8 ms·

People should be free to work for whom they please under the terms they want. As a Californian, I am proud of the people for getting this passed.

jrowley 6y ago
We already have laws that restrict how Californians work (eg minimum wage, OSHA, EEOC). Do you think we should rollback those requirements as well, in the name of freedom?
- indymike 6y ago
  Employment and work are not always the same thing.
- virmundi 6y ago
  Yes. There are developed countries without a minimum wage. Having a floor only limits labor’s ability to find buyers.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > Having a floor only limits labor’s ability to find buyers. It is not a priori true that a minimum wage is not utility maximizing, depending on the regime of the supply/demand curve we're on. This is supercharged when you consider the diminishing marginal returns to wealth.
  - jrowley 6y ago
    Yeah, they can have no minimum wage because they have organized labor. But if you’re a 1099 for Uber and you attempt to organize a union, you’ll just get fired. Without the ability to form a union, or wage protection, workers are going to be racing to the bottom.
    - jrowley 6y ago
      Also in those developed countries without minimum wage, they have national healthcare. So a poor comparison in my opinion.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - virmundi 6y ago
      If they don’t derive benefit, they wouldn’t work for Uber. There are other jobs available. Also we’ve stopped expecting people to move to find a better life.
    - virmundi 6y ago
      You can make your own Uber. There is nothing stopping people from doing that. Lyft and Uber are all powered by VC money. There is nothing stopping a communalist approach to software and profit distribution.
      - jrowley 6y ago
        I cannot “make my own Uber”. I don’t have a bottomless pit of Saudi Oil money to throw into this unprofitable space. The only people that have the money to compete have no desire to put workers first. They are just trying to establish a monopoly and drive existing, successful, more efficient and sustainable forms of transit out of business.
        cbozeman 6y ago
        Yes you can. You don't want to. That's not the same thing. Its been my experience over the decades that when people say, "I can't do "x"", they really mean, "Doing "x" is going to be really, really hard and I don't want to work hard."
        jrowley 6y ago
        First, I highly doubt any investors would be interested in yet another Uber/Lyft competitor with nothing to differentiate. They operate at billion dollar losses and just laid off a bunch of employees. It's just a race to who can drive prices lowest and establish a monopoly. Second, you're right in part, I don't want to build another uber, but not because its hard work (I like hard work). It's just that ethically Uber is pushing our country in the wrong direction, furthering our dependence on private individual transit, while further burdening the worker and the environment.
        CountSessine 6y ago
        The barrier to entry for a taxi service, in a sensible jurisdiction, is very low - put a sign on your car and start driving people around. Uber and Lyft became so popular precisely because there are so many insensibly-regulated jurisdictions that made even this start-your-own-taxi-service illegal in order to create artificial scarcity. Highly-regulated medallion taxi services suck - both independent taxis as well as Uber are a threat to them because they're comprehensively better for customers. You literally have to legislate good service away for medallion taxis to work. And that's exactly what AB5 was.
SilasX 6y ago
Even accepting that, what's the relevance to Prop 22/AB5 -- let alone my comment? Here you have a system of ruleset 1 being applied to one group, and ruleset 2 being applied to another. The CA legislature passed AB5, which changed who ruleset 2 to applied to in a very arbitrary way. Prop 22 said, "oh, add this subgroup to 1, permanently, regardless of what the legislature does with anything else". Per my orginal comment, that's not an improvement, even you believe as you do.
mdorazio 6y ago
Many Californians would willingly work in 1900s factory conditions with machines eating body parts and people passing out from exhaustion because that's the only work they can get. This kind of completely unregulated employment market that you seem to want is exactly the thing that people fought against for decades for damn good reasons.
- shuckles 6y ago
  There is plenty of unfilled demand for the trades, so I’m skeptical that there is a large pool of labor willing to work those kinds of jobs.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ac29 6y ago
    Sure, but the post you are responding to isn't talking about things like electricians or plumbers - which require some amount of training and licensing/certification. They're talking about things like garment workers - jobs with little to no requirements.
    - shuckles 6y ago
      Unskilled day labor in the Bay Area easily charges $25/day with breaks and, if your GC is ethical, workers comp. I also think it's incorrect to characterize factory workers as unskilled. Labor intensive manufacturing in America usually involves qualities of dexterity, since those are hard to automate, which inherently have a skill component.
  - bsder 6y ago
    Your statement is factually false. If there were that much pent up demand for the trades, wages would be going up. That is not the case.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
arrosenberg 6y ago
> People should be free to work for whom they please under the terms they want. The genesis of the whole issue is that Uber and Lyft are claiming people can work "under any terms they want" as ICs, but they aren't actually able to do things that ICs can do, like set their own rates and pick their own customers.
- lhorie 6y ago
  My understanding is that as of recently Uber does allow drivers to opt out of automatic pricing and pick their own multiplier[1] [1] https://www.uber.com/blog/california/set-your-fares/ https://www.uber.com/blog/california/set-your-fares/
  - arrosenberg 6y ago
    Certainly appears to be a step in the right direction. If the result of government regulation is that Uber and Lyft wind up treating the drivers like actual ICs on "their own terms", that seems like a win for everyone.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  Well, ICs can set their own rates but clients can also set a rate they are willing to pay. If Lyft pays more than Uber, Uber doesn't stop IC from accepting Lyft rate instead of Uber. If I as an IC want to charge $100/hr for taxi rides, it doesn't mean any client has to take me up on that. And a client can have a policy of paying all IC taxi drivers X rate. What's wrong with that?
sagarm 6y ago
Do you remember how we gave Uber/Lyft drivers unemployment in the CARES Act even though they never paid unemployment insurance? Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. The oligarchy wins again.

jrowley 6y ago

We already have laws that restrict how Californians work (eg minimum wage, OSHA, EEOC). Do you think we should rollback those requirements as well, in the name of freedom?

indymike 6y ago
Employment and work are not always the same thing.
virmundi 6y ago
Yes. There are developed countries without a minimum wage. Having a floor only limits labor’s ability to find buyers.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > Having a floor only limits labor’s ability to find buyers. It is not a priori true that a minimum wage is not utility maximizing, depending on the regime of the supply/demand curve we're on. This is supercharged when you consider the diminishing marginal returns to wealth.
- jrowley 6y ago
  Yeah, they can have no minimum wage because they have organized labor. But if you’re a 1099 for Uber and you attempt to organize a union, you’ll just get fired. Without the ability to form a union, or wage protection, workers are going to be racing to the bottom.
  - jrowley 6y ago
    Also in those developed countries without minimum wage, they have national healthcare. So a poor comparison in my opinion.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - virmundi 6y ago
    If they don’t derive benefit, they wouldn’t work for Uber. There are other jobs available. Also we’ve stopped expecting people to move to find a better life.
  - virmundi 6y ago
    You can make your own Uber. There is nothing stopping people from doing that. Lyft and Uber are all powered by VC money. There is nothing stopping a communalist approach to software and profit distribution.
    - jrowley 6y ago
      I cannot “make my own Uber”. I don’t have a bottomless pit of Saudi Oil money to throw into this unprofitable space. The only people that have the money to compete have no desire to put workers first. They are just trying to establish a monopoly and drive existing, successful, more efficient and sustainable forms of transit out of business.
      - cbozeman 6y ago
        Yes you can. You don't want to. That's not the same thing. Its been my experience over the decades that when people say, "I can't do "x"", they really mean, "Doing "x" is going to be really, really hard and I don't want to work hard."
        jrowley 6y ago
        First, I highly doubt any investors would be interested in yet another Uber/Lyft competitor with nothing to differentiate. They operate at billion dollar losses and just laid off a bunch of employees. It's just a race to who can drive prices lowest and establish a monopoly. Second, you're right in part, I don't want to build another uber, but not because its hard work (I like hard work). It's just that ethically Uber is pushing our country in the wrong direction, furthering our dependence on private individual transit, while further burdening the worker and the environment.
      - CountSessine 6y ago
        The barrier to entry for a taxi service, in a sensible jurisdiction, is very low - put a sign on your car and start driving people around. Uber and Lyft became so popular precisely because there are so many insensibly-regulated jurisdictions that made even this start-your-own-taxi-service illegal in order to create artificial scarcity. Highly-regulated medallion taxi services suck - both independent taxis as well as Uber are a threat to them because they're comprehensively better for customers. You literally have to legislate good service away for medallion taxis to work. And that's exactly what AB5 was.

SilasX 6y ago

Even accepting that, what's the relevance to Prop 22/AB5 -- let alone my comment? Here you have a system of ruleset 1 being applied to one group, and ruleset 2 being applied to another. The CA legislature passed AB5, which changed who ruleset 2 to applied to in a very arbitrary way. Prop 22 said, "oh, add this subgroup to 1, permanently, regardless of what the legislature does with anything else". Per my orginal comment, that's not an improvement, even you believe as you do.

mdorazio 6y ago

Many Californians would willingly work in 1900s factory conditions with machines eating body parts and people passing out from exhaustion because that's the only work they can get. This kind of completely unregulated employment market that you seem to want is exactly the thing that people fought against for decades for damn good reasons.

shuckles 6y ago
There is plenty of unfilled demand for the trades, so I’m skeptical that there is a large pool of labor willing to work those kinds of jobs.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ac29 6y ago
  Sure, but the post you are responding to isn't talking about things like electricians or plumbers - which require some amount of training and licensing/certification. They're talking about things like garment workers - jobs with little to no requirements.
  - shuckles 6y ago
    Unskilled day labor in the Bay Area easily charges $25/day with breaks and, if your GC is ethical, workers comp. I also think it's incorrect to characterize factory workers as unskilled. Labor intensive manufacturing in America usually involves qualities of dexterity, since those are hard to automate, which inherently have a skill component.
- bsder 6y ago
  Your statement is factually false. If there were that much pent up demand for the trades, wages would be going up. That is not the case.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

arrosenberg 6y ago

> People should be free to work for whom they please under the terms they want. The genesis of the whole issue is that Uber and Lyft are claiming people can work "under any terms they want" as ICs, but they aren't actually able to do things that ICs can do, like set their own rates and pick their own customers.

lhorie 6y ago
My understanding is that as of recently Uber does allow drivers to opt out of automatic pricing and pick their own multiplier[1] [1] https://www.uber.com/blog/california/set-your-fares/ https://www.uber.com/blog/california/set-your-fares/
- arrosenberg 6y ago
  Certainly appears to be a step in the right direction. If the result of government regulation is that Uber and Lyft wind up treating the drivers like actual ICs on "their own terms", that seems like a win for everyone.
notsureaboutpg 6y ago
Well, ICs can set their own rates but clients can also set a rate they are willing to pay. If Lyft pays more than Uber, Uber doesn't stop IC from accepting Lyft rate instead of Uber. If I as an IC want to charge $100/hr for taxi rides, it doesn't mean any client has to take me up on that. And a client can have a policy of paying all IC taxi drivers X rate. What's wrong with that?

sagarm 6y ago

Do you remember how we gave Uber/Lyft drivers unemployment in the CARES Act even though they never paid unemployment insurance? Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. The oligarchy wins again.