I dislike Uber and Lyft's practices as much as the next guy. But I also believe AB5 is a terrible bill and will be voting in November to exempt Uber and Lyft from AB5. AB5 was written to impose a 20th century employment model to a 21st century situation. As such, the bill is distorted that it carve out hundreds of exemptions to musicians, freelancers, journalists, doctors, hair stylists and so on and so forth. A bill…
It's not a profitable or a good force in an economy, it does not pay a reasonable wage for anyone to live on, it is not environmentally friendly unless done in large quantities of people,(which is called a bus).
Ridesharing exists to profit Uber/Lyft investors and management and is successful due to lower pricing than is sustainable. It is built on the back of loopholes in the law to use and abuse working class people and to lie about the true costs and profits.
The bill's exceptions exist to split apart reality from this subsidized artificial market (There are exemptions in most laws, purely due tot he idea that things are complex, by nature)
I see this as an attempt to make the Gig Economy pay all workers fairly in addition to healthcare costs and to put the onus on the company rather than their taxes. This would force Uber and Lyft to limit the number of drivers in an area by cost and profits, to deny those they cannot pay fairly. Uber currently may give you 100 rides a day or 1, you don't know which and you cant depend on it nor if you cant drive can get unemployment.
The hard problem is contracting work is not a known reality for most, they don't understand the costs. Dressing it up in pretty fonts and Ads makes it much like the alcohol or tobacco industries, you don't know the danger until you are very invested and nobody is there to save you.