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All? 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 instea

All? 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 ago
There should be a law banning law exemptions..of which a select few will be exempt /s
xnyan 6y ago
I 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 ago
  I’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 ago
      Why are the drivers driving for Uber and not say being Instacart shoppers where they can be employees?
    - ChrisLomont 6y ago
      Wage floors push the most vulnerable out of the workforce. Is that bad?
      - XMPPwocky 6y ago
        If 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 ago
        If 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 ago
        This 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.
        manigandham 6y ago
        Uber is profitable in many markets and was approaching broad profitability this year before Covid.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > 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. Given that Uber adjusted their platform to adhere to the ABC test in jurisdictions where the justice system upheld the law, I doubt that they'll leave. If they were to leave, though, that would be a good thing. There are dozens of companies that do follow the law and do pay their taxes that are champing at the bit to eat Uber's lunch.
    - syshum 6y ago
      I dont think there are... Uber and Lyft filled a market need for lower cost ride services. The key was they were LOWER COST than a taxi, if everyone had to be full employee's with all of the costs that entils it is likely the fare will be at or higher than taxis, And given there would be less competition between drivers, the service would also drop It would just be a taxi service which was universally hated as too expensive with poor service.
      - winkeltripel 6y ago
        Did they actually cost less after accounting for a normal profit margin? My understanding was that Uber lost money on each ride, right?
        gruez 6y ago
        >My understanding was that Uber lost money on each ride, right? AFAIK in mature markets they made a profit
    - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
      You mean the taxi companies that Uber and Lyft effectively replaced that were even more sleazy? I’m still wondering how the taxi industry managed to get an exemption from these new standards and why that was deemed fair.
      - heavyset_go 6y ago
- cortesoft 6y ago
  I 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 ago
    The 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 ago
  How 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 ago
      Every 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 ago
        JS 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 ago
    Business 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 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. 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 ago
      The 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 ago
  Sure, 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 ago
  Labor 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 ago
    That's a terrible example to make your argument.
  - RandoHolmes 6y ago
    Oh 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    What if, without minimum wage, there was effectively infinite work available?
    - amadeuspagel 6y ago
      Not sure what you're trying to say here.
  - RandoHolmes 6y ago
    You don't understand how being exploitable would change your opinion on laws that try and prevent exploitation? shocker...
- RandoHolmes 6y ago
  Having been homeless in my life, I agree with you and I submit anyone who disagrees with you has lived a charmed life.
- emilfihlman 6y ago
  If 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 ago
  You 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 ago
  Do you think the people you ask to sacrifice are rich?
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  If 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 ago

There should be a law banning law exemptions..of which a select few will be exempt /s

xnyan 6y ago

I 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 ago
I’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 ago
    Why are the drivers driving for Uber and not say being Instacart shoppers where they can be employees?
  - ChrisLomont 6y ago
    Wage floors push the most vulnerable out of the workforce. Is that bad?
    - XMPPwocky 6y ago
      If 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 ago
        If 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 ago
      This 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.
      - manigandham 6y ago
        Uber is profitable in many markets and was approaching broad profitability this year before Covid.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > 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. Given that Uber adjusted their platform to adhere to the ABC test in jurisdictions where the justice system upheld the law, I doubt that they'll leave. If they were to leave, though, that would be a good thing. There are dozens of companies that do follow the law and do pay their taxes that are champing at the bit to eat Uber's lunch.
  - syshum 6y ago
    I dont think there are... Uber and Lyft filled a market need for lower cost ride services. The key was they were LOWER COST than a taxi, if everyone had to be full employee's with all of the costs that entils it is likely the fare will be at or higher than taxis, And given there would be less competition between drivers, the service would also drop It would just be a taxi service which was universally hated as too expensive with poor service.
    - winkeltripel 6y ago
      Did they actually cost less after accounting for a normal profit margin? My understanding was that Uber lost money on each ride, right?
      - gruez 6y ago
        >My understanding was that Uber lost money on each ride, right? AFAIK in mature markets they made a profit
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    You mean the taxi companies that Uber and Lyft effectively replaced that were even more sleazy? I’m still wondering how the taxi industry managed to get an exemption from these new standards and why that was deemed fair.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
cortesoft 6y ago
I 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 ago
  The 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 ago
How 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 ago
    Every 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 ago
      JS 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 ago
  Business 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 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. 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 ago
    The 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 ago
Sure, 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 ago
Labor 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 ago
  That's a terrible example to make your argument.
- RandoHolmes 6y ago
  Oh 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 ago
I 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 ago
  What if, without minimum wage, there was effectively infinite work available?
  - amadeuspagel 6y ago
    Not sure what you're trying to say here.
- RandoHolmes 6y ago
  You don't understand how being exploitable would change your opinion on laws that try and prevent exploitation? shocker...
RandoHolmes 6y ago
Having been homeless in my life, I agree with you and I submit anyone who disagrees with you has lived a charmed life.
emilfihlman 6y ago
If 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 ago
You 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 ago
Do you think the people you ask to sacrifice are rich?
IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
If 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.