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This is not even comparable. The law already passed and is not banning Uber/Lyft/Dordash it just places the same requirements other jobs have. They could eithe

• SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Whether Uber's position on AB5 is correct isn't relevant to the question of whether they should be legally prohibited from saying it. The government can't go around banning people from having the wrong opinions on laws.
  • pessimizer 6y ago
    Nobody's banning anyone from having an opinion on laws, so that's even more irrelevant.
    • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Did you mean to respond to a different comment thread? The parent commenter indicated that they think it should be illegal for Uber to say it might not be feasible to operate in California if the law passes.
  • tehjoker 6y ago
    Corporations are people my friend! -- Mitt Romney
• brian_cloutier 6y ago
  It's not necessarily a tantrum. The failure of Prop 22 will cause a massive disruption of an existing marketplace. No matter what you think of the morality of the existing setup, the failure of Prop 22 will force some large structural changes to how it operates. It seems likely that this will cause ride-sharing not to be economically feasible in rural areas where per-driver utilization is low. Operating in SF and LA will likely remain profitable but many drivers will be forced, by AB5, to stop driving. This will increase wait times and increase prices and cause lower ridership. It's very possible that Uber/Lyft will decide that the overhead of being an employer is not worth the reduced revenue, it's not like they're making a lot of money in the first place. It's also possible they'll decide they won't want to dilute their brands by offering a service which makes you wait 7 minutes for a ride. It is, of course, also possible that they'll decide to send a message / throw a tantrum, but your comment implies this is the only explanation. It's definitely not the only possible explanation and I'm not even sure it will be the most likely explaination.
  • plankers 6y ago
    >It's very possible that Uber/Lyft will decide that the overhead of being an employer is not worth the reduced revenue, it's not like they're making a lot of money in the first place. Here's the thing... they're not making _any_ money in the first place. Every single segment of Uber's business is loss-making. So AB5 will uh, force a loss-making, VC-capital-burning, parasitic business to be slightly more loss-making at the cost of providing a living wage to drivers? The whole situation is frankly absurd.
    • ponker 6y ago
      It’s not axiomatic that Uber is supposed to exist. I think it should, but that is a matter of opinion. It’s like Walmart saying, “if we pay a living wage we’ll become unviable!” Well, maybe you should be. Maybe stuff shouldn’t be that cheap.
    • infogulch 6y ago
      The point of labor laws is to force companies to conduct business in a way that doesn't infringe on the rights of employees. Making certain business practices financially unsound is the point. Uber/Lyft have found a loophole that enables them to skirt by one of the "Riders Must Be At Least This Tall" measuring sticks, and the law basically says: No, you actually have to be this tall, sorry. I don't see what the issue is.
      • chongli 6y ago
        It's a backwards way of going about it. Instead of forcing anyone who ever wants to hire a human being to pay for their health insurance, the government should be providing it for everyone. If I want to hire teenagers on my street to mow the lawn or babysit the kids, should I be forced to pay them benefits as well? The alternative is the way California is heading: instead of taking care of people's needs directly, it's regulation after regulation to lock everything up so that only entrenched corporations with the scale to afford all these benefits can afford to operate.
        • 6y ago
• thereisnospork 6y ago
  Attitudes like this are why I hate California, calling companies reacting to economic disincentives 'childish' with blithe disregard to the value they provide and the harm disincentives can have on the rest of us[0]. [0]Effectively banning Uber will literally kill people, for starters. To say nothing of the increased economic friction going back to the cab system.
  • meroes 6y ago
    stop astroturfing
  • refulgentis 6y ago
    A lot of things "literally kill" people, by the definition you're using. It's a weak argument if you move from "people will die, to say nothing of the impact to the economy" — presumably, of using a different taxi app? The strict adhesion to economics you're proposing would say a new marketing clearing price would be reached, not start making alarmist overstatements about what higher prices could imply
    • lhorie 6y ago
      GP is probably referring to the MADD campaign, which points to statistics that say that the rate of drunk driving decreased after ridesharing entered the picture.
      • shard 6y ago
        I would guess that it's not ridesharing, but app-based hailing which reduced drunk driving, by reducing the friction of hailing a ride. There is also the added effect of there being more vehicles available, which reduced wait times, but that can be achieved with increasing the number of medallions, so I don't believe there is a direct need for companies like Uber and Lyft to reduce drunk driving.
        • lhorie 6y ago
          Well, "can be achieved in theory" and "has happened in reality" are vastly different things. Some potential counter-arguments: - If it can be achieved via such a simple change, then why wasn't it? - Medallions and gig economy have vastly different incentive models, which tie very deeply with coverage and supply volume - What of the countless anecdotes of taxi no-shows even after rideshare became prevalent? - In most markets, it took a multinational giant burning through billions of dollars to get competitors to start playing catch up technology-wise - etc
• lhorie 6y ago
  > similar to baby making a tantrum This seems a bit misinformed. The reason they stated for leaving CA is due to logistics, i.e. a company can't process hiring paperwork for hundreds of thousands of people out of thin air. A more apt comparison would be your state government saying you have 6 months to rebuild your wooden house with bricks or face exorbitant fines. In that position, it wouldn't be a tantrum for you to decide to leave said state. Regardless, CA is a big market for rideshare, so even if they leave, Uber will surely come back to CA once they make whatever changes they need to their platform to conform with the local regulations. That's what they did in Austin.
  • bloomburger 6y ago
    This is where you’re wrong. This would set a precedent. Uber will definitely not renter CA or else it would send a message that other states can follow like California. CA was about 9% or Uber’s total rides before the pandemic, so it is significant, but they wouldn’t re-enter as it would risk the profitability profile of the whole company as the rest of the US adopts similar laws.
    • lhorie 6y ago
      > This would set a precedent That's a really good argument. Personally - and admittedly this is purely speculation - I think they would find some creative way to conform to the letter of the law without a drastic shift in business model. Someone elsewhere suggested, for example, something akin to an agency model, where they pay some amount to a sourcing company, and said company then retains a pool of workers that service requests from all rideshare and delivery apps. They could spin it into an opportunity to become said middle man themselves and profit from competitors and/or enter different gig economy verticals. Or they could settle for some middle ground with some loss of coverage but still more or less the same service. Or find some way to devour or partner with the taxi industry proper. Etc. The thing w/ regulation and precedents is that it doesn't have to be Uber. If a precedent is set by any other company, your hypothetical scenario of risk to profitability profile would affect Uber regardless, so it doesn't seem in their best interest to just part ways with CA and call it a day. On an opposing note, something else to consider is that the rest of the country (or the world, for that matter), may not agree with CA policymaking, especially as the CA political landscape drifts more and more towards the radical left side of the spectrum.
• Jommi 6y ago
  You're so far from the truth you can't even see it. Nearly every single other industry has an excpet from AB5 than gigworkers. It's an insanely stupid law that nobody wanted and was not passed via direct democracy. Nearly everyone agrees with this
• cactus2093 6y ago
  Well this sums up the progressive mentality extraordinarily well. "I don't really have a personal connection to this thing, pay much attention to it, wouldn't really care if it went away, but by God we need to set this rule I want to make it work exactly how I say it should. No, I haven't really studied it, I'm not going to rely on any data or "facts" or any of that nonsense, I'll only argue from first principles in a vague, hand wavy way. And I am not going to acknowledge any complexity the world, this is black and white and it will work exactly the simple way I say." And then by the time it's clear what the result of this decision was, you've already forgotten about it because, like you said, you don't even really care that much if these companies stay or go, and by extension if these drivers can keep driving to earn money or not.
• loxs 6y ago
  "They didn't 'ban' strip clubs, just mandated that strippers cannot get naked - just dance."