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Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

lyft.com

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Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#941

Post by crondung »

jawns wrote: post #641
crondung wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you pick your own hours and your own pickups, you are not anyone's employee -you by definition are your own boss. to be an employee, you have to have your hours and your work defined by your employer. employers tell you what work to do and when to do it. flexible hours don't work when at 4pm on tuesday dispatch yells you to pick someone up. california is forcing all rideshare contractors to be employees. that's no…

This is incorrect. Determining whether someone is an independent contractor has always involved multiple factors. Flexibility of working hours is just one of the factors. You cannot say categorically that having the ability to choose your own hours makes you an independent contractor rather than an employee. Other factors include: * What level of control does the employer have in dictating HOW the work is done? * Is…

HOW the work is done is chosen by the driver. They are free to take a different route

The employer's business is connecting cars to riders with software. The driver's usual job is HR, and he uses the lyft service to make extra cash on his way home.

The last point is not something that determines a contractor. What you choose to do for money does not have to be a trade. It can be anything.

There are no working hours. You don't get paid by lyft for hours you 'work.' You get paid for engagements you pick -the rides. Getting paid per project, not for time you put in makes you a contractor for that gig.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#942

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

fumar wrote: post #778
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because people can't afford the true cost of a rideshare if a driver needs to make subsistence wage, and the company needs to be profitable. In a difference landscape the Uber model might be sustainable, but the middle class is being completely gutted. California especially is headed toward a Hawaii-esque bifurcated economy, comprised of a wealthy minority and a massive underclass of service-industry people cate…

Is that future different in any other of the top 5 states in the US? What can be done about it?

Robust social safety nets, combined with increased access to education so unskilled workers can retool to partake in the 21st century global service economy, financed by massive pigouvian taxes on our carbon consumption, and an appropriately progressive tax structure (the latest studies suggest the optimal tax rate according to the Laffer curve for billionaires is somewhere around 73%).

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#943

Post by mdoms »

syshum wrote: post #430
mdoms wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow you took a very flawed lesson from that post.

In what way? MX has a free market in healthcare, this allows people to get better care and lower prices as all free markets do The cost of care in the US is so high because of the layers and layers of regulations, tax code, and legal liabilities that compound to influence the market in ways that are Anti-Consumer and increase prices on the service

> The cost of care in the US is so high because of the layers and layers of regulations, tax code, and legal liabilities that compound to influence the market in ways that are Anti-Consumer and increase prices on the service

So is it your belief that other countries that have highly-regulated medical systems, complex tax codes and a high degree of legal liability also have health care as expensive as USA? Or do you think it's possible that there are other factors at play?

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#944

Post by pembrook »

FireBeyond wrote: post #940
pembrook wrote: post #938

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber and Lyft will be free to go back to exploiting drivers for Exploiting? Can you please cite another industry that has the capacity to employ millions of unskilled labor people at $10/hr and ALSO allow them the freedom to set their own schedule? It's clear you've never worked a minimum wage job before. Flexibility on hours is next-to-impossible at these jobs. If people are willing to make a few bucks an hour les…

> It's not like these companies are minting profits. Possibly because they're dramatically undercharging, loss leading, to get "market share"? Undercharging, and drivers being paid "not very much" seems like two issues that are ... very much related.

So you're suggesting...the solution is to raise prices, and then transfer the added cost to drivers to give them benefits?

I actually know of a system by which you could do that on a grand scale...for every single worker in America. Not just rideshare drivers!

It's a concept commonly found in a far away continent most Americans have only dreamed of one day traveling to, called "Europe." How it works is simple. You raise prices throughout the entire economy via taxation, and then redistribute that money back to the less fortunate via a government provided healthcare program.

...And here's the best part, studies show it ends up lowering the price of healthcare for everybody. I wonder if something like that might be a better use of our time than trying to put Lyft out of business?

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#945

Post by strbean »

kllrnohj wrote: post #847
cactus2093 wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on one point, "ridesharing" is a silly word. I would call it something like an "Open Car Service". The main reason I can't get on board with the rest of this line of argument is that it ultimately just comes down to paternalistic protection of the poor disenfranchised gig workers that you clearly view as being less than capable, rational adult humans. The number of gig economy workers has been growin…

Rational adult humans sell themselves into modern day slavery in order to feed their families, see the Qatar World Cup Stadium for example. That doesn't mean we as a society should support or enable that. That's a ridiculously naive line of reasoning. What is rational for an individual in extreme circumstances does not and should not automatically make that valid legally. Similarly, if a market is saturated with unde…

> They replaced existing ones - namely, taxis, and they achieved disruption via unsustainable economics & exploitative practices.

Corrupt, exploitative industry gets replaced with less corrupt, equally exploitative industry while also delivering far better value to consumers. Seems like a win to me.

Why are we so up in arms about Uber, when Dominos delivery drivers get about the same paltry compensation, no benefits, and far less freedom? The same could be said for pretty much all minimum wage jobs.

Like the parent insinuated, all these socialist / egalitarian arguments don't explain why we are in such a rush to fix for Uber drivers what has been broken for every low-paying job ever.

(That being said, with a rise in independent contractors, we should fix unemployment insurance to include them)

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#946

Post by crondung »

mike00632 wrote: post #798
crondung wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you pick your own hours and your own pickups, you are not anyone's employee -you by definition are your own boss. to be an employee, you have to have your hours and your work defined by your employer. employers tell you what work to do and when to do it. flexible hours don't work when at 4pm on tuesday dispatch yells you to pick someone up. california is forcing all rideshare contractors to be employees. that's no…

What if you can't choose the price, you don't know the details of the work before accepting and get punished for not doing enough work? That doesn't sound very independent to me.

You know it's a ride with pickup in an area. You are free to take the gig or not. You get paid for the gig. That is you choosing your work. That makes it a contract. People who do more work can be compensated better -that has nothing to do with whether or not its a contract.

W2 means you get paid salary or by the hour. Have you ever seen a W2 stub? It doesn't have 'projects' on it. It has a pay rate. Becoming W2 for drivers means they have a salary, and a bonus. So now they're hourly employees. This is literally on the W3 form employers submit to the IRS every year. Not knowing the paid amount before hand is one of the things making it a contract, yet you're claiming not knowing how much you will get paid makes it W2. Amazing gymnastics.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#947

Post by pfooti »

pembrook wrote: post #944
FireBeyond wrote: post #940

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like these companies are minting profits. Possibly because they're dramatically undercharging, loss leading, to get "market share"? Undercharging, and drivers being paid "not very much" seems like two issues that are ... very much related.

So you're suggesting...the solution is to raise prices, and then transfer the added cost to drivers to give them benefits? I actually know of a system by which you could do that on a grand scale...for every single worker in America. Not just rideshare drivers! It's a concept commonly found in a far away continent most Americans have only dreamed of one day traveling to, called "Europe." How it works is simple. You ra…

This may be poe's law at work, but it's pretty disingenuous to have the conversation in this fashion. Of _course_ it would be better to raise taxes and have a universal basic income and free healthcare. That's because the ultimate problem here isn't taxes or taxis or lyft or uber, it's capitalism.

However, given the system under analysis, because corporations have a history of making it very difficult for labor to be paid a fair and living wage, it falls to the government to use the tools at its disposal to ensure (as much as possible) that employees are paid fairly and have an opportunity to spend that pay on health insurance, because corporations won't be volunteering to do that, especially if they're already burning in excess of a billion dollars a year.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#948

Post by runarberg »

ProcNetDev wrote: post #931
mola wrote: post #919

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could also be good public transportation. Much more efficient.

I'll believe in public transportation in CA whenever Marin county gets a BART station. Trust me if that happens we'll be able to ride our flying pigs everywhere.

What a dishonest, cherry-picked example to justify your pessimism.

The Bay area is finally electrifying Caltrain, which has the potential to connect the South bay in more ways then the current commuter connection. BART is also being expanded both in the East bay and the South Bay. And the only reason you are not getting a high speed rail to South California is because politics got in the way. But this high speed train will go between Bakersfield and Merced, making it the first true high speed train in the USA. All this while the Metro in LA is expanding and adding much needed connections in South California.

This all said, Marin County is an incredibly affluent part of the Bay area, it could really easily fix their connectivity issues to the rest of the Bay area with better and more frequent buses (I wonder why they don’t).

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#949

Post by CountSessine »

stronglikedan wrote: post #916
CountSessine wrote: post #894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then they should get a driving job Why? I’m a consultant - and this is what I do for a living. Why isn’t freelance work respectable or acceptable in your view?

I suspect you're being disingenuous since I never said either of those things, so I will ignore your second question. As to your first question, I've never met a consultant that enjoys all the benefits of the full-time employees at the companies they consult for. The term "consultant" sets the expectation that one would not enjoy those benefits during their work there.

I suspect you're being disingenuous since I never said either of those things, so I will ignore your second question.

You used the word should - should get a full time job. Based on what you say, you don’t think freelance work is acceptable. If you considered it acceptable then you wouldn’t be admonishing people, telling them what they should do.

I've never met

You’re just full of assumptions. I get paid crazy-well - much higher than the salaried employees I work with, and unlike them I can bill off-hours. I don’t have a company retirement plan but that’s cheap with the excess I get paid over salary. And I write my own vacations.

The term "consultant" sets the expectation that one would not enjoy those benefits during their work there.

No, it sets the expectation that I’m consulting. That’s all.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#950

Post by darkwizard42 »

throwaway_kufu wrote: post #759
carlosdp wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this a lot, that Lyft/Uber could allow the same flexibility if they wanted to. It's not that the law dictates this shift, it's that the economics do. Requiring full employment means you can hire less drivers. If you have less drivers, you need more control over when they drive in order to make sure when customers are looking for a ride, they can find one, hence shifts.

> It's not that the law dictates this shift, it's that the economics do. You can check their S-1 filing for the “economics” of it...Uber before going public was losing money and acknowledged the legal risk they had been misclassifying drivers as contractors and should drivers be reclassified as employees it’s an existential threat to Uber. That’s the economics of it...Uber knew they were in the wrong, they knew the d…

This isn't how their S-1 reads at all... they never say they misclassified drivers. The drivers were truly independent contractors under the law at the time they filed and they note that if they were converted to employees this would cause a GREAT increase in costs...

You took a potentially objective point and added a ton of spin to it :/

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