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Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

51 points by isalmon 11y ago

MichaelCrawford 11y ago
Just the other day someone posted a link about the "sharing economy" job of pretending to be a girlfriend. The service is promoted as a way to convince others that you're getting some. In reality is is used for many things, for example the author's "boyfriend" wrecked his car and needed someone to talk to. However the author found that she earned about one dollar per hour. The crowdsourcing company that she worked for points out that, as its workers are independent contractors, it is not bound by employment laws. I hasten to disagree but that's what the company actually says. I see the sharing economy as the problem not the solution.
djmdjm 11y ago
"sharing economy" sounds so much friendlier than "contractor, no workplace protections economy"
xname 11y ago
Hillary never needs to use anything like Uber or Airbnb. Whether sharing/contract economy is good or bad, it is a complicated issue. Why would we need a president pretending knows everything?
EGreg 11y ago
I happen to agree that there needs to be a better understanding. Personally I believe that ultimately we'll just expand unconditional basic income via a welfare state one way or the other, and people will choose to work if they want to. But until that happens... It would be a good idea to define the difference between a marketplace that connecta people and one that sets the terms without the two sides having input. Once again centralization causes the heavy hand of the central party, whether a marketplace, buyer or provider.
Natsu 11y ago
Hillary sat on the board of Wal-Mart from 1986 to 1992 and there aren't many places that exploit their workers much more than they do. It would have been nice if she had done some campaigning on behalf of workers back then.
- duncan_bayne 11y ago
  She's not campaigning for workers now, either. She's campaigning on behalf of lobbyists whose broken business models are being threatened by Uber and their ilk.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- donarb 11y ago
  That was back when Sam Walton was alive and pushing Buy American. Walmart went to shit after he died.
  - Natsu 11y ago
    Was it actually better for workers back then? As far as I ever knew, they've always had a habit of squeezing everyone for a little more every year and whatnot. Most "associates" (your average workers) get 30 hours/week and zero benefits, except when mandated otherwise by law, with ridiculously strict timing on things like breaks. Heck, they even specifically manage the number of cashiers to ensure that there is always a line as long as they have customers... even at 3 AM in the morning. And that's without going into all the random horror stories, like the workers locked inside doing inventory and unable to get someone to an ambulance, e.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/us/workers-assail-night-lock-ins-by-wal-mart.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/us/workers-assail-night-lo...
    - zaccus 11y ago
      I worked at Walmart when I was in college because they paid the highest wage in town. No joke, every other offer I received was minimum wage. It's not glorious, and it would definitely suck as a a career, but at the time it was the best unskilled work available. If Walmart employees had better alternatives they would take them.
      - Natsu 11y ago
brc 11y ago
The reason airbnb and uber exist is because the prior business models are broken with regards to a big enough portion of their potential customers. A conversation with the average taxi driver will reveal the job is no ticket to the high life or consistent pay. The way forward is to get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that. Ultimate flexibility is what efficient economies are about. Unions don't like that future and understandably try and fight it. It's a futile fight in the end. The reference to qualifying for a loan based on permanent work is not relevant. A history of stable earnings is enough to qualify for a loan. Permanent positions are no guarantee of enough employment to pay down most loans.
- ageek123 11y ago
  > The way forward is ton get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that. This. Among other things, it would go a long way towards fixing the health insurance problems in the country. One of the reasons the private health insurance market is so dysfunctional is that relatively few people participate in it (most people are covered by their employers).
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    The way the rest of the world has “fixed” health insurance is to have the state involved. Even the USA does this for anyone over 65 (where most of the spending occurs) and for anyone who is a veteran. For some reason covering the young and healthy seems too hard. It is almost as though there is a huge vested interest keen on maintaining the status quo at the expense of everyone else. Given that only unions are evil this could not be true.
    - norea-armozel 11y ago
      Kevin A Carson outlined in an essay how hospitals justify their prices on everything from saline to surgery on a managerial model which treats every service/good as revenue on the accounting books. Oddly enough, they got this model from the auto industry which did the same sort of model which obviously demands consumers to use the service/good as much as possible. For example, how many patients actually need a CT scan? Not many, really, but if you dig deeper the reason they do this is to get the maximum value of of their CT scan equipment even if a patient's symptoms don't match anything that would require such a service. Equally, many hospitals also compete with each other thus duplicate services or spend their budget on the look/feel of their facilities (how many people care wth the foyer of a hospital looks like?) which leads to the higher prices. Essentially, each patient pays the full cost of the medical services rendered unlike how consumers in other industries (the price of a meal or a cell phone is not at cost, often it's lower when you factor in everything to bring it to market). I think the way to clear the system is to do a multi-tier approach which may include single payer healthcare, but if you were to install that system into our hospital system as is then expect the US to go bankrupt in less than a decade. We have to break the back of the monopolists before we can get anything close to sane market prices.
nnq 11y ago
...so instead of refactoring your law so that contractors have the same social benefits as "full-time employees" instead, she wants to turn the contractors into more easily controlled full time wage slaves. I really hope you Americans don't vote a president with such twisted logic! ...imagine how this warped way of thinking would be manifested in international politics
ageek123 11y ago
Labor market flexibility is one of the great strengths of the US economy. It's one of the reasons why unemployment is back to reasonable levels even after the Great Recession. The freelancer economy has some downsides but in aggregate it's a good thing, both for workers and the economy as a whole. The opposite end of the spectrum is the labor market regulations in a country like Greece, which has always been a drag on their economy (even before their debt crisis). Anyway, this is a great opportunity for the Republicans to paint themselves as the party of progress and technology, though they need to clean up some of their backward views (climate change, etc.) before such a claim would be credible. The NY Times had a somewhat more balanced article about Hillary campaigning against Uber: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/business/rising-economic-insecurity-tied-to-decades-long-trend-in-employment-practices.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/business/rising-economic-i...
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  It would be fine if the price of housing, food, and healthcare weren't so far out of sync with the wages earned. This is going to lead to a permanent underclass where people are worse off than even serfs of the medieval period.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
JohnyLy 11y ago
Uber is a great service and a great idea. However, they encounter many legal problems. I am not surprised that Hillary Clinton wants to move this industry... a bit like the French government does.
meric 11y ago
CharityWatch says even a “minimally efficient” foundation spends 60 percent of its budget on programs. In the years 2009-2012, the Clinton Foundation devoted just 15 percent to charitable grants, according to an analysis of IRS filings by The Federalist. That fell to 10 percent in 2013. Forty-five percent was spent on salaries, perks and travel for staff. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/31/clintons_corruption_126800.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/31/clinton... Hiliary Clinton can be bought and is being bought through donations to her foundation.
onewaystreet 11y ago
David Plouffe, Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign manager (the guy who orchestrated Hillary's upset in the Democratic primary) is now the SVP of Policy and Strategy at Uber. This could get personal.
comrade1 11y ago
I know my opinion won't be popular on HN, but looking at uber, especially, and similar companies from the outside (American living in Europe the last 6 years), the u.s. appears to be in a race to the bottom, with people competing to lower their own wages. I like uber but I think they f*cked themselves over and deserve every bit of scrutiny they are getting. There are markets where they don't screw over the drivers, for example where I live in Zurich uber is the same price as a cab but it's more convenient because of the app. If uber was truly beneficial to their drivers in the u.s. They wouldn't be under this scrutiny. They deserve whatever pain they receive and hopefully someone more responsible will take over the market. Good luck fighting the political class. Uber will lose this fight.
- joinjune 11y ago
  Uber will fight the laws for at least a couple of years and by then be half way through replacing the entire labor force with autonomous cars. This is a political tactic designed to get Hillary points in the media. She's smart enough to know it'll have little to no long term impact.
  - comrade1 11y ago
    Frankly I'm surprised she picked uber as a target as uber has a very strong, large, and sophisticated political lobbying organization. Granted, they focus on local politics more than national, so maybe this is a sign of Hillary being out of touch with the local level. I don't think we'll have autonomous cars in 2 years.
  - rspeer 11y ago
    "A couple of years" is not even close to halfway to the time when autonomous cars will be available, convenient, and able to handle the traffic situations that Uber drivers do.
- jlebar 11y ago
  > If uber was truly beneficial to their drivers in the u.s. They wouldn't be under this scrutiny. Isn't this the wrong question? I should think the relevant question is, "is Uber beneficial to society as a whole?" It's entirely possible that drivers would be better off without Uber but that society is better off with Uber.
schimmy_changa 11y ago
Regardless of what you think of the issue, that read like a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. I know Techcrunch skews pro-tech, but at some point reading articles like that increases your filter bubble and ends up with the reader worse off. Instead of understanding WHY people feel so strongly enough about the issue that it's a political issue, a reader just hears essentially a diatribe of why Hillary Clinton is wrong and Uber is great... Again, no judgement on whether or not Uber is great or HC is wrong, just a concern that articles like this enhance the SV echo chamber to our own detriment.
interesting_att 11y ago
As someone who loves Uber and who spends thousands of dollars a year on their app, and as someone who dislikes Hillary, I cannot be happier with Hillary's stance. Uber will remain here and their rides will stay cheap. I am, however, very concerned about their drivers. Many of them are making huge investments purchasing new cars with the implicit (and sometimes borderline explicit, depending on the marketing rep you talk to at Uber) that they can have guaranteed work and a guaranteed wage. If über decides to cut driver wages in half and pocket the profits, drivers will be out of luck. This can be catastrophic for poor families, which will be basically be forced into wage slavery. This will have huge effects on the community as Uber gets bigger. We can all point to how Taxi unions and their lobbyists are evil (as a colored man, it's difficult for me to get picked up by one), how awesome Uber is w/ their investments in autonomous cars, and the free markets are great...but we need real employee protections in this country. We need real protection for drivers who are making a huge investment. This doesn't have to hurt consumers either, as über can still remain insanely profitable while maintaining lower prices. Edit: Removed the umlauts
- camillomiller 11y ago
  First, it's Uber, not Über. Then we should all have a reality check. All this sharing economy thing has gone a little bit too far now... It's masquerading as a revolutionary way to earn money for everybody except some greedy unions and lobbies that need to be "disrupted", and we don't see that it's just undercutting by spreading costs in an anticompetitive way. But much more important than that: the jobs they "create" are extremely weak, unprotected and they contribute to erode the middle class even more, all while centralizing wealth toward the top 1% that actually funds this sort of ventures. I really don't get what's so revolutionary in all the services where "sharing" actually means "exploiting lower middle class people's free time or temporary unemployment to provide a service without giving any warranty for the workers, providing cheaper services for the upper middle class". I understand and support those services where "sharing" keeps its real meaning. Like in car sharing or bike sharing, where you actually SHARE a car or a bike, and not someone else's cheap time.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  I am not sure if uber has the umlauts. While I am not great supporter of the taxi industry, I do think that you should not be too hard on the taxi drivers for not picking you up although I do understand your personal frustration. I am not sure how many uber drivers would be happy to pick up random people without knowing they had been pre-screened.
reilly3000 11y ago
This is why we have campaigns. We get to see the cadnidate's logic across a wide spectrum of topics. This is practically a deal killer for me and Hillary. I think that W2 employment is a dying model. Piecemeal 1099 work empowers every participant to have clear and direct economic benefit and takes the power away from corporations to exploit labor with manipulation about how incapable they are to function independently. They rob the individual of identity, forcing membership in the ranks of the company as a sense of self. Instead I think work will be distributed, scalable, and coordinated with great software. I think that work will happen based on real-time pricing and presence. I think that means having skills and a good reputation means you can always work when you want as much or as little as you want as long as you actually produce. I hope that said great software isn't owned and operated by a for-profit institution, but instead is a community-driven, decentralized tool. I think this would pave the way for as close as possible 'frictionless' marketplace where the value of things and people's time are based on the value they bring, not based on slick sales tactics or lobbied regulations. I seriously believe that government needs to empower and support independent work, or face a slow, 'Snow Crash' style extinction when mesh coordination brings about digital voting, etc. I get a sense that Hillary will in many ways enforce the status quo and that simply isn't the kind of leadership that we need as we approach 2020 and all that comes along with it.
xbmcuser 11y ago
Uber should have to follow the same laws that other taxi companies have to. I don't agree with the monopoly systems that are in place for taxis in most cities those should be removed. But at the same time many of these laws are so that taxis are available not just in the peak period but other times as well. So laws that force taxi companies to have part of the fleet available at all times should be also be enforced on uber and other such companies as well.

51 points by isalmon 11y ago

Just the other day someone posted a link about the "sharing economy" job of pretending to be a girlfriend. The service is promoted as a way to convince others that you're getting some. In reality is is used for many things, for example the author's "boyfriend" wrecked his car and needed someone to talk to. However the author found that she earned about one dollar per hour. The crowdsourcing company that she worked for points out that, as its workers are independent contractors, it is not bound by employment laws. I hasten to disagree but that's what the company actually says. I see the sharing economy as the problem not the solution.

djmdjm 11y ago

"sharing economy" sounds so much friendlier than "contractor, no workplace protections economy"

xname 11y ago

Hillary never needs to use anything like Uber or Airbnb. Whether sharing/contract economy is good or bad, it is a complicated issue. Why would we need a president pretending knows everything?

EGreg 11y ago

I happen to agree that there needs to be a better understanding. Personally I believe that ultimately we'll just expand unconditional basic income via a welfare state one way or the other, and people will choose to work if they want to. But until that happens... It would be a good idea to define the difference between a marketplace that connecta people and one that sets the terms without the two sides having input. Once again centralization causes the heavy hand of the central party, whether a marketplace, buyer or provider.

Natsu 11y ago

Hillary sat on the board of Wal-Mart from 1986 to 1992 and there aren't many places that exploit their workers much more than they do. It would have been nice if she had done some campaigning on behalf of workers back then.

duncan_bayne 11y ago
She's not campaigning for workers now, either. She's campaigning on behalf of lobbyists whose broken business models are being threatened by Uber and their ilk.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
donarb 11y ago
That was back when Sam Walton was alive and pushing Buy American. Walmart went to shit after he died.
- Natsu 11y ago
  Was it actually better for workers back then? As far as I ever knew, they've always had a habit of squeezing everyone for a little more every year and whatnot. Most "associates" (your average workers) get 30 hours/week and zero benefits, except when mandated otherwise by law, with ridiculously strict timing on things like breaks. Heck, they even specifically manage the number of cashiers to ensure that there is always a line as long as they have customers... even at 3 AM in the morning. And that's without going into all the random horror stories, like the workers locked inside doing inventory and unable to get someone to an ambulance, e.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/us/workers-assail-night-lock-ins-by-wal-mart.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/us/workers-assail-night-lo...
  - zaccus 11y ago
    I worked at Walmart when I was in college because they paid the highest wage in town. No joke, every other offer I received was minimum wage. It's not glorious, and it would definitely suck as a a career, but at the time it was the best unskilled work available. If Walmart employees had better alternatives they would take them.
    - Natsu 11y ago

brc 11y ago

The reason airbnb and uber exist is because the prior business models are broken with regards to a big enough portion of their potential customers. A conversation with the average taxi driver will reveal the job is no ticket to the high life or consistent pay. The way forward is to get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that. Ultimate flexibility is what efficient economies are about. Unions don't like that future and understandably try and fight it. It's a futile fight in the end. The reference to qualifying for a loan based on permanent work is not relevant. A history of stable earnings is enough to qualify for a loan. Permanent positions are no guarantee of enough employment to pay down most loans.

ageek123 11y ago
> The way forward is ton get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that. This. Among other things, it would go a long way towards fixing the health insurance problems in the country. One of the reasons the private health insurance market is so dysfunctional is that relatively few people participate in it (most people are covered by their employers).
- danieltillett 11y ago
  The way the rest of the world has “fixed” health insurance is to have the state involved. Even the USA does this for anyone over 65 (where most of the spending occurs) and for anyone who is a veteran. For some reason covering the young and healthy seems too hard. It is almost as though there is a huge vested interest keen on maintaining the status quo at the expense of everyone else. Given that only unions are evil this could not be true.
  - norea-armozel 11y ago
    Kevin A Carson outlined in an essay how hospitals justify their prices on everything from saline to surgery on a managerial model which treats every service/good as revenue on the accounting books. Oddly enough, they got this model from the auto industry which did the same sort of model which obviously demands consumers to use the service/good as much as possible. For example, how many patients actually need a CT scan? Not many, really, but if you dig deeper the reason they do this is to get the maximum value of of their CT scan equipment even if a patient's symptoms don't match anything that would require such a service. Equally, many hospitals also compete with each other thus duplicate services or spend their budget on the look/feel of their facilities (how many people care wth the foyer of a hospital looks like?) which leads to the higher prices. Essentially, each patient pays the full cost of the medical services rendered unlike how consumers in other industries (the price of a meal or a cell phone is not at cost, often it's lower when you factor in everything to bring it to market). I think the way to clear the system is to do a multi-tier approach which may include single payer healthcare, but if you were to install that system into our hospital system as is then expect the US to go bankrupt in less than a decade. We have to break the back of the monopolists before we can get anything close to sane market prices.

nnq 11y ago

...so instead of refactoring your law so that contractors have the same social benefits as "full-time employees" instead, she wants to turn the contractors into more easily controlled full time wage slaves. I really hope you Americans don't vote a president with such twisted logic! ...imagine how this warped way of thinking would be manifested in international politics

ageek123 11y ago

Labor market flexibility is one of the great strengths of the US economy. It's one of the reasons why unemployment is back to reasonable levels even after the Great Recession. The freelancer economy has some downsides but in aggregate it's a good thing, both for workers and the economy as a whole. The opposite end of the spectrum is the labor market regulations in a country like Greece, which has always been a drag on their economy (even before their debt crisis). Anyway, this is a great opportunity for the Republicans to paint themselves as the party of progress and technology, though they need to clean up some of their backward views (climate change, etc.) before such a claim would be credible. The NY Times had a somewhat more balanced article about Hillary campaigning against Uber: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/business/rising-economic-insecurity-tied-to-decades-long-trend-in-employment-practices.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/business/rising-economic-i...

norea-armozel 11y ago
It would be fine if the price of housing, food, and healthcare weren't so far out of sync with the wages earned. This is going to lead to a permanent underclass where people are worse off than even serfs of the medieval period.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

JohnyLy 11y ago

Uber is a great service and a great idea. However, they encounter many legal problems. I am not surprised that Hillary Clinton wants to move this industry... a bit like the French government does.

meric 11y ago

CharityWatch says even a “minimally efficient” foundation spends 60 percent of its budget on programs. In the years 2009-2012, the Clinton Foundation devoted just 15 percent to charitable grants, according to an analysis of IRS filings by The Federalist. That fell to 10 percent in 2013. Forty-five percent was spent on salaries, perks and travel for staff. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/31/clintons_corruption_126800.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/31/clinton... Hiliary Clinton can be bought and is being bought through donations to her foundation.

onewaystreet 11y ago

David Plouffe, Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign manager (the guy who orchestrated Hillary's upset in the Democratic primary) is now the SVP of Policy and Strategy at Uber. This could get personal.

comrade1 11y ago

I know my opinion won't be popular on HN, but looking at uber, especially, and similar companies from the outside (American living in Europe the last 6 years), the u.s. appears to be in a race to the bottom, with people competing to lower their own wages. I like uber but I think they f*cked themselves over and deserve every bit of scrutiny they are getting. There are markets where they don't screw over the drivers, for example where I live in Zurich uber is the same price as a cab but it's more convenient because of the app. If uber was truly beneficial to their drivers in the u.s. They wouldn't be under this scrutiny. They deserve whatever pain they receive and hopefully someone more responsible will take over the market. Good luck fighting the political class. Uber will lose this fight.

joinjune 11y ago
Uber will fight the laws for at least a couple of years and by then be half way through replacing the entire labor force with autonomous cars. This is a political tactic designed to get Hillary points in the media. She's smart enough to know it'll have little to no long term impact.
- comrade1 11y ago
  Frankly I'm surprised she picked uber as a target as uber has a very strong, large, and sophisticated political lobbying organization. Granted, they focus on local politics more than national, so maybe this is a sign of Hillary being out of touch with the local level. I don't think we'll have autonomous cars in 2 years.
- rspeer 11y ago
  "A couple of years" is not even close to halfway to the time when autonomous cars will be available, convenient, and able to handle the traffic situations that Uber drivers do.
jlebar 11y ago
> If uber was truly beneficial to their drivers in the u.s. They wouldn't be under this scrutiny. Isn't this the wrong question? I should think the relevant question is, "is Uber beneficial to society as a whole?" It's entirely possible that drivers would be better off without Uber but that society is better off with Uber.

schimmy_changa 11y ago

Regardless of what you think of the issue, that read like a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. I know Techcrunch skews pro-tech, but at some point reading articles like that increases your filter bubble and ends up with the reader worse off. Instead of understanding WHY people feel so strongly enough about the issue that it's a political issue, a reader just hears essentially a diatribe of why Hillary Clinton is wrong and Uber is great... Again, no judgement on whether or not Uber is great or HC is wrong, just a concern that articles like this enhance the SV echo chamber to our own detriment.

interesting_att 11y ago

As someone who loves Uber and who spends thousands of dollars a year on their app, and as someone who dislikes Hillary, I cannot be happier with Hillary's stance. Uber will remain here and their rides will stay cheap. I am, however, very concerned about their drivers. Many of them are making huge investments purchasing new cars with the implicit (and sometimes borderline explicit, depending on the marketing rep you talk to at Uber) that they can have guaranteed work and a guaranteed wage. If über decides to cut driver wages in half and pocket the profits, drivers will be out of luck. This can be catastrophic for poor families, which will be basically be forced into wage slavery. This will have huge effects on the community as Uber gets bigger. We can all point to how Taxi unions and their lobbyists are evil (as a colored man, it's difficult for me to get picked up by one), how awesome Uber is w/ their investments in autonomous cars, and the free markets are great...but we need real employee protections in this country. We need real protection for drivers who are making a huge investment. This doesn't have to hurt consumers either, as über can still remain insanely profitable while maintaining lower prices. Edit: Removed the umlauts

camillomiller 11y ago
First, it's Uber, not Über. Then we should all have a reality check. All this sharing economy thing has gone a little bit too far now... It's masquerading as a revolutionary way to earn money for everybody except some greedy unions and lobbies that need to be "disrupted", and we don't see that it's just undercutting by spreading costs in an anticompetitive way. But much more important than that: the jobs they "create" are extremely weak, unprotected and they contribute to erode the middle class even more, all while centralizing wealth toward the top 1% that actually funds this sort of ventures. I really don't get what's so revolutionary in all the services where "sharing" actually means "exploiting lower middle class people's free time or temporary unemployment to provide a service without giving any warranty for the workers, providing cheaper services for the upper middle class". I understand and support those services where "sharing" keeps its real meaning. Like in car sharing or bike sharing, where you actually SHARE a car or a bike, and not someone else's cheap time.
danieltillett 11y ago
I am not sure if uber has the umlauts. While I am not great supporter of the taxi industry, I do think that you should not be too hard on the taxi drivers for not picking you up although I do understand your personal frustration. I am not sure how many uber drivers would be happy to pick up random people without knowing they had been pre-screened.

reilly3000 11y ago

This is why we have campaigns. We get to see the cadnidate's logic across a wide spectrum of topics. This is practically a deal killer for me and Hillary. I think that W2 employment is a dying model. Piecemeal 1099 work empowers every participant to have clear and direct economic benefit and takes the power away from corporations to exploit labor with manipulation about how incapable they are to function independently. They rob the individual of identity, forcing membership in the ranks of the company as a sense of self. Instead I think work will be distributed, scalable, and coordinated with great software. I think that work will happen based on real-time pricing and presence. I think that means having skills and a good reputation means you can always work when you want as much or as little as you want as long as you actually produce. I hope that said great software isn't owned and operated by a for-profit institution, but instead is a community-driven, decentralized tool. I think this would pave the way for as close as possible 'frictionless' marketplace where the value of things and people's time are based on the value they bring, not based on slick sales tactics or lobbied regulations. I seriously believe that government needs to empower and support independent work, or face a slow, 'Snow Crash' style extinction when mesh coordination brings about digital voting, etc. I get a sense that Hillary will in many ways enforce the status quo and that simply isn't the kind of leadership that we need as we approach 2020 and all that comes along with it.

xbmcuser 11y ago

Uber should have to follow the same laws that other taxi companies have to. I don't agree with the monopoly systems that are in place for taxis in most cities those should be removed. But at the same time many of these laws are so that taxis are available not just in the peak period but other times as well. So laws that force taxi companies to have part of the fleet available at all times should be also be enforced on uber and other such companies as well.