Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 212 posts

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#141

Post by uoaei »

chii wrote: post #25
uoaei wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> At what point does blatant advertising/propaganda meaningfully undermine human agency? at the point where there's a gov't agency that is forbidding free media from existing, or to censored to prevent the alternative argument. Otherwise, the voters would not vote against their own interest (or if they do, it's deemed to be their choice to do so).

I followed the news at the time, did you? Swaths of people who voted for Prop 22 were interviewed after it passed, and asked whether 1) they understood what was in the bill and 2) if they appreciate the changes that took place once it was in effect. The responses generally ranged from "I thought my job was going to get easier" to "I can no longer afford to feed my family".

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#142

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

BurningFrog wrote: post #131
user3939382 wrote: post #74

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…

Uber and Lyft are groups of people.

The US Army is a group of people, too.

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#143

Post by uoaei »

robertlagrant wrote: post #130
epgui wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with anything you said, but my intuition tells me you're possibly under-estimating the proportion of voters who routinely vote against their self-interest without realizing it. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that was >30% of voters. Assuming that number I just made up was correct, just for the sake of argument, the parent comment's question is very interesting: what does that say about voters' age…

It's worth considering that you're not really talking about their own self-interest. You're talking about what you think they should want. For example, anyone who likes the non-employee status of Uber driving will vote against it. Anyone who wants to be an employee is voting for lower wages, although higher benefits. They may prefer that, but not everyone does.

By that same token, we're all only talking about what people think they should want, and not necessarily what will really benefit them. By extension, the argument becomes that it doesn't matter how well people are informed, only that they act on the limited information they have. I prefer to emphasize efforts to inform the public better, rather than leaving them out to dry when their hopes are not reflected in the outcomes of such things.

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#144

Post by paulddraper »

uoaei wrote: post #8
CSMastermind wrote: post #2

https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A163655.PDF ^ Actual court ruling which is linked in the article itself. I find the article's headline misleading. The court ruled that a proposition that was passed by voters in California which classified these drivers as contractors was mostly constitutional and would be allowed to have the effect of law, noting that California's legislative branch was free to change th…

[flagged]

At any point democracy exists

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#145

Post by uoaei »

maldev wrote: post #22
uoaei wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You can see this actually doesn't have that big an effect. See https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr... To summarize, the law is extremely simple. Remove the line "the government and public institutions cannot discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contract…

Will you make sure to reach the top of the tree? The cherries picked there are sweetest.

In any serious accounting, you would find that people generally do not understand the implications of their vote before they cast it.

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#147

Post by iLoveOncall »

jawns wrote: post #123
iLoveOncall wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

None of them work for multiple employers at the same time. They are working multiple part-time jobs with shorter-than-customary on-the-clock times, but if they pick up a Lyft passenger, they're only being paid by Lyft for that time, and if they pick up an Uber passenger, they're only being paid by Uber for that time. There's no double-dipping. The only difference between this arrangement and typical part-time jobs is…

> None of them work for multiple employers at the same time.

Just like no contractor bills the same hour to two employers.

> The only difference between this arrangement and typical part-time jobs is that with typical PT work, we often think of shifts being measured in hours, whereas with these jobs, shifts are measured in minutes.

Not at all. There are many differences, namely the ones I have already mentioned above.

> As for being able to choose their working hours, it sounds nice in the abstract, but the platforms actively punish drivers whose availability is limited.

Just like any company would not prioritize doing business with a software engineering contractor who is available an hour from 8 to 9 AM on Tuesdays and then an hour and a half every other Thursday night.

Spin it however you want, they are exactly the same as any other contractor.

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#148

Post by user3939382 »

fallingknife wrote: post #135
josho wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the point. Companies are not citizens therefore, op argued, as non citizens they should not have a voice in election outcomes. It’s a fair point, as a comparison we don’t allow visa holders to vote. I also suspect the citizens were influenced in their opinions by all the money spent to ‘educate’ the electorate. Somehow it feels wrong to allow a corporation to pay to set school curriculums, but when…

Paying officials to set policy is wrong. Spending money to make your case, convince people that you are right, and advocate that they support your political position is a fundamental right in a democracy. Freedom of the press guarantees the right for citizens to be able to publish as they please, and the owners and management of Uber are citizens as much as anyone else.

The problem isn't with the owners and managers spending money it's the company itself. c.f. Citizens United.

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#149

Post by SllX »

oneplane wrote: post #134
SllX wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re talking about the difference between W2s and 1099s, so I feel pretty good that my vote isn’t up there with literal bodily mutilation so you can put away the straw man; and if I thought AB5’s supporters and the “No” vote had the moral high ground, I wouldn’t have voted the way I did. I would in fact have voted the complete opposite of what I did, so keep that in mind. Do you want to try a different line of argum…

Since you're ignoring the thought experiment, let's see what remains in your reply. It sounds like you are reasoning that harm is fine when it morally shouldn't be, regardless of the technical (legislative, executive, judicial) track you're on. I believe that is bad.

You didn’t have a thought experiment, just a straw man. I thought I was clear on that point. Overwriting substantial portions of a law that took effect in 2020 with another law passed in 2020 isn’t “harmful” and doesn’t rank with your hypothetical anti-thumbs bill.

> It sounds like you are reasoning that harm is fine when it morally shouldn't be

That is exactly what I did not say, that is what you are attempting to reduce my argument to because you believe your position was morally superior and you don’t want to concede the legitimacy of my vote having voted for the losing position. I’m okay with you thinking your position was morally superior—it’s not, never was and we clearly disagree but I was done persuading people the moment the polls closed on November 3rd 2020—but having lost, you don’t have carte blanche to deny the election’s result nor its legitimacy. The “No” voters have exactly the same voting rights as the “Yes” voters, and they were outnumbered by a difference of 2,930,605 votes, nor are either the “Yes” voters or “No” voters morally superior people to each other for having held their positions and voted the way they did.

So lacking carte blanche and moral superiority, why under the laws of California and the United States should my vote and the other 9,958,424 people who voted “Yes” on Prop 22 in 2020 be nullified when we have deemed ballot propositions for good or for ill to be a legitimate form of lawmaking in the State of California?

Re: US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

#150

Post by fallingknife »

user3939382 wrote: post #148
fallingknife wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying officials to set policy is wrong. Spending money to make your case, convince people that you are right, and advocate that they support your political position is a fundamental right in a democracy. Freedom of the press guarantees the right for citizens to be able to publish as they please, and the owners and management of Uber are citizens as much as anyone else.

The problem isn't with the owners and managers spending money it's the company itself. c.f. Citizens United.

FOX/CNN/MSNBC spend millions on influencing politics every day. That's freedom of the press. Uber has the same rights.
Post reply on HN