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Have you tried finding work when your education is not in demand? Please don’t minimize other’s lived experience.
by satya71 6y ago
Have you tried finding work when your education is not in demand? Please don’t minimize other’s lived experience.
- sokoloff 6y agoThat's a fair point, but if your education is not in demand, I don't see a reason to think that driving a car, something that 80+% of American adults are capable of doing, should provide a full household income on 40 hours per week of effort. That initial condition (your education is not in demand) definitely represents a tough position, but it's not clear that it's ride-sharing's "fault" in any way. Instead, it seems to me like ride-sharing is providing them with a better alternative than whatever their next-best alternative is; in other words, it's helping them not harming them.
- pixelbash 6y agoSorry, are you saying that working a 40 hour week shouldn't earn a living wage if it's a non-specialised skill?
- sokoloff 6y agoI'm saying that if there is not enough demand for that work to support a wage that will provide a living wage on 40 hours/week, that you can't legislate up enough excess demand to make the equation solve the way you might like it to. In most (maybe all) markets, there is not enough consumer demand at the prices that would be required to support a living wage for everyone for whom flexible ride-share driving is the most lucrative work readily available. Now, iff that's true, what should the legislature do? Prevent that work from being done at all? Ration the supply (medallions or companies refusing to let drivers choose when/if to work)? The people said no, including a lot of current ride-share drivers.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y agoI think you need to give the parent poster a little more credit. People have all kinds of preferences for employment that go into determining a market-clearing wage. e.g. it is probably the case that loading garbage onto a truck doesn't require more skill/specialization than driving a car for hire However, the overwhelmingly vast amount of people prefer to do the job that they can do while sitting down, in an air-conditioned vehicle, vs. the one they have to do surrounded by stinking detritus, outside in all weathers. Based on my own prejudices, driving a car for hire sits in a relative sweet-spot of low skill, low physical demand, low discomfort. I agree there are undoubtedly personal safety factors that you're more exposed to than, say, flipping burgers at McDonalds.
- _alex_ 6y agowages are a market. "should" or "shouldn't" is irrelevant
- sokoloff 6y agoTo be fair to @pixelbash, I was the one who sloppily used "should". I meant it to imply that there's a market/economy effect that dominates, but it was sloppy/possibly ambiguous. I'm going to leave my comment unedited, but I wish I'd used "would" instead of "should" there to suggest that it's an outcome of economic inputs rather than a personal value judgment.
- pixelbash 6y agoThanks for the clarification, this is essentially what I was querying!
- refurb 6y agoSure. But can anyone honestly argue that driving for Uber/Lyft is the only employment option they have? I mean, what would they have done before those companies existed?
- eplanit 6y agoA little off topic, but where does this now commonly used phrase "lived experience" that lefties love to use so much come from. Doesn't the word "experience" cover the idea? Is it to differentiate from their reading or television "experiences"? I think the redundant "lived" part is added for dramatic effect.
- bazooka_penguin 6y agoWhy do you think Uber/Lyft will remain accessible if drivers have to be employees?