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Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

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Re: Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

#101

Post by throwaway201103 »

ndespres wrote: post #12
mullingitover wrote: post #8

This of course has led to a lot of 'I told you so!' and finger-wagging that voters were too stupid, and shouldn't be allowed to have the initiative system because they're too easily manipulated. Prop 22 wasn't unclear. The voters knew what they were voting for, which was to keep the status quo with regard to gig economy jobs, and roll back the broad, messy legislation that the state legislature had enacted. Had Prod…

>>"We can't paper over our lack of viable careers by creating low-skilled jobs that pay the same as jobs requiring a college education." Well, why can't we? If we are saying that these types of jobs need to exist, why can we not agree that the people who do the job deserve to be compensated with a living wage and deserve dignity and stability?

Because the real economic value of those jobs is less than a "living wage."

A delivery driver is not a skilled job. I know, I delivered pizza when I was in college. And that was before mobile phones or navigation apps so drivers actually had to learn their way around their delivery area.

If you have a drivers license and a car you can be a delivery driver. That's not a very high bar. So those jobs don't pay very much.

Re: Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

#102

Post by Pfhreak »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #98
mullingitover wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore has some pretty nice public housing. If there was a government policy that any time median rents climb above X, the state will procure land and build housing until it drops below that number again, it might be more workable than the blunt instrument of price caps.

Public housing in thE US is almost entirely shitholes, though. It's better than being homeless, maybe. That's about it. That is the reason many large cities have torn most of it down and replaced it with section 8 vouchers. This scatters the ghetto-dwellers from their former high-rise islands into neighborhoods, which triggers flight by the existing residents since the people coming out of public housing are clueless…

That's entirely because of the way our procurement process works. We have separate capital and maintenance procurement processes. Typically, we splurge on a high capital budget (the cost to build housing) and then skimp or cut out the maintenance budget. Or worse, we expect the housing to be self supporting.

Public housing done right is distributed, low rise apartments rented below market rate and not expected to be self supporting.

As a tax payer, it's so frustrating to see us build good things and then totally neglect to maintain them.

I will say that high rise public housing in the US introduces complexity because it necessitates a degree of service infrastructure that's more costly than more, lower buildings.

Re: Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

#103

Post by Pfhreak »

renewiltord wrote: post #69
Pfhreak wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, why can't we just say housing isn't a market, it's priced primarily for livibility and less for some concept of quality. Then living wage doesn't need to be opened to inflated housing markets.

Because there is an existing large class of people (2 in 3 Americans) who have acted based on the idea that housing is a market and have bought a home on that basis. They have no interest in altering the status quo. To add to that, you can't choose what housing is priced by unless you have government price controls and that is a cure that's worse than the disease.

I own a home, and if it steadily loses value but my city becomes affordable for anyone who wants to live here, that seems like a pretty fair trade to me...

Re: Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

#104

Post by foogazi »

amluto wrote: post #47
ndespres wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>"We can't paper over our lack of viable careers by creating low-skilled jobs that pay the same as jobs requiring a college education." Well, why can't we? If we are saying that these types of jobs need to exist, why can we not agree that the people who do the job deserve to be compensated with a living wage and deserve dignity and stability?

Perhaps we could decouple benefits from employment so that 8 hours of gig work per day would actually add up to roughly the same thing as 8 hours per day of employment.

if we are serious about benefits for everyone then make it available to everyone: healthcare, retirement options, sick days, unemployment

remove the tax benefits around employer health plans, or exclusivity of 401k plans

Then it doesn’t matter if you have a hotdog cart, shine shoes or are a white collar worker.

Re: Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

#105

Post by bsder »

Anon1096 wrote: post #67
slg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money buys votes at the margin. Everyone agrees on this including the people who supported Prop 22 otherwise they wouldn't have spent some $175m more than their opponents.

That doesn't mean the voters were brainwashed into supporting something they otherwise wouldn't have.

Many were practically blackmailed.

Uber/Lyft/DoorDash etc. threatened to summarily shut down in the middle of a pandemic if Prop 22 didn't get passed.

Uber and Lyft actually did this in Austin, but since it wasn't in the middle of a pandemic people had other options and could make adjustments. And then Uber and Lyft went crying to the state government to override Austin because Austin started generating alternatives and we found out that Uber/Lyft don't really have an unassailable position but they have LOTS of VC cash to spend on lobbying and advertising.

Unfortunately, making the kind of adjustments that people in Austin did borders on impossible right now, so this kind of threat was quite effective.

Re: Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

#106

Post by foogazi »

Pfhreak wrote: post #103
renewiltord wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is an existing large class of people (2 in 3 Americans) who have acted based on the idea that housing is a market and have bought a home on that basis. They have no interest in altering the status quo. To add to that, you can't choose what housing is priced by unless you have government price controls and that is a cure that's worse than the disease.

I own a home, and if it steadily loses value but my city becomes affordable for anyone who wants to live here, that seems like a pretty fair trade to me...

Would we own homes if they steadily lost value ?

I mean the house steadily loses value due to deterioration. But the land appreciates due to scarcity and the available financing.

>affordable for anyone who wants to live here

That doesn’t scale

Re: Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

#107

Post by bquest2 »

Jommi wrote: post #95
slg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the 7/8 majority is nothing but lip service to being flexible. It is designed to be used the exact way you are doing now in debates like this. A majority that high is not feasible to actually be implemented.

??? Are you just ignoring everything we previously discussed? Having a way to directly amend the law via some majority is completely optional. There is no need to ever include that in the ballot proposition. Why are you choosing to completely ignore this clear fact?

I'm really questioning if GPT3 would come up with better responses than @slg. They seemed to talk themselves into circles, and repeat themselves quite often, not taking into account new information. It's almost like they have a litany of responses that they fall back onto.

Re: Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

#108

Post by bsder »

mullingitover wrote: post #8

This of course has led to a lot of 'I told you so!' and finger-wagging that voters were too stupid, and shouldn't be allowed to have the initiative system because they're too easily manipulated. Prop 22 wasn't unclear. The voters knew what they were voting for, which was to keep the status quo with regard to gig economy jobs, and roll back the broad, messy legislation that the state legislature had enacted. Had Prod…

> Overall, in the end Prop 22 was a wash.

Really? We've got employees with benefits and healthcare who just got their healthcare yanked out from under them in the middle of a pandemic.

That looks like a pretty big net loss to me.

Re: Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

#109

Post by metabagel »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #90
mc32 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oregon! But yeah, I agree. Don't try to institute the same policies in your new state which lead to your decision to eventually leave your old state.

Problem is that many who are moving aren't giving a whole lot of thought as to why California has had such a large reduction in quality of life. They simply know QoL has declined to a level where they want to be somewhere else. They may have different theories as to why QoL tanked, some might even know that some of the policies they voted for had a hand in it while believing that they simply weren't implemented well…

Quality of life in California is grand if you don’t factor in the high cost of living, which is primarily due to land being expensive. California is a victim of its own success and of its bad zoning laws and nimbyism.

Re: Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors

#110

Post by metabagel »

m4eta wrote: post #64
Jommi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize many laws don't allow any legislative input at all right? By default, a law enacted by ballot measure can only be changed by another law enacted by ballot measure. You can go learn something about it from here: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/initia...

The will of the people will not be superceded. Why would we allow legislature to overpower a ballot measure? We voted. The only thing people can be upset about is their lack of educating themselves on what they were voting for in the ballot measure. People cannot be coddled when it comes to their vote. Any undue influence would rot the inside and then why have a democracy?

It’s not practical for most voters to educate themselves on the typically dozen or so ballot measures. It’s too much homework, and you don’t get paid for it.

I do my due diligence, but it’s not easy to get a full understanding of how I want to vote. It’s a significant amount of work, and a lot of people will not spend the time.

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