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Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

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Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#331

Post by treis »

ericmay wrote: post #270
treis wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more complicated than that. The kid down the street can say I'll do it for $15 and you can decline. There's no negotiating with Uber. If the kid down the street says no to $10 you're not going to ban him from ever cutting your grass. With Uber if you decline too many offers you will be effectively booted off the platform. More broadly, you can't compare 1 person trying to contract with 1 other person with 1 mult…

If you want to take this analogy further, if that kid has the opportunity to do something else for more money and keeps declining to cut my grass for $10 I'll ban her from cutting it and find someone else. There's also no negotiating with me. It's $10, take it or leave it! (If they leave it, like they don't accept the fare, then so be it my grass doesn't get cut and Uber doesn't make money). > More broadly, you can't…

>$10 I'll ban her from cutting it

No you won't. Or at least most people won't.

>There's also no negotiating with me

Yes there is. Or at least there is with most people. Even if you are adamant on price there's plenty of other areas for negotiation like when the work will occur, subscription agreements, or the kid can try to work it out and cut your grass at the same time as your neighbors.

>Why? The foundational principles seem to be the same to me here.

You really don't see a difference in a business transaction between two people and one between a person and a multi-billion dollar corporation?

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#332

Post by therealdrag0 »

ac29 wrote: post #138
ekianjo wrote: post #83

> "What worker doesn't want to have access to paid sick leave?" Becerra said. "What worker doesn't want to have unemployment insurance at a time of Covid-19 crisis? What worker doesn't want to know that they'll get paid for overtime if they work 60 hours in a week or 12 hours in a day?" Since when are we reasoning about workers starting from what they want? If we go by that reasoning, "What worker does not want to be…

> Increase the costs of running the service, and you don't have work anymore. This hasn't been found to be the case when increasing the minimum wage, though.

It absolutely has. Minimum wage prevents some possible jobs. There are studies showing this [0].

The fair debate is only about whether more jobs is better than less jobs with higher pay.

[0] https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/7/13/20690266/seattle...

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#333

Post by frockington1 »

ardy42 wrote: post #234
lghh wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm an adult, if I want the money isn't it strictly better than I have the freedom to cash in on my human resources? Yes.

>> I'm an adult, if I want the money isn't it strictly better than I have the freedom to cash in on my human resources [by selling my kidney]? > Yes. By this logic, slavery should be legal, because people should have the freedom to sell themselves into it (for instance, to purchase medical care for a loved one).

Yes. But that wouldn't be slavery really because you are working for a predetermined rate.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#335

Post by twblalock »

Loughla wrote: post #227
chrisco255 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, is there no such thing as over-regulation, in your mind? No red tape too sticky? No hoop too high to jump through?

That's not what the OP said, though. You can't just carry an argument to its complete extreme - that's not how it works. OP said that THIS law wasn't too much, not that over-regulation doesn't exist. Please reply to the opinion that this law isn't too much. I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

> You can't just carry an argument to its complete extreme - that's not how it works.

Reductio ad absurdam is a legitimate way to respond to an argument, if the argument is susceptible to it.

"It's not a bad law - if Uber can't operate in compliance with it, it has a bad business model." is an argument that could be used to defend any law. It defends the concept of law itself, rather than the specific law we are discussing. It's perfectly reasonable to point that out and ask where the line should be drawn.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#336

Post by _2d30 »

teachrdan wrote: post #289
typest wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add onto this —- living with only one kidney rather than two only barely increases your risk of dying, and many people each year die due to lack of kidneys. So, creating a market here (regulated of course) would save a lot of lives.

It would likely coerce poor Americans into selling their kidneys to the wealthy so that they could pay off their student debt. Is coercing the poor to sell their organs to the rich a net benefit for society? For anyone who thinks this is hyperbole, ProPublica has done excellent work investigating how lenders use the court system to imprison Americans who can't pay back their debts: https://www.google.com/search?q=pro…

You and I have very different views of coercion. Making a choice possible is not coercing people into that choice.

Debtors prisons are bad but of course that’s a separate issue.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#337

Post by eanzenberg »

ghaff wrote: post #43

Maybe I'm cynical but "temporarily shut down" sounds like a formula to: - Inconvenience a certain class of urbanites who have grown accustomed to being driven around in the hopes that they - Complain loudly to their representatives and other governmental officials in the hope that - The state will reverse this judgement

The playbook is nothing new:

“Allow homeless encampments locally in inconvenient locations to visually show how bad things are getting.”

“Allow looting, pillaging, free cop-zones and curfews in inconvenient localities to visually show how bad things are getting.”

“Allow mass protests during a pandemic but arrest business owners who choose to open to visually show how bad things are getting.”

The playbook is, inconvenience enough people into the action you are interested in from them.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#338

Post by thatguy0900 »

twblalock wrote: post #315
thatguy0900 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't every law specifically intended to put a group of people in noncompliance with it? What's the point of making a law if everyone was going to comply regardless?

The power to create laws is not supposed to be used as weapon. It clearly was in this case. AB5 was written in bad faith with the goal of hurting specific companies, not with the goal of writing a sensible law that sets a framework for how businesses ought to operate. They wrote it in such a hurry that it unintentionally hurt a bunch of other people and small businesses. That's not how laws are supposed to work.

So if a government sees a company's actions as too unethical what are they to do about it other than target them with a law? I don't know about the specifics of this law, Ill assume you're correct it's poor, but I have trouble understanding your point of the law not being used as a weapon against these companies. That seems to be all its for to me, something to be used to stop a bad actors behavior. I can't imagine the majority of laws are created preemptively.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#339

Post by carierx1 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

Seems like a fair outcome to me. If they can't operate within the law, they shouldn't operate.

They were operating with the law. The law was arbitrarily changed to screw Uber. Can't believe so many here don't see this.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#340

Post by dangus »

Grimm1 wrote: post #297

Uber has generally seemed like a net benefit and I've taken a lot of rides (hundreds to low thousand) and have generally conversed with most of the drivers I've had and the gig work has been beneficial to them, they make a decent standard of living for a HCOL area enough for a family and get to set their own hours. Hard pass on regulation like this and good to see Uber push back with the levers they have. I will add…

You can set your own hours with W2 employment. There’s nothing that says that Uber can’t give their W2 employees that flexibility.

They could hire W2 employees right through the app, there is no technical barrier.

Uber just wants to avoid their fair share of payroll taxes and employee health regulations that their upper caste office employees enjoy. They want to provide benefits to some employees but not all, purely based on their job description.

I bet your ridesharing gig worker friends you know would love no longer covering the full payroll tax bill, and they’d love to be covered with workers compensation if they got into a car accident while driving for Uber.

If companies don’t want to pay for healthcare and benefits anymore, maybe they should start putting their lobbying efforts toward making healthcare paid through tax revenue rather than through the inequality and inefficiency of employer subsidy and for-profit private insurance companies.

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