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It’s possible that Uber and Lyft drivers are simply not dumb enough to believe that the legislature is going to magically conjure a 401k match and PTO for their 10 hour/week driving side gig.
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>pre-industrial democracy You have a very rose tinted view of how democracy was in the past or who actually made decisions.
It wasn't perfect but it existed. Calling it rose-colored is to downplay how bad it's gotten. The complex of multinational corporations and their lobby groups that run our government today didn't exist then, the e.g. railroad companies are no comparison.
Isn't this debate largely a false dilemma? Its obvious to me that an additional category is prudent, or that people besides employees should have access to subsidized health care premiums and some form of paid sick leave. that doesnt have to come from the employer and that doesnt have to mean that worker flexibility is curbed. contractors can already do retirement benefits plans such as the 401k plan, running your ow…
The problem is there is no agency with a financial incentive to support the individual drivers. The drivers don’t earn enough on their own to create meaningful representation. If the drivers somehow were able to pool their resources under some sort of a guild then they might. But that will take a lot of organizing and someone with resources that can stop driving to spend time organizing.
And therein is the problem. We have a large labor pool that is not protected by employment law and is easily exploited through low pay rates. So how is a driver supposed to find money to fund their own 401k plans when they are barely covering their costs?
Our government, and large swaths of the media, is owned by banks and corporations. The vestiges of the pre-industrial democracy we had persist as a sham to keep the electorate’s consent for and compliance with this system. Uber and Lyft are not people and shouldn’t have been permitted to spend $1 on this campaign nor towards the campaign of any politician. Unfortunately it won’t be until bread is $30/loaf that the pu…
>pre-industrial democracy You have a very rose tinted view of how democracy was in the past or who actually made decisions.
You did not refute the original point. You've only managed to muddy the discussion with irrelevance and noise.
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Paid per hour, free to chose their working hours, free to work for multiple employers at the same time, etc. How are they not contractors? They're way more contractors than the contractors that were working 9 to 5, 5 days a week, for years, for my FAANG.
I do not think they can choose their working hours, their income does not allow this freedom. Not US, but I did some study on Ukraine immigrants in Poland, etc, they work as self-employed at factories, like LG and Samsung and even make some parts for Porsche cars. A luxury made by slavery, 12 h/day, 6 days a week and minimum hour rate.
But their pay directly scales with the amount being charged to the customer. Let's say that I am a driver classified as an employee. I give a one hour ride at 8PM and the customer is charged $100 - I will make my hourly wage (let's say $18). Now, let's say I give that same ride at 8AM during rush hour. Uber surge is 3x and the customer is charged $300 - I still make $18 for that trip. Uber and Lyft drivers now pay a…
It's entirely possible to have a base of $18/hr with a commission based on the value of the ride once it's over a certain amount. Lots of places do similar things.
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It’s possible that Uber and Lyft drivers are simply not dumb enough to believe that the legislature is going to magically conjure a 401k match and PTO for their 10 hour/week driving side gig.
In other countries, working at McDonalds you get pension time (better, I'd say, than any 401k match) and more weeks of PTO than most Americans do. These rights were "magically conjured" either by the legislature or labor action.
In Europe, you can't drive for Uber or deliver food without a standard work contract which includes: healthcare, pension, payroll and income taxes. Drivers here PAY private companies a weekly amount in order to work for Uber et all (to have that contract). Uber et all work with these companies only, not individuals.
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> At what point does blatant advertising/propaganda meaningfully undermine human agency? Regularly and governments live and die on their ability to advertise their policies and propagate their message in a convincing fashion. There were plenty of us that didn’t need to be advertised to to put a bullet through AB5’s heart in a manner humiliating to the Bill’s chief sponsor despite the deficiencies in Prop 22 for getti…
> In whichever way campaigning influenced the outcome, the vote was the vote and the vote followed the laws of California and the United States. While that might be technically true in the absolutist way, bad things are still bad, even if it followed all the technicalities. If we play "the vote was the vote and the vote followed the laws" and it ends up making it mandatory for everyone to cut off their thumbs, do you…
Do you want to try a different line of argument for why my vote should be nullified? There’s no “because someone on Hacker News thought it was bad“ exception in our democracy, so I’m kind of looking for something more here.