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>I have a skill that adds value to a company. They want to pay me to do it. I agree to the price. What's the problem? According to CA, a lot. Are you arguing t
by marcinzm 6y ago
>I have a skill that adds value to a company. They want to pay me to do it. I agree to the price. What's the problem? According to CA, a lot.
Are you arguing that all labor laws, workplace safety laws, minimum wage laws, anti-compete laws and so on should be repealed? After all, they all get in the way of two consenting parties deciding to work together. If not then it's merely a question of where the line is drawn and that's a murky issue.
- r29vzg2 6y agoAll? No. Some if not most? Yes. There are many cases to be made against minimum wage laws and anti-compete laws. A laws designed to affect everyone but instead has hundreds of exemptions carved out has no place existing.
- blackflame7000 6y agoThere should be a law banning law exemptions..of which a select few will be exempt /s
- xnyan 6y agoI know this will sound needling but it’s not, but have you ever been truly poor? By that I mean, have you been in a situation where you don’t know where your next meal is going to come from and you have no belief that anything in the future is likely to change such that that you would have confidence about where your next meal will come from? I will freely admit my bias: I have been very poor before and I lean towards protections for the most vulnerable in our society at the expense that some people will have to sacrifice somewhat between Uber and their other gig.
- r29vzg2 6y agoI’ve never been poor. But I wasn’t exactly middle class. My parents were immigrants. Poverty is terrible, and I agree it should be dealt with. But how has this law helped? Uber and Lyft are more than willing to leave all of California rather than stay and deal with the regulation. They’ve made that clear. It’s more economical for them for halt business in California rather than adhere to the regulations. That’s a rather poor incentive set for on behalf of the California regulators. Regulations don’t exist in a vacuum.
- viraptor 6y ago> Uber and Lyft are more than willing to leave all of California rather than stay and deal with the regulation. Ok. And why is that bad? The office work / engineers will stay. If there's need for transport, the drivers will work for transport in other ways. If nobody wants to pay for better conditions of drivers, then we just exposed the VC funding as unsustainable in a long run - it would happen sooner or later.
- Hnaomyiph 6y ago>if there is a need for transport, the drivers will work for transport in other ways This is incredibly unlikely in any imaginable way.
- usaar333 6y agoWhy are the drivers driving for Uber and not say being Instacart shoppers where they can be employees?
- ChrisLomont 6y agoWage floors push the most vulnerable out of the workforce. Is that bad?
- XMPPwocky 6y agoIf somebody is vulnerable, I'd say it seems like a very bad thing to make them work by threatening them with homelessness and poverty, enforced by men with guns. So no, I don't think it is.
- unishark 6y agoIf most people want to help them, as apparently most people do (these laws need to get passed in a democracy, after all), why does that help need to be enforced by men with guns?
- viraptor 6y agoThis would be the immediate effect today. An alternative description is "VC money supports the axe hanging over unprofitable uber jobs". The question is - does uber need to find a solution to this problem today or in X months? This is going to happen one way or another.
- cortesoft 6y agoI totally agree that we need to protect our poor people from being exploited. However, I think that trying to place market restrictions on two parties making an agreement is not the right way to go about it. If we had a stronger social safety net (either something like a UBI, or some other form of economic assistance), we wouldn’t need to try to manipulate the market with blunt restrictions on trade. There are a LOT of things a market economy is bad at, or simply won’t address... externalities, extreme poverty, taking care of people who don’t produce something that the market will pay for, etc. Attempting to force a market to address these issues by passing blunt laws is extremely inefficient. If we want to support poor people (which I want to do), we should tax everyone and pay to support them. Then we can let the market do it’s thing and set prices and wages and contracts without having to guess at what policies will force the market to fix the issue we see (without also causing unintended consequences like we see here)
- arcticbull 6y agoThe reason these restrictions exist is to address the inherent power differential between the contractor and the contractee. The company will be around next month if they don't contract you. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you may not be. Thus, you're not meeting on a level playing field and these rules are built to prevent you being taken advantage of. This is particularly relevant to Uber drivers, as driving for Uber is unskilled labor. It's not you freelancing as a $200-500/hr software engineer. After all if you are, you can just incorporate a contracting business and pay yourself benefits out of the take -- then this whole conversations is moot. > If we had a stronger social safety net (either something like a UBI, or some other form of economic assistance), we wouldn’t need to try to manipulate the market with blunt restrictions on trade. This is my free-market argument for UBI and socialized medicine also. I believe UBI and socialized medicine promote, not detract from a true, a free-market economy.
- gridlockd 6y ago> The reason these restrictions exist is to address the inherent power differential between the contractor and the contractee. Being effectively prohibited from working on my own terms - even if the best terms I can negotiate are poor - doesn't give me any power. It makes me a subject to the crappy welfare system, which now has far more power over me than any employer would have ever had.
- briandear 6y agoHow does eliminating Uber help the poor? Over regulation kills jobs, so a poor person could make $10 per hour, with all of these “protections,” now they make $0 because the job disappears. Why would I pay an uneducated, inexperienced person to sweep floors $20 per hour? I’ll do it myself first. But at $8 am hour, the numbers make sense. So rather than one job at $8 per hour, now there is no job paying $20 per hour. What’s better for the poor? $8 per hour at an entry level job, or $20 per hour for no job. And presumably when that $8 per hour worker gains experience and can provide more value, he either gets a raise or goes to another job that will pay what his skills are worth.
- Talanes 6y ago"And presumably when that $8 per hour worker gains experience and can provide more value, he either gets a raise or goes to another job that will pay what his skills are worth." That's a mighty strong presumption to make. What skills exactly does one build up sweeping floors? And who is going to be incentivized to give out raises, when they could just hire a new person at the base wage?
- listenallyall 6y agoEvery year tons of new Javascript developers graduate from colleges and bootcamps. Why do any of them get raises when companies could just hire at the base wage? Sweeping floors may not be very exciting but you can learn skills - perhaps purchasing (supplies), handyman work (path to union labor), maybe the CEO notices the floors are freaking spotless and this guy has never been late once in the past year and decides to give him more responsibility...
- lumost 6y agoJS developers are entering a growing market that constantly needs dramatically more developers than currently exist. This is not going to be true for cleaners of restaurants in 2020.
- zuminator 6y agoBusiness owners don't hire unnecessary people out of the goodness of their hearts. If they're paying someone full time to sweep floors, it's because it's a necessary business expense. The owner hasn't the time nor the inclination to spend 8 hours a day doing that person's task. If they can identify slack in the person's job, they will try to cut hours, but barring that, they will keep that person employed at a higher salary, raise prices to maintain profits if they're able, and all of their local competitors will do the same, as they are in the same boat.
- scarface74 6y agoAnd if we as a society decide that people should have health care, food to eat, and shelter , we shouldn’t put the burden on private companies. Companies should focus on making money and paying taxes. The government should use that tax money to provide universal healthcare, increase the earned income tax credit and make it easier to get throughout the year. A private company shouldn’t be worried about providing a “livable wage”. A “livable wage” to my 18 year old son staying at home is not the same for a single mother of two doing the same job - that reality was part of the structure and purpose of the EITC. It’s just implanted badly. I don’t need big government to make decisions for me.
- RandoHolmes 6y ago> And if we as a society decide that people should have health care, food to eat, and shelter , we shouldn’t put the burden on private companies. Why? Do they not benefit from the same healthy society that's created from this?
- amadeuspagel 6y agoThe comment you replied to already makes the following point, but I'll try to make it more succinctly, since you apparently didn't read the whole comment: And if we as a society decide that people should have health care, food to eat, and shelter, and that we should put the burden on private companies, we should do so in the form of corporate taxes.
- manigandham 6y agoSure, I've been poor, but that's not a necessary condition to think through this situation (as if any of these politicians have experienced such conditions). These laws are not protecting anyone, they're preventing opportunities for them. A new classification between employee and contractor would've been a real solution. That would've been real progress to create benefits while maintaining flexibility. But that's not what happened.
- zozbot234 6y agoLabor regulations do not protect the most vulnerable in our society. They create far more vulnerability and marginalization, by getting in the way of private contracting and initiative. And the more regulations are piled on to "solve" the problem, the more this occurs. See the dismal situation of, e.g. socially marginalized ethnic minorities in places like France as an example.
- luxurycommunism 6y agoThat's a terrible example to make your argument.
- RandoHolmes 6y agoOh dear god, found the person who has never been homeless. Do you REALLY believe that laws that, say... limit how much interest you can charge on a loan CREATE vulnerability and marginalization? Seriously?
- unishark 6y ago> Oh dear god, found the person who has never been homeless. Gasp!
- amadeuspagel 6y agoI don't see how that question is relevant, and you could easily turn it around and ask: Have you ever been so poor that you would have been willing to work for less then minimum wage, but couldn't find work due to the minimum wage?
- whiddershins 6y agoWhat if, without minimum wage, there was effectively infinite work available?
- amadeuspagel 6y agoNot sure what you're trying to say here.
- RandoHolmes 6y agoYou don't understand how being exploitable would change your opinion on laws that try and prevent exploitation? shocker...
- RandoHolmes 6y agoHaving been homeless in my life, I agree with you and I submit anyone who disagrees with you has lived a charmed life.
- emilfihlman 6y agoIf you've been poor then you can see that these laws that limit the kind of work people want to do aren't the reason for you being poor. What should be had is sufficient welfare programs and still let people work as they want (mostly).
- djbebs 6y agoYou protect people by having an effective and sustainable social state, not by making the economy more inefficient and offloading your social policies to the hands of the companies that are least able to avoid them. Is this really what you want? To have your economy become less able to sustain social welfare, and to have the least moral companies become a greater and greater part of the economy? Because with the policies you are advocating that is what you are selecting for.
- godelzilla 6y ago>You protect people by having an effective and sustainable social state We're talking about the United States here.
- AbrahamParangi 6y agoDo you think the people you ask to sacrifice are rich?
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y agoIf you speak english there is a very good likelyhood you dont know what it really means to be poor. Exhibit A: Take most countries in south America, like Peru, Bolivia or Ecuador. They have labor laws that mandate workers should receive x (usually 3) months severance for every year worked. As a result massive underemployment which means people are literally working the streets to make ends meet. Minimum wage is the least of your worries when your wages will come from selling produce in the middle of the road. You havent seen poverty until you see people living on top of garbage heaps picking up traah to survive. Thats the kind of stuff you see in countries swimming in labor regulations.
- kazinator 6y ago> but have you ever been truly poor If poor people are whom these meddlesome laws are supposed to protect, then draft the laws that way. Someone who is not poor doesn't want to be screwed over by some protect-the-poor labor law. E.g. it could be that a freelancer must be considered an employee if they are paid peanuts. If they are amply compensated, then not. Various other kinds of labor laws could be sensitive to compensation. Nobody should be required to work without a break. But some consultant taking $200/hr from you should probably not be entitled to 8 hours pay for 7.5 hours work, with a paid 30 minute lunch period. Work safety should be non-negotiable. Anyone working on your site should be safe, highly paid or not.
- eli_gottlieb 6y ago>A laws designed to affect everyone but instead has hundreds of exemptions carved out has no place existing. Then let's get rid of the exemptions, not the law.
- blackflame7000 6y agoAt first I was inclined to agree with the parent comment, but your counter-argument is something I didn't consider. While there is unquestionably a role for government in consumer and child protection, to what degree should the government be able to limit freedom for safety. I personally believe freedom includes the freedom to be stupid so long as it doesn't hurt anybody else however others would disagree.
- lumost 6y agoHistoric evidence shows that most workers do not have the ability to negotiate with their employers on workplace safety, and that many workers are sufficiently economically constrained to accept high long-term health, and short-term accident risks at a job. Competitive companies will rarely make decisions that lower worker productivity. So the case of "freedom to be stupid" tends to lead to a race to the bottom on safety standards, as companies cut safety to increase productivity - and workers get dragged along for the ride.
- parineum 6y ago> Historic evidence shows that most workers do not have the ability to negotiate with their employers on workplace safety I wonder how the perception of these laws would change under a more unionized workforce. As an example, professional sports players unions are fairly powerful and the risk of injury is pretty high, much higher than I'd expect to be acceptable under OSHA, and people seem pretty comfortable with it as long as the players are informed of the risk (CTE disclaimer).
- Talanes 6y agoIsn't that just the Nordic model? No minimum wage, but omnipresent collective bargaining for every field.
- whiddershins 6y agoSafety standards could be addressed by insurability, and this is really a very separate concept from wage. Look up the Underwriters Laboratory for a real life example of this happening without government, it’s successes are all around us.
- Shivetya 6y agoHyperbole does not make for a valid argument and this is what the laws supporters seem to always resort to. Throwing up absurd requests that those with an opposing view are not requesting. No, no one is asking to throw out worker protections. You would think this site would be free of such shit but at times this place is worse than reddit That California further manipulated the law at the last moment to excuse certain professions over others should be a red flag to how politically targeted this originally was. That taxi drivers are not protected by the law because cities and counties can choose to not apply it should be a big hint here. love the cry babies that were offended, but HN is no better than reddit and the amounts of hyperbole here is astounding
- marcinzm 6y ago>Hyperbole does not make for a valid argument and this is what the laws supporters seem to always resort to Neither does saying "oh how dare they interfere in the sacred ability of two consenting parties to work together." All I did was point out that the ship has sailed long ago and using that form of moral argument doesn't fly.
- whiddershins 6y agoNo, because that moral argument still matters. Just because it hadn’t been adhered to in a purist sense doesn’t mean we’ve all agreed to, for example, a centrally managed economy, which would be the extreme on the other end. This California law is by my estimation very invasive and bad. I come to that conclusion in part based on how much it violates the moral right to engage in commerce.
- dang 6y agoCould you please make your substantive points without breaking the site guidelines? There's interesting information in your comment but it's drowned out by the name-calling and dissing of the community. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Hnaomyiph 6y agoThe line should be drawn at where pay is discussed.
- baryphonic 6y ago> Are you arguing that all labor laws, workplace safety laws, minimum wage laws, anti-compete laws and so on should be repealed? After all, they all get in the way of two consenting parties deciding to work together. If not then it's merely a question of where the line is drawn and that's a murky issue. We should repeal every minimum wage law, yes. They were created a century ago with racist intentions, their effects are still racist and yet today they are defended as being "anti-racist." The actual minimum wage is and always has been $0, and more people get to (not) work for this wage in the minimum wage regime than would without it. I have yet to see a reason why a body of torts and collective bargaining would not be completely effective at resolving the real issues that need solutions in labor law and workplace safety. (I'm not sure what you mean by "anti-compete" laws in a labor relations context.) The existing regime where administrative bureaucracies are essentially intermediaries with perverse incentives to reduce exchange between two otherwise consenting parties seems like the worst possible world. To reframe your question, I think the solution is not "no laws," but laws that encourage more exchange but in a way that reduces power imbalances between consenting parties and give the parties a solid basis of legal (or equitable) recourse for undeniable wrongs that happen that were not anticipated by the contract.
- kittiepryde 6y ago1 person vs a large company is a power imbalance. The company doesn't even need you to survive. You need it.
- WalterBright 6y agoIt follows from that that Microsoft/Google/Etc would be paying all their employees minimum wage.
- marcinzm 6y agoYou mean they’d do something like form a cartel with each other to keep wages down in unison?
- 6y ago
- unishark 6y ago> Are you arguing that all labor laws, workplace safety laws, minimum wage laws, anti-compete laws and so on should be repealed? The implication being that without such laws, enslavement of children, poisoning and maiming of workers, and other horrors would be totally legal in America? Perhaps the real problem is the mess that occurs when governments recognize and try to control abstractions like corporations to protect people from liability.
- michaelmrose 6y agoLiability is not sufficient when a sufficient power imbalance exists.
- cft 6y agoSo the civil law system is not sufficient when the power balance exist? That's a Marxist argument. The results have been demonstrated.
- throwanem 6y agoYou're right, they have. Unfortunately, having failed to retain the lessons of the first Gilded Age, we're now well into a second, and closer to its inevitable failure and collapse than to its "morning in America" beginning. So it goes.
- luxurycommunism 6y agoThis is Ycombinator. A lot of people are trying to rationalize why they're being squeezed by startup companies instead of fighting for their dignity and labor rights.
- vibrio_bobtail 6y agoThis issue does not seem murky at all. The legislators way over reached when writing this bill. There are absolutely people who are being exploited as independent contractors like uber drivers and other gig economy workers. If the law focused on these areas I would have no problem. But they took it much further and legislated entire industries of professionals. Specifically both my wife, a freelance writer, and my mother, a court reporter, have been negatively impacted by this law. I know more about the writer point of view and it is clear the legislators didn't both to understand the industry when placing the 35 article limit per client. My wife has multiple clients whom she writes a weekly blog post for. This is now illegal to do and my wife has lost clients over it. This area of the law is totally backwards the only time my wife has been exploited was as an employee. She went from making 40k as a full time employee to a range of 120k-150k as a freelancer. We are definitely planning on leaving the state over this and will be voting republican (except president) for the first time in our lives over this law. The TLDR of this law is that arrogant legislators decided to write a bill about dozens of industries they didn't bother to learn anything about.
- corrys 6y agoI, of course, don’t have all the context of your wife’s situation. However, it seems like she could register a company that provides writing services - and, therefore, be unaffected by this law? If a person is actually engaged in a business independently, they won’t have to change their status. Lyft and Uber drivers don’t own independent businesses. “The person is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.”
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y agoHot tip: If your public views conflict with your private practice, it invalidates your public views, not your private practice. You cant be in favor of a law in a public forum and then repudiate it from a personal viewpoint
- curryst 6y agoThe fundamental problem is that those laws exist to protect vulnerable workers, but they also inadvertently affect non-vulnerable workers. Someone should not have to work for less than minimum wage because they have less bargaining power than a corporation. On the other hand, if someone has a full time job with benefits and wants to drive for Uber in their spare time for nothing more than the price of wear and tear on their car, morally, they should be allowed to in my opinion. Hypothetically, if Bill Gates wanted to drive for Uber for free, he should (morally) be allowed to, right? If so, then we would agree that there exists some group of people that should be allowed to waive those rights. It's just a question of how large that group is and on what criteria people are a part of it. What I can't figure out is how to allow non-vulnerable workers to waive those protections without affecting the vulnerable workers. The non-vulnerable workers come with a lot of cost advantages, which makes them more appealing than the vulnerable workers and creates pressure to make the non-vulnerable conditions the new "normal". Or worse yet, the jobs would only be available to people who already have primary employment (further reinforcing class discrepancies).