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I find this all really bizarre that so many people are so quick to jump to this kind of thinking. Honest question: why does anyone think these people are being

I find this all really bizarre that so many people are so quick to jump to this kind of thinking. Honest question: why does anyone think these people are being taken advantage of? Why would you work a gig job if it weren’t a) desirable for whatever reason or b) if you had a better offer. Where do we draw the line of interfering with an agreement between two competent, free parties?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
schroeding 4y ago
> or b) if you had a better offer. ... isn't the lack of a better offer one of the components necessary to exploit a worker? You can only exploit a worker, without violence, if they are (financially) pressed against the wall and have no better options, right?
- qeternity 4y ago
  Not necessarily, but let's take your example. People often point that the gig companies aren't making any money, and the response to that is often along the lines of "well a business model like this shouldn't exist then". So given that these companies aren't making money, what if these changes drive them out of existence? If gig workers truly don't have a better offer, well now they have no offers. What do this people do then?
  - schroeding 4y ago
    They will do an even shittier job or be without any income. You want to say "better this job than the worse one then", right? I understand that. But if you view the working conditions of gig workers as exploitive, this can't justify their existence, IMO. Otherwise you get a race to the bottom and can justify any work condition with the exception of the absolute bottom of the barrel. Whether or not you see the working conditions for gig workers as exploitive is up to you, of course.
    - qeternity 4y ago
      This is a fair argument (not one I agree with), but this is much larger than gig workers, and quickly jumps to minimum wage, UBI, etc. I have views on that, not appropriate for this thread, and I accept if someone wants to make this argument. But again, this is a social critique...nothing specific to the gig economy.
seydor 4y ago
humanitarian reasons - the same reason why workers rights in general exist in the first place.
- bigbillheck 4y ago
  Workers rights exist only because they were fought for, and will exist only as long as people are willing to fight for them.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
namdnay 4y ago
You could give that argument for pretty much any labour dispute. If those workers don’t want to spend 70 hours a week in the factory, why don’t they find another job instead? If the miners are not happy about the safety measures, why don’t they go to another mine that’s safer? To answer your question, yes it’s probably a bit of a and a lot of b, but what does that change?
- qeternity 4y ago
  Yes, and I think it's a fair argument, which then leads to some reasonable conclusion. In a modern country, most people don't believe that people should put their life at undue risk, even if that makes the system less efficient. I happen to agree with this. My open question again was not about whether to draw a line, like your mining example, but rather where we draw it. I just happen to be of the opinion that gig workers, and miners working in dangerous conditions, happen to fall on opposite sides of that line.
  - polygamous_bat 4y ago
    I think I missed your explanation of why they fall on the opposite line. Care to explain?
- Flankk 4y ago
andrewflnr 4y ago
As a society, we have to decide that certain kinds of voluntary agreements are too exploitative, have too big of a power differential, to be compatible with liberty and therefore are not permissible. Selling yourself into literal slavery comes to mind, but the bar can be a lot higher than that. Part of making sure that "better offers" exist is banning intolerable offers. If this damages or bankrupts your business, it means you weren't producing enough value for the resources, including humans' finite lifetimes, that you were consuming. In this particular case, the important thing to me is the focus on honesty about the nature of the job. If they tell you, while you're voluntarily entering an agreement, that you'll have a certain degree of flexibility, and in practice they try not to let you have that, you've been lured into the deal on false premises. Usually we call that fraud, and in any case it should be uncontroversial that it's immoral. After reading the comments here I was prepared to be disappointed by the policy direction, but instead I'm only disappointed I didn't see any specific enforcement teeth mentioned. Demanding transparency and that companies treat their contractors as contractors is IMO the correct direction; it's certainly better than retroactively classifying as employees people who never wanted to be such, as we sometimes see.
- qeternity 4y ago
  I think all of the hyperbole around slavery is massively disrespectful to actual slavery, which still exists in 2022. An Uber driver is not a slave. But I do agree with you on everything else. I think that companies who want to hire contractors, should treat them as such, and not as employees for which they can reap the rewards of a contractor classification.
  - andrewflnr 4y ago
    Slavery is an existence proof for the general principle, not a direct comparison to Uber. I made clear reference to higher standards we could also choose to draw, that would be more relevant to gig work. I think I made it pretty damn clear I'm not opposed to gig work in principle. Don't ask me to compromise my arguments for some wooly notion of "respect" that's violated by the bare mention of slavery in a context that also disusses less horrible things. That makes everyone dumber. Of all forums, on HN I feel I ought to be able to make a precise logical statement, meaning no more or less than I said, and be understood correctly. I like to think that most readers did, and the commenters (you less so, I'll grant) trying to draw obviously stupid conclusions from my careful wording are the minority.
FireSparrowWeld 4y ago
We think they're suffering because they're saying they're suffering. Zero people would care about this if there wasn't a huge outcry from the gig workers themselves! This isn't just paternalism, it's the gig workers themselves driving these changes.
- worried4future 4y ago
  > This isn't just paternalism, it's the gig workers themselves driving these changes. This isn't universal though. If you go to places where gig workers discuss these issues (say /r/UberDrivers) every post complaining about pay has people saying "if you don't like the fare, don't accept it!" and to be fair there are also lots who are not complaining about it. In any event, I don't mean to defend uber. I don't favor their model. I would just say that it is NOT universal.
  - FireSparrowWeld 4y ago
    You're arguing tactics vs. strategy though, the tactic is to optimize the current system, but the strategy is to fix the broken system. A single Uber driver can and often does do both.
    - worried4future 4y ago
      Some people don't agree that the system is even broken.
      - Kloversight2 4y ago
        "Some people" think all kinds of crazy shit, I'm not really seeing an argument here.
- qeternity 4y ago
  > We think they're suffering because they're saying they're suffering. Calfornia's AB5 was massively protested by gig workers. This sort of generalization is absolutely paternalism.
abigail95 4y ago
To the extent the companies are colluding on rates, that hurts the sellers and the buyers on any marketplace. If the company is using some AI model to resolve disputes against statutory and contract requirements, same problem. Same thing again with deceptive conduct and misrepresentation, if you take a dollar from one million people that you wouldn't have without deceiving people, this is a good area for regulator (like FCC) to handle. Class actions as an alternative seem to end up with a worse result.
probably_wrong 4y ago
In my opinion, the problem is that gig companies eventually "suck the air" out of the market and leave no room for those "better" jobs to exist. Let's take Uber as an example: if you wanted to open a rival company following the taxi laws that Uber ignores you'd have higher employee and maintenance costs. Eventually you'd go broke: your drivers may be happier, but yor clients are all taking Uber because it's cheaper. And once you go broke, your drivers have no choice but to work for Uber. It's a race to the bottom. > Where do we draw the line of interfering with an agreement between two competent, free parties? Typically, when the deal is too disproportionate and/or one-sided. Anti-usury laws and contracts void due to lack of consideration are two examples, but I'm sure there are others.
- fuzzzerd 4y ago
  Uber has not been cheaper than a taxi for years now. Definitely not since the pandemic started. People take Uber now because it's about the same cost as a taxi, but the credit card machine is never broken, and they can be summoned on demand.
  - warble 4y ago
    Agreed, I use Uber because it's easier, not because it's less expensive.
  - kylecordes 4y ago
    Even when I suspect it will be more expensive, I take it because I know it won't turn out that the credit card machine is inexplicably "broken" again. Want to really hurt Uber? Tighten taxi regulations so that a taxi may not legally operate without the ability to accept its full published list of acceptable payment options. The operator can take it out of service until repairs are complete, or police impound it.
- qeternity 4y ago
  > In my opinion, the problem is that gig companies eventually "suck the air" out of the market and leave no room for those "better" jobs to exist. You call it sucking the air out of the market because you don't like it. It's not a better job, it's the same job, you just want it to pay more. Yes, if you cannot provide a service as cheaply as your competitor, you go broke. That's capitalism. If Uber is the cheapest taxi provider, then yes they will dominate...but that's because consumers chose Uber over more expensive alternatives. If Uber can charge low prices because lots of people are willing to work for it, and consumers choose Uber because of its low prices...where is the problem? If Uber subsidizes rides and goes broke, they deserve that fate as well. > And once you go broke, your drivers have no choice but to work for Uber. Or they do something else. This is the natural balance of market forces. Driving an Uber is essentially unskilled labor. If the attractiveness of the job drops, people go and do something else. The labor pool shrinks, and Uber is then forced to raise wages to attract people back into their ranks. Your cut-and-dry extremes are just not how the real economy works. > Typically, when the deal is too disproportionate and/or one-sided. These contracts are not too one-sided. A gig worker can stop working at a moment's notice (which has historically been one of the perks).
CPLX 4y ago
> Where do we draw the line of interfering with an agreement between two competent, free parties? Constantly. Endlessly. Daily. We draw the line everywhere, all day, in every single aspect of lives. It’s the core concept of government, in fact it’s the basic premise of civilization. Two parties can’t agree to enter into slavery. Or a Ponzi scheme. Or a restaurant meal where the cooks don’t disinfect the kitchen. Or a bank where there’s not enough reserves. Or an airplane that hasn’t been maintained. Or a verbal agreement to buy a house. In all cases it’s because we’re not ok with the effect on society, like E. Coli outbreaks, plane crashes, bank failures, destitute old people, and lots of other stuff. It’s not necessarily that the people themselves are being taken advantage of. Society is. The companies are externalizing costs and risks on everyone instead of absorbing them. We get to decide that’s not OK.
- qeternity 4y ago
  I asked where we draw the line, not if we draw it. All of your examples are incredibly unlikely things for two informed parties to enter into. In fact, the reasons those laws exist is because of the information asymmetry. That seems reasonable to me. But gig workers are not under the illusion that they are going to receive healthcare or other benefits. It's like if I took a job offer for $X and then demanded I was being exploited because I want $Y. I fully support gig workers in pushing for more, I absolutely do. These are natural market forces. Everyone should act in their own self interest...we know that Uber will. I just think that in this instance, this qualifies as government overreach.
  - CPLX 4y ago
    I answered it. We draw the line where there are demonstrable harms to society and when information or power asymmetry is not avoidable, which externalizes costs onto society as a whole.
    - qeternity 4y ago
      Ok, and what is the unavoidable and unacceptable asymmetry at play here?
zhoujianfu 4y ago
I agree... and here's something weird (using DoorDash as an example): 1. Everybody says DoorDash doesn't pay their workers enough. 2. Everybody says DoorDash charges restaurants too much. 3. Everybody says DoorDash marks up the food too much. 4. Nobody is forced to use DoorDash, work for DoorDash, or sell on DoorDash. 5. DoorDash has never made a profit.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  That's not very weird to me. It just means DoorDash's business model is unsuitable and that DoorDash shouldn't exist.
  - Infinitesimus 4y ago
    I think the weird part is that they still exist despite all this.
steve76 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

schroeding 4y ago

> or b) if you had a better offer. ... isn't the lack of a better offer one of the components necessary to exploit a worker? You can only exploit a worker, without violence, if they are (financially) pressed against the wall and have no better options, right?

qeternity 4y ago
Not necessarily, but let's take your example. People often point that the gig companies aren't making any money, and the response to that is often along the lines of "well a business model like this shouldn't exist then". So given that these companies aren't making money, what if these changes drive them out of existence? If gig workers truly don't have a better offer, well now they have no offers. What do this people do then?
- schroeding 4y ago
  They will do an even shittier job or be without any income. You want to say "better this job than the worse one then", right? I understand that. But if you view the working conditions of gig workers as exploitive, this can't justify their existence, IMO. Otherwise you get a race to the bottom and can justify any work condition with the exception of the absolute bottom of the barrel. Whether or not you see the working conditions for gig workers as exploitive is up to you, of course.
  - qeternity 4y ago
    This is a fair argument (not one I agree with), but this is much larger than gig workers, and quickly jumps to minimum wage, UBI, etc. I have views on that, not appropriate for this thread, and I accept if someone wants to make this argument. But again, this is a social critique...nothing specific to the gig economy.

seydor 4y ago

humanitarian reasons - the same reason why workers rights in general exist in the first place.

bigbillheck 4y ago
Workers rights exist only because they were fought for, and will exist only as long as people are willing to fight for them.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

namdnay 4y ago

You could give that argument for pretty much any labour dispute. If those workers don’t want to spend 70 hours a week in the factory, why don’t they find another job instead? If the miners are not happy about the safety measures, why don’t they go to another mine that’s safer? To answer your question, yes it’s probably a bit of a and a lot of b, but what does that change?

qeternity 4y ago
Yes, and I think it's a fair argument, which then leads to some reasonable conclusion. In a modern country, most people don't believe that people should put their life at undue risk, even if that makes the system less efficient. I happen to agree with this. My open question again was not about whether to draw a line, like your mining example, but rather where we draw it. I just happen to be of the opinion that gig workers, and miners working in dangerous conditions, happen to fall on opposite sides of that line.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago
  I think I missed your explanation of why they fall on the opposite line. Care to explain?
Flankk 4y ago

andrewflnr 4y ago

As a society, we have to decide that certain kinds of voluntary agreements are too exploitative, have too big of a power differential, to be compatible with liberty and therefore are not permissible. Selling yourself into literal slavery comes to mind, but the bar can be a lot higher than that. Part of making sure that "better offers" exist is banning intolerable offers. If this damages or bankrupts your business, it means you weren't producing enough value for the resources, including humans' finite lifetimes, that you were consuming. In this particular case, the important thing to me is the focus on honesty about the nature of the job. If they tell you, while you're voluntarily entering an agreement, that you'll have a certain degree of flexibility, and in practice they try not to let you have that, you've been lured into the deal on false premises. Usually we call that fraud, and in any case it should be uncontroversial that it's immoral. After reading the comments here I was prepared to be disappointed by the policy direction, but instead I'm only disappointed I didn't see any specific enforcement teeth mentioned. Demanding transparency and that companies treat their contractors as contractors is IMO the correct direction; it's certainly better than retroactively classifying as employees people who never wanted to be such, as we sometimes see.

qeternity 4y ago
I think all of the hyperbole around slavery is massively disrespectful to actual slavery, which still exists in 2022. An Uber driver is not a slave. But I do agree with you on everything else. I think that companies who want to hire contractors, should treat them as such, and not as employees for which they can reap the rewards of a contractor classification.
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  Slavery is an existence proof for the general principle, not a direct comparison to Uber. I made clear reference to higher standards we could also choose to draw, that would be more relevant to gig work. I think I made it pretty damn clear I'm not opposed to gig work in principle. Don't ask me to compromise my arguments for some wooly notion of "respect" that's violated by the bare mention of slavery in a context that also disusses less horrible things. That makes everyone dumber. Of all forums, on HN I feel I ought to be able to make a precise logical statement, meaning no more or less than I said, and be understood correctly. I like to think that most readers did, and the commenters (you less so, I'll grant) trying to draw obviously stupid conclusions from my careful wording are the minority.

FireSparrowWeld 4y ago

We think they're suffering because they're saying they're suffering. Zero people would care about this if there wasn't a huge outcry from the gig workers themselves! This isn't just paternalism, it's the gig workers themselves driving these changes.

worried4future 4y ago
> This isn't just paternalism, it's the gig workers themselves driving these changes. This isn't universal though. If you go to places where gig workers discuss these issues (say /r/UberDrivers) every post complaining about pay has people saying "if you don't like the fare, don't accept it!" and to be fair there are also lots who are not complaining about it. In any event, I don't mean to defend uber. I don't favor their model. I would just say that it is NOT universal.
- FireSparrowWeld 4y ago
  You're arguing tactics vs. strategy though, the tactic is to optimize the current system, but the strategy is to fix the broken system. A single Uber driver can and often does do both.
  - worried4future 4y ago
    Some people don't agree that the system is even broken.
    - Kloversight2 4y ago
      "Some people" think all kinds of crazy shit, I'm not really seeing an argument here.
qeternity 4y ago
> We think they're suffering because they're saying they're suffering. Calfornia's AB5 was massively protested by gig workers. This sort of generalization is absolutely paternalism.

abigail95 4y ago

To the extent the companies are colluding on rates, that hurts the sellers and the buyers on any marketplace. If the company is using some AI model to resolve disputes against statutory and contract requirements, same problem. Same thing again with deceptive conduct and misrepresentation, if you take a dollar from one million people that you wouldn't have without deceiving people, this is a good area for regulator (like FCC) to handle. Class actions as an alternative seem to end up with a worse result.

probably_wrong 4y ago

In my opinion, the problem is that gig companies eventually "suck the air" out of the market and leave no room for those "better" jobs to exist. Let's take Uber as an example: if you wanted to open a rival company following the taxi laws that Uber ignores you'd have higher employee and maintenance costs. Eventually you'd go broke: your drivers may be happier, but yor clients are all taking Uber because it's cheaper. And once you go broke, your drivers have no choice but to work for Uber. It's a race to the bottom. > Where do we draw the line of interfering with an agreement between two competent, free parties? Typically, when the deal is too disproportionate and/or one-sided. Anti-usury laws and contracts void due to lack of consideration are two examples, but I'm sure there are others.

fuzzzerd 4y ago
Uber has not been cheaper than a taxi for years now. Definitely not since the pandemic started. People take Uber now because it's about the same cost as a taxi, but the credit card machine is never broken, and they can be summoned on demand.
- warble 4y ago
  Agreed, I use Uber because it's easier, not because it's less expensive.
- kylecordes 4y ago
  Even when I suspect it will be more expensive, I take it because I know it won't turn out that the credit card machine is inexplicably "broken" again. Want to really hurt Uber? Tighten taxi regulations so that a taxi may not legally operate without the ability to accept its full published list of acceptable payment options. The operator can take it out of service until repairs are complete, or police impound it.
qeternity 4y ago
> In my opinion, the problem is that gig companies eventually "suck the air" out of the market and leave no room for those "better" jobs to exist. You call it sucking the air out of the market because you don't like it. It's not a better job, it's the same job, you just want it to pay more. Yes, if you cannot provide a service as cheaply as your competitor, you go broke. That's capitalism. If Uber is the cheapest taxi provider, then yes they will dominate...but that's because consumers chose Uber over more expensive alternatives. If Uber can charge low prices because lots of people are willing to work for it, and consumers choose Uber because of its low prices...where is the problem? If Uber subsidizes rides and goes broke, they deserve that fate as well. > And once you go broke, your drivers have no choice but to work for Uber. Or they do something else. This is the natural balance of market forces. Driving an Uber is essentially unskilled labor. If the attractiveness of the job drops, people go and do something else. The labor pool shrinks, and Uber is then forced to raise wages to attract people back into their ranks. Your cut-and-dry extremes are just not how the real economy works. > Typically, when the deal is too disproportionate and/or one-sided. These contracts are not too one-sided. A gig worker can stop working at a moment's notice (which has historically been one of the perks).

CPLX 4y ago

> Where do we draw the line of interfering with an agreement between two competent, free parties? Constantly. Endlessly. Daily. We draw the line everywhere, all day, in every single aspect of lives. It’s the core concept of government, in fact it’s the basic premise of civilization. Two parties can’t agree to enter into slavery. Or a Ponzi scheme. Or a restaurant meal where the cooks don’t disinfect the kitchen. Or a bank where there’s not enough reserves. Or an airplane that hasn’t been maintained. Or a verbal agreement to buy a house. In all cases it’s because we’re not ok with the effect on society, like E. Coli outbreaks, plane crashes, bank failures, destitute old people, and lots of other stuff. It’s not necessarily that the people themselves are being taken advantage of. Society is. The companies are externalizing costs and risks on everyone instead of absorbing them. We get to decide that’s not OK.

qeternity 4y ago
I asked where we draw the line, not if we draw it. All of your examples are incredibly unlikely things for two informed parties to enter into. In fact, the reasons those laws exist is because of the information asymmetry. That seems reasonable to me. But gig workers are not under the illusion that they are going to receive healthcare or other benefits. It's like if I took a job offer for $X and then demanded I was being exploited because I want $Y. I fully support gig workers in pushing for more, I absolutely do. These are natural market forces. Everyone should act in their own self interest...we know that Uber will. I just think that in this instance, this qualifies as government overreach.
- CPLX 4y ago
  I answered it. We draw the line where there are demonstrable harms to society and when information or power asymmetry is not avoidable, which externalizes costs onto society as a whole.
  - qeternity 4y ago
    Ok, and what is the unavoidable and unacceptable asymmetry at play here?

zhoujianfu 4y ago

I agree... and here's something weird (using DoorDash as an example): 1. Everybody says DoorDash doesn't pay their workers enough. 2. Everybody says DoorDash charges restaurants too much. 3. Everybody says DoorDash marks up the food too much. 4. Nobody is forced to use DoorDash, work for DoorDash, or sell on DoorDash. 5. DoorDash has never made a profit.

sudosysgen 4y ago
That's not very weird to me. It just means DoorDash's business model is unsuitable and that DoorDash shouldn't exist.
- Infinitesimus 4y ago
  I think the weird part is that they still exist despite all this.

steve76 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]