - horrible. They wouldn't last a month on Uber - neither their vehicles, nor the drivers themselves - they'd be rated out immediately. I think the mistake that Uber and Lyft are making here is just not charging market rates that will let their drivers make a good living. If it turns out that costs 50% more than a taxi - fine. People then have a choice of Public Transit, Taxis, or Uber/Lyft. Their race to the bottom and attempt to price each other out of the market is what led us here. Where they erred originally is trying to build a business model that didn't provide a good living to their key employees - and lets face it, Uber/Lyft drivers are employees.
• ironman1478 6y ago
  This is a bit unfair. Yes, the public transit in cali sucks, but there needs to be a minimum standard with how we treat workers. Gig work was initially framed as a side thing where somebody going to the same area as you hops in your car and you share a ride. Like on demand carpooling. That is no longer the case, its people's livelihoods due to economic inequities and lack of normal jobs available to match the demand for jobs. Gig work should NOT be how people make a living, but due to reality it is what many people have resorted to and these people deserve to be treated like employees for normal companies. I have been in many ride shares where drivers drive from hours away to drive in SF or the bay area in general and then go back at night. They do this because their local economy doesn't provide an equivalently paying job (or jobs at all). Instead of telling people "hey go drive around endlessly in SF, hours from where you live. Also, you get no benefits" we can choose to bolster those local economies or we can choose to force companies to provide benefits. Either one of those options will make their lives better. We have chosen the latter, even though we should have chosen the former but politicians don't give a crap about people who aren't in the bay area, LA, or san diego. So they're screwed and forced to take these bad jobs.
  • bradenb 6y ago
    > Gig work should NOT be how people make a living I don't think I understand this. Why not? Seems like more options besides a traditional 9-5 is a good thing.
    • ironman1478 6y ago
      With how gig work is defined under prop 22 (pre AB5), its unfair. Look at the parent comment. Apparently these gig workers are insanely important, but they don't deserve health insurance (all of this is operating under the assumption that we won't get universal health care any time soon). People who are doing these gig jobs full time are destroying themselves (many work 60+ hours) doing a menial task with no benefits. That's not fair. My father for years worked a back breaking manual labor job and got excellent health benefits, reasonable hours, and flexible time off most of the year (not all of it though). All of this from a university that was always on the brink of collapse. He didn't make a great salary but there were other benefits. We cannot regress as a society where people are expected to work longer hours and do something more boring and dangerous (driving ain't safe, also sitting down all day is known to be bad) and expect people to not have benefits or a reasonable pay. Maybe you can't give them everything (reasonable pay + good benefits), but at least do one. What should happen is there should be a UBI in place. Many people would stop being a ride sharing drivers and the people who want to be a driver for extra cash will be paid fairly because only the people who WANT to do it will do it, not the people who NEED to do it. Lyft and Uber and benefiting from how many people are in the second category. Its not Lyft's and Uber's job to fix societies inequities, but they shouldn't be allowed to exist solely on those people's backs.
• saghm 6y ago
  > If there really exists a market that is sustainable via the terms outlined by the court of California, why the hell isn't anyone competing in this market that famously yields no incumbent benefits? There was a cheaper alternative for companies to provide up until now, so I don't think the current lack of this type of service proves that it couldn't exist. Companies will tend to provide the service that costs them the least in the absence of other incentives; that's why labor laws exist in the first place. The fact that child labor and unsafe working conditions used to be the norm wasn't due to it being impossible to make a profit without them, but due to companies having no incentive to get rid of them.
• WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  It's been stayed as of 10 minutes ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24227481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24227481 The parent post (from Lyft) looks hilarious in hindsight. Edit: Added context
  • blhack 6y ago
    Some person with a legitimate concern about how this effected their disabled sister is not "hilarious".
    • WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
      I was referring to the Lyft post, not the parent comment... I have edited the parent to make this easier to understand.
• Trias11 6y ago
  What a surprising decision made by otherwise wise and well respected CA politicians.
• baron_harkonnen 6y ago
  Maybe relying on the exploitation of others for vital services is a bad situation to be in in the first place? I'm sure uber and lyft drivers are also extremely upset by this, since they are only being exploited because they are vulnerable. The fact that these drivers cannot survive without being exploited and that your sister can't be mobile with out their exploitation is not a problem with CA law makers. Its beyond insane that so many people on HN will jump through such tremendous intellectual hoops to justify the world that they exist and temporarily thrive in. These companies might make your live easier today, but the distance from where you are to feeling that exploitation is not as far as you think.