I think your view of the situation is certainly a valid way to look at it, I'd just disagree that the end state of taking AB5 or a similar law national is going

I think your view of the situation is certainly a valid way to look at it, I'd just disagree that the end state of taking AB5 or a similar law national is going to result in this this worst-case-scenario situation that you describe. For one thing, AB5 has since had a "cleanup law" passed to help alleviate unintended consequences. I think it's also more than fair to say that Uber and Lyft abuse the rules on independent contracting, and I think there's a very decent argument that their entire business model isn't viable in the first place without below-minimum wage compensation (after expenses). If shuttling people around the long distances of the suburbs for casual frequent trips was economically viable, taxi and livery companies would have already offered the service long before Uber and Lyft thought of the idea. Uber and Lyft are both exiting California, and to that I say: unviable businesses don't have the right to exist, and while you can say it's a net negative for the poorest workers, that's kind of like saying that banning child labor is bad for poor families. An enforceable minimum wage is the tool used to force companies to properly compensate their workers in industries where the labor supply is always be greater than the labor demand, and in my view Uber and Lyft completely skirted that by dumping all the risk and downside onto their "contractors," who were never given the same negotiation and job selection rights that a normal contractor has. They were given a switch to go on or off shift and that's about it. When it comes to things that happen in Australia and the issues you bring up with teacher and police unions, I think you're tying together separate issues that are not related. The status of Uber in Australia is not related to the status of Uber in the United States, and it's not at all related to labor law in the United States. It's a different country. The union status of teachers and police isn't at all related to any independent contractors in the USA. To my knowledge, AB5 didn't lead to the creation of any new unions or a mass shift to W-2 employment.