California has proven itself again and again to be really good at centrally planning the economic activities of individuals so I think this will work out pretty well in the end.
True. That's why nobody wants to live there.
Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
481–490 of 1001 posts
Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking similar gig in other industries, such as gardening, constructions, telemarketing and support, pet care, beauty industry, etc. The gig economy did not start with Uber or AirBnB.
Except now with AB5, those populations are at risk too.
I don't disagree, the current politicians need to find a solution to provide people with meaningful opportunities to protect them from the fallout of these changes. I think the danger of allowing this exploitation to continue, if we examine the precedent of the previous decades, is too large though and we need to act before the erosion continues.
Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
#483Another group caught in the collateral damage is people in wheelchairs. Paratransit sucks in most places and where wheelchair accessible Uber/Lyft is available they provide a much better service. This is an especially vulnerable population because it's not like a wheelchair user can just find a friend with an accessible vehicle to take them to appointments, etc.
What did people in wheelchairs do before these rideshare apps were around?
Not sure the right word, but a lot of towns and cities have a heavily subsidized busing system for very local routes. Things like DATA Bus or Meals on Wheels.
Also my grandparents in a city always used a cab service that only serves wheelchair and has trained drivers to load and unload.
Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
#484It would be better for society if the billions of dollars of capital invested in ride share platforms was invested in high productivity labor technologies instead of low labor productivity technologies.
Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
#485I 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…
Shameless plug of my own post
Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
#486Am I nuts, or is the heart of this issue really the fact that our healthcare system is built on tying benefits to full time jobs?
I keep paying my health insurance premium at my home country just because the health insurance in the US is completely broken. I feel that if you get seriously sick in the US you're in an almost sure path to financial insolvency. My employer pays probably a shit ton of money for my health insurance and what I get is the most subpar, confusing, broken and sometimes blatantly extortive service ever. I live in Austin an…
Can confirm. I drove from Austin to Nuevo Laredo for dental work. Park up, walk across the bridge, get dental work for a fraction the of the US price and walk back. Most painful part of the process is going back though US border control.
Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
#487> Instead, what Sacramento politicians are pushing is an employment model that 4 out of 5 drivers don’t support. Is that stat accurate? If so, what is the argument for imposing a model that the vast majority of drivers don't support?
Probably, but I bet the 1/5 of drivers that support the getting classified as employees represent a disproportionate amount of driver hours spent on the app. If you are logged in 8.5h a day as your primary source of income, becoming an employee is probably beneficial. If you only log in for likely surge events a few hours a week, you largely won't get to do that anymore.
Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
#488I suspect that California is going to backpedal on this pretty quickly. Uber and Lyft are popular. Going back to taxis is going to be very unpopular. IMO, if the California Republican party was smart they would make this a wedge issue in the next election. "Elect us, and we'll make it possible to use Uber again."
Drivers choose to make their living with Lyft and Uber. California is starting to feel the repercussions of their far left policies. It hurts consumers (fare prices rise), stifles innovation, pushes entrepreneurs out of the state, and the irony is it ended up hurting the drivers.
Lyft _chose_ to hurt the drivers instead of complying with the law.
This is a transparent ploy by Lyft and Uber to try and extort the state into changing the law by holding their drivers' livelihoods ransom.
Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
Driving jobs already exist if that’s what they wanted. Turning ridesharing into full-time employment doesn't solve anything other than removing the freelance opportunity for many who find it fits their situation best.
> Nobody is being forced into anything. They're choosing this because it's the best opportunity. That is such a lazy take. Of course people are forced to take whatever job is available: humans need food, shelter and healthcare. If society doesn't collectively agree about a minimum standard of what a job entails, you inevitably ends up with the "bottom of the barrel" living in inhumane conditions. As a society, it is…
Why don't these people accept the existing full-time driving jobs then? Is it because flexibility is paramount and they might already have other commitments?
Why convert many existing opportunities into fewer worse jobs? What's that solve exactly? Do you think there should be no independent contractors? Do you also object to freelancer writers or artists?
Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
#490Another group caught in the collateral damage is people in wheelchairs. Paratransit sucks in most places and where wheelchair accessible Uber/Lyft is available they provide a much better service. This is an especially vulnerable population because it's not like a wheelchair user can just find a friend with an accessible vehicle to take them to appointments, etc.
This is a true and an important concern. Municipalities and counties in California really need to step up their game and provide a viable and cheap to use alternative. Everybody deserves to be able to go where they want within their community when they want to. And we should provide these without relying on private companies with questionable labor practices.
Why step up and provide a viable and cheap alternative when you can just step down and not kill the existing cheap alternative?