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California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

reuters.com

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Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#31

Post by choppaface »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #9

This has been an interesting battle in terms of civil governance. Basically Uber & Lyft threatened to put the initiative they wrote, on the ballot if the legislature passed AB5, which they did. Uber and Lyft are now doing everything they can to get it to pass which will set up its own court fight. Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?" is it the Legislature/Governor or is it special…

But rideshare employment regulation is not a California issue, it's a _global_ issue. California wasn't first to GDPR, yet it's the home of internet advertising. Sales tax laws for online commerce had to come from the Supreme Court.

California (courts) might be able to leave a mark in the Sidecar vs Uber suit on the issue of Uber using dynamic pricing to uncut rivals for marketshare: https://www.law.com/therecorder/2020/04/24/uber-has-trouble-...

Uber got away with greyballing and other price espionage in New York and outright medical record theft in India. Have those legislatures been successful against Uber?

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#32

Post by johnloeber »

youeseh wrote: post #30
cm2012 wrote: post #24

Incredibly dumb. Taxi drivers have not ever been employees, what's the difference now?

The difference is in the power imbalance. Taxi drivers hold much more power and control over their ability to earn compared to Uber and Lyft drivers.

No they don't. Taxi drivers are exploited end-to-end. There's a reason why the medallions eclipsed a million dollars in price. The drivers have to lease their cars on a daily basis, and start at around $160 leasing fee in the hole. They're driving for many hours before they start making any money at all. That's not "power and control", that's getting totally screwed. And every Uber or Lyft driver who has ever driven taxis before will tell you that.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#33

Post by Ericson2314 »

beambot wrote: post #26
Ericson2314 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California didn't help itself when it implemented term limits which had the unpleasant side effect of never having any legislators with enough experience in the job to know how to really get things done. I've never understood this argument. Potential "yay" and "nay" votes are both term-limited, so the "inexperience" should cancel out? The fear of rocking the boat effects anyone that, well, will live longer. Whether…

Yay & Nay votes aren't the only job of legislators. They're often responsible for writing good legislation too -- something that's arguably difficult to do if you're new to the job, so the task (largely) falls back to special interests to "help" with the process. By way of example: Literature. It's easy to read a good book; it's much harder to write one without lots & lots of practice.

Even when the outside interests don't write the legislation, it's the staff and not actually politicians that too: politicians are basically constantly in meetings / at events and have no time for such work. :|

Nothing prevents the staff from being retained from when legislator to the next.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#34

Post by nemothekid »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #9

This has been an interesting battle in terms of civil governance. Basically Uber & Lyft threatened to put the initiative they wrote, on the ballot if the legislature passed AB5, which they did. Uber and Lyft are now doing everything they can to get it to pass which will set up its own court fight. Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?" is it the Legislature/Governor or is it special…

At the risk of sounding like a stereotypical leftist, I'm struggling to see how more of the blame can be on term limits, and not just a side-effect of our current version of democracy under capitalism.

Simply put, if I had 100B, and there was outside force threatening my business I would certainly invest to protect myself - this includes mundane things like investing in security and outside threats like regulation. I just don't know you would design a government that is protected against an outside player pouring hundreds of millions of dollars in order to change the laws. If anything I think an official who decided to get in bed with special interest groups is far more prepared to outspend any opponent, and is the safer option for special interests groups.

I think, in the future, we will see more Facebook era startups get smarter and smarter on playing politics. Airbnb originally failed miserably in their political game, but I think as time goes on SV will only get better at influencing California & global politics.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#35

Post by tcbasche »

umvi wrote: post #5

So does this mean it'll be more economical for me to just rent cars again and drive myself whenever I fly to California?

Forgive my ignorance, but doesn't California have public transport? Renting cars isn't the only option I would think?

I dunno, I'm not from the US so maybe I just don't understand.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#36

Post by haroldegibbons »

This ruling could pave the way for a model that is good for everyone. As of now the gig economy exploits the poor[0]. Unless you think making 70% less than minimum wage is fair.

0: https://web.archive.org/web/20180302041610/http://ceepr.mit....

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#37

Post by thaumasiotes »

foota wrote: post #28
VRay wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bet you could set up an actual marketplace with automated matchmaking it probably wouldn't be as good as Uber/Lyft can make things by forcing "contractors" to take unprofitable rides, though

> I'll bet you could set up an actual marketplace with automated matchmaking > it probably wouldn't be as good as Uber/Lyft can make things by forcing "contractors" to take unprofitable rides, though I think it's hard to tell what would happen. There's no reason that we would necessarily expect that uber drivers would not take lower wages for rides if they had to in a market. It's hard to know whether Uber deflates t…

> It's hard to know whether Uber deflates the price of rides to keep demand high (and thereby steals surprlus from the drivers) or whether they inflate the price of rides to take a larger cut (and thereby steal surplus from riders).

Do they do either of these? Their historical approach has been to subsidize the rides, which enriches both passengers and drivers at Uber's expense.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#39

Post by thelastbender12 »

rectang wrote: post #25
drewblaisdell wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The judge ruled based on the law. Are you basing this on anything other than the ideal that we Americans are taught about how courts work? In practice, a reasoned argument can be made for two or more interpretations of law and judges are often entirely "political".

One of the great distinctions between natural languages and programming languages is that programming languages have comparatively little ambiguity — because computers do not have the capacity to consider external context when interpreting the intention of the programmer, and thus cannot resolve ambiguous constructs. You'd hope that tech folks, from constantly having to accommodate this defect of computers, would dev…

The distinction between natural language and programming languages is interesting, given the push towards machine learning and programming 2.0 that switches explicit instructions in code for training using examples.

Re: California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees

#40

Post by Ericson2314 »

d23 wrote: post #29
Ericson2314 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California didn't help itself when it implemented term limits which had the unpleasant side effect of never having any legislators with enough experience in the job to know how to really get things done. I've never understood this argument. Potential "yay" and "nay" votes are both term-limited, so the "inexperience" should cancel out? The fear of rocking the boat effects anyone that, well, will live longer. Whether…

> I've never understood this argument. Potential "yay" and "nay" votes are both term-limited, so the "inexperience" should cancel out? What? Take this to it's logical conclusion and imagine term limits of 1 day. No one would be making sound decisions with those yeas and nays. And why would they always be 50 / 50 and "cancel out"? If you know nothing about a fairly complex topic, it's easy to be mislead, especially by…

> Imagine term limits of 1 day. No one would be making sound decisions with those yeas and nays.

I have no idea what terms limits of 1 day would do; it's not obvious to me. Please argue your point.

> And why would they always be 50 / 50 and "cancel out"?

I'm not talking about a vote split additive cancel out. I'm talking about how in `(termLimit * nFor) / (termLimit * nAgainst)` the `termLimit` factors cancel out.

> If you know nothing about a fairly complex topic, it's easy to be mislead, especially by someone with an ulterior motive that's playing a game much longer than your term limits.

Again you seem to be imagining legislators are dead at the end of the term and born at the beginning or something. They have plenty time to study the role before (c.f. the stereotypical centrist-psychopath politician planning from elementary school), and plenty of their career to be judged on their actions after.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of factors that reinforce the status quo, but I still haven't heard a decent argument term limits aren't obviously among them one way or the other.

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