Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

#131

Post by Barrin92 » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 2:49 AM UTC

lhorie wrote: post #127

Barrin92 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Recognize that gig jobs are going to become more of a thing in various ways Is that a law of nature or something? An interesting way seeing ideology at work is when people start framing policy choice as the natural state of things. To what degree gig work permeates the economy is entirely in the hands of the lawmakers of California, and if they care about the long term accumulation of human capital they better nip i…

> taxpayers are supposed to be on the hook It's interesting that people frame social safety issues as "taxpayers money sharking". The reality is that privatized healthcare in the US means middle class americans typically pay quite a bit more than socialized healthcare countries (see medical debt collection industry). It's even more mind boggling because the ones that stand to benefit the most from socialized infrastr…

I'm also not American and not old and I don't know if it sounded that way but I didn't come at this from a "hobos leeching money" standpoint. My point is that social safety doesn't just happen at the government level, and a plurality of entities, including private ones, can be responsible for it.

In my country employees at sizeable firms have guaranteed representation on the board of their firm. (30%). Stakeholdership can be enshrined in law. Small and middle-sized business doesn't just optimise for profit but employs people for life. (the unemployment during covid did not go past 6-7%).

Is that less 'efficient' in a direct sense? Yes, but it's also autonomous and decentralised and robust and gives people real stake in their workplace and control over their life. The perversity of gig work is how it alienates and atomises workers.

You're essentially building a super fragile system in which benevolent government taxes single minded competitive companies to send checks to fluid workers who get ordered around by an algorithm. That system has so many single points of failure it's not even funny. the US, ironically enough, already suffers from a version of this. What happens when the army of Uber drivers and table cleaners doesn't get their 2 trillion relief fund because one guy in charge of the entire thing throws a tantrum?

Re: Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

#132

Post by xboxnolifes » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 2:51 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #113

username90 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge demand for gig work and not a great demand for gig workers, exploring more ways to create demand for gig workers is a good thing. Lots of people don't want a stable job and I don't see why we should force them to get one just to feed themselves.

>Lots of people don't want a stable job yeah, don't you just know tons of people who love to have no job security, don't know how much they'll make on any given day or whether they'll be unemployed in a month? Of course people love stable jobs, some people however are dependent on gig work because of institutional failure on several fronts within California in particular. The solution to this is, as Russ Ackoff put i…

I think " not wanting stable work" was a poor choice of words, and the previous commenter meant more along the line of "people want more flexible work". There is a great deal of people who are happy working jobs that allow them to pick their hours, days worked, or even just stop working for weeks at a time with no notice.

Having healthcare tied to full-time employment is almost entirely incompatible with this type of employment, as it is priced at half-time / full-time employment, not super flexible gig jobs.

Re: Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

#133

Post by apta » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 2:52 AM UTC

acadien wrote: post #3

I am so against prop22 it pains me so here I am ranting on the internet. What's going on is a negotiation between the state and these companies that are able to take advantage of a gap in how insurance and other benefits work. Instead of actively negotiating with the state, Uber/Lyft/Doordash and many others have simply asked to maintain the status quo, screw the drivers, just business as usual. Drivers do not get be…

Instead of CA requiring private companies to cover health costs, they should step in to lower them and to provide coverage for the residents, it's as simple as that.

Re: Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

#134

Post by apta » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 2:58 AM UTC

jzer0cool wrote: post #94

I have also seen it on ubereats (as consumer). I also at the moment don't have an opinion of this. Is this understanding correct at a very high level? Yes 22: * Benefits Uber. * Do not need to provide drivers with health benefits. They are on contract (e.g. hourly) so they can buy their own health benefits. This is similar to other workers like doing "gigs". No 22 - Benefits Drivers. * Every driver (irregardless of h…

If Uber/Lyft/DD are forced to shut down, then there won't be any more drivers/delivery people to benefit. It's not for nothing that CA decided to back down after Uber and Lyft threatened to stop service in CA after their AB5.

Re: Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

#135

Post by slg » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 3:03 AM UTC

EdJiang wrote: post #128

slg wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The CA legislature just passed AB323, which exempts journalists from AB5, with a 71-4 margin (94.7%) in the Assembly The link you provided says 67-4. The Assembly has 80 seats so 67/80 is 83.75% and therefore wouldn't be enough to amend Prop 22. One big difference between that change to AB5 and this one is that almost zero journalists actually wanted AB5 to apply to them. Journalism is profession that is much closer…

I do see the first link says 67-4, but the second link uses 71-4, which is the correct vote count. You can see on the ca.gov website: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtm... If you agree that the workers should decide, the majority of drivers also don't want AB5 to apply to them. https://therideshareguy.com/california-proposition-22-2020/ In this blog's survey ~70% of drivers want to be indepe…

>I do see the first link says 67-4, but the second link uses 71-4, which is the correct vote count. You can see on the ca.gov website:

Fair enough.

>In this blog's survey ~70% of drivers want to be independent contractors, and ~60% are a Yes on 22. In case you think it's biased, the writers ultimate argued for the No vote.

My point was not necessarily that the workers should always decide. It was that there is a huge difference between roughly 0% who support it for journalists and a roughly 30%-40% who support it for rideshare workers.

Also that 60% who support Prop 22 is wildly influenced by the money spent by these companies and the underhanded practices that were the topic of this post. If these workers were given an unbiased account of Prop 22 and the ramifications, I think the numbers would be different. If this was truly a popular proposal, why would this become the most expensive campaign in history with roughly 95% of the money coming in support of Prop 22?

Re: Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

#136

Post by EdJiang » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 3:18 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #135

EdJiang wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do see the first link says 67-4, but the second link uses 71-4, which is the correct vote count. You can see on the ca.gov website: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtm... If you agree that the workers should decide, the majority of drivers also don't want AB5 to apply to them. https://therideshareguy.com/california-proposition-22-2020/ In this blog's survey ~70% of drivers want to be indepe…

>I do see the first link says 67-4, but the second link uses 71-4, which is the correct vote count. You can see on the ca.gov website: Fair enough. >In this blog's survey ~70% of drivers want to be independent contractors, and ~60% are a Yes on 22. In case you think it's biased, the writers ultimate argued for the No vote. My point was not necessarily that the workers should always decide. It was that there is a huge…

According to the Rideshare Guy, the proportion of drivers in favor of being an IC was higher pre-pandemic and higher outside of CA. You could make the opposite argument -- that political voices have influenced people in the other direction. I'm not sure which would be correct. I've personally seen a lot of misinformation in the other direction. The top post in this thread (which I replied to) is a distillation of general sentiment and misinformation from AB5/No22 voices.

Also, the "against" was not 40% even when "for" was 60%. It was 60% for, 24% against, and 16% undecided. I'm not sure where you got the number that 0% of journalists wanted to be employees but I doubt it's actually 0%.

Anyways, happy to get into a deeper discussion offline -- I think there's a lot of interesting philosophical arguments for both sides but with politics the way it is the Yes/No voices are currently talking past each other. Feel free to reach out to me directly!

Re: Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

#137

Post by umvi » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 3:27 AM UTC

jerry80 wrote: post #129

acadien wrote: post #3

I am so against prop22 it pains me so here I am ranting on the internet. What's going on is a negotiation between the state and these companies that are able to take advantage of a gap in how insurance and other benefits work. Instead of actively negotiating with the state, Uber/Lyft/Doordash and many others have simply asked to maintain the status quo, screw the drivers, just business as usual. Drivers do not get be…

I really don't understand why drivers should be considered employees, or even independent contractors, to Uber. Maybe someone can fill me in. To me, Uber seems more like a marketplace that connects buyers and sellers of a particular service (rides). If I sell something on eBay, should eBay consider me an employee and give me benefits? What about if I sell my service on Fiverr or Upwork? How is that Upwork any differe…

The difference is that on ebay you get to set the price of what you are selling.

With Uber you don't. Uber gets to decide how much the ride costs, not you.

Re: Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

#138

Post by refurb » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 3:31 AM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #60

We should fight for a system where people can actually be paid enough to live from ONE JOB. (This solves all kinds of other problems, like freeing up time so people can finally live more relaxed lives and invest in themselves, including in their own health.) Yet we live in a society where multiple jobs are often required just to survive. And in that scenario, it is strange to require “your employer” to give you benef…

We should fight for a system where people can actually be paid enough to live from ONE JOB.

So when a college kid wants a weekend job, that won't be allowed?

Re: Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

#139

Post by lhorie » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 3:34 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #131

lhorie wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> taxpayers are supposed to be on the hook It's interesting that people frame social safety issues as "taxpayers money sharking". The reality is that privatized healthcare in the US means middle class americans typically pay quite a bit more than socialized healthcare countries (see medical debt collection industry). It's even more mind boggling because the ones that stand to benefit the most from socialized infrastr…

I'm also not American and not old and I don't know if it sounded that way but I didn't come at this from a "hobos leeching money" standpoint. My point is that social safety doesn't just happen at the government level, and a plurality of entities, including private ones, can be responsible for it. In my country employees at sizeable firms have guaranteed representation on the board of their firm. (30%). Stakeholdershi…

That's a great point. I was mostly speaking about a common line of rhethoric specific to the US situation. There are certainly many interesting models outside of north america that ought to come to light more.

The employment security thing is something I sometimes see being argued as a weakness in the sense that it reinforces incumbents as opposed to promoting entrepreneurship (and indeed, the US being the polar opposite does show anedoctal evidence of strong entrepreneurship).

Even in the US, there are relatively common ways that companies provide stakeholdership (equity programs, for example). But I'm not convinced that this type of stakeholdership is necessarily aligned with the interests of the population at large. Unions, for example, are notorious for disruptive strikes.

IMHO, the gig economy falls into a weird area: drivers are technically independent and ought to be free to set their own prices, much like say freelance programmers can be sole proprietorships who are on the hook for their own healthcare expenses, but the ridesharing industry is extremely price sensitive, to the point drivers could easily put themselves out of work by increasing prices.

There are many lines of thought about how that dynamic ought to play out, ranging from "side gigs are just hustling between real jobs", to sacrificing some drivers in favor of allowing a subset to earn a higher minimum income, to the socialist "it's only fair if everyone gets the same treatment, even if it's not ideal for everyone", to the "this industry is important enough that government should subsidize no matter what" sort of thing you see in agriculture and many public transit systems. I'm not sure there's a right answer there.

> one guy in charge of the entire thing throws a tantrum

I think the model that makes the most sense here is the one in the name of the social safety net in Canada: employment insurance. Insurance in the traditional sense of the word: a collective pool of money from a diversified population which can be deployed systematically to bail out some subset of said population in rare emergencies. Naturally, in real life, that's not exactly how it works, especially in such large scale prolonged emergencies, but still, it's a model I like.

Re: Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

#140

Post by paulmd » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 3:41 AM UTC

Arelius wrote: post #106

paulmd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really disgusting how Silicon Valley has embraced the tactic of holding other people's livelihoods hostage while they try to make a few percent more profit. Epic is doing the same thing with the Unreal Engine code. They deliberately violated Apple TOS knowing it would get the account banned, and then they try to leverage all those other developers who are going to lose iOS support against the big bad Apple who…

While I generally agree, I don't think Epic is an accurate comparison. They obviously knew that Fortnight would get banned from the Appstore, and it was a business decision for them to make. However, it would have been reasonable for them to assume that they would maintain their ability to still develop UnrealEngine, so they can publish source code for other developers to publish games from their own accounts . That…

That seems like an after-the-fact justification, I don't think they knew for sure that courts would force apple to allow downstream development. I think that may be courts saving people's bacon from an upstream that was willing to let them burn if that's what made the upstream profit, until the court case is decided.