361–370 of 640 posts
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That's like saying "you can tell this is an Aspen by the way it is". The idea is that we should have control over those laws dude. We didn't just spawn in a video game and are forced to deal with it. "Cause that's what Dad says" isn't how it's supposed to be.
>The idea is that we should have control over those laws dude Okay, what should we do to tackle long firm fraud?
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> Don't blame the potato theives or potato cartels, blame the politicians that built the system to work this way. Blame both.
Oh, and don't forget the voters, who mostly don't care, thus enabling the cartels that extract value from them to grow unchecked.
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> "Shareholder" are not people who own a stock in robin hood. If you own even a fraction of a share of a business (say IBM), you are, by definition, a "shareholder" in that business. It does not matter if it is via the RobinHood app., or a JP Morgan Chase Premier Brokerage Account.
Yeah, this place is starting to sound like reddit. Unhinged SJW everywhere.
Though I agree that monetary punishments to the company are much more effective than jail for some random shareholders. They just need to be large enough.
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We need to redefine what it means to commit this sort of crime. The modern corporation is an expert in dodging responsibility. Upper management will make it very clear that everyone is expected to follow the law at all times. Then they’ll set up incentives, requirements, and quotas that more or less require breaking the law to meet. When the inevitable occurs, they’ll wring their hand and say, we don’t condone that b…
Wage theft, like any other kind of theft, is a self-incentivizing crime. I agree people shouldn't be allowed to turn a blind eye to systematic lawbreaking, but no system of incentives can erase the fundamental accounting identity that a business unit will have more money if they pay workers less than promised.
This should be easier to deal with than most crimes. The problem with individual crimes is that criminals are generally bad at thinking through the consequences. No matter how terrible the punishment is, you’re still going to have murders, because the typical murderer isn’t weighing the cost/benefit tradeoff.
Companies are much better at this, especially big ones. Make wage theft unprofitable and it will drop dramatically.
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>To avoid having to pay any difference to make up the hourly wage to drivers, Uber runs an algorithm which kicks drivers out of the app randomly if demand gets too low, without warning or indication of when they can get back in. It can be minutes or hours. So the drivers remain on the road, driving/idling, waiting to get back into the app. The "work" is still getting done, but it doesn't count against Uber. I get leg…
> expecting uber to continue allowing unlimited amount of drivers to be "online", when they have to pay for them is absurd. I don't recall anyone demanding that. Maybe things have changed since then, but back when I worked in restaurants if things were slow I'd be sent home and know when I was expected to be back be that the next day or in time for the dinner rush. I wasn't randomly clocked off for 15-30 minutes, and…
That's seemingly what OP was demanding, given the displeasure he was expressing at uber for the practice.
>but back when I worked in restaurants if things were slow I'd be sent home and know when I was expected to be back be that the next day or in time for the dinner rush. I wasn't randomly clocked off for 15-30 minutes, and expected to hang around, then suddenly told I'm back on. In fact we'd call that wage theft, (which is very common in the US). But suddenly for Uber such a thing is acceptable.
It's the difference between employment vs working as a contractor. Cab drivers, who also work as independent contractors. No fare, no pay.
>The tight margins of the hack trade can leave cabbies feeling frustrated. “Sometimes, I don’t like it, because I have the potential to lose money,” said M. D. Islam, a cabby from Queens who has been driving for six months. He often earns less than $100 a day, he said; if his cab breaks down, or he can’t find passengers, he may end up in the red.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/nyregion/new-york-taxi-dr...
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>To avoid having to pay any difference to make up the hourly wage to drivers, Uber runs an algorithm which kicks drivers out of the app randomly if demand gets too low, without warning or indication of when they can get back in. It can be minutes or hours. So the drivers remain on the road, driving/idling, waiting to get back into the app. The "work" is still getting done, but it doesn't count against Uber. I get leg…
> expecting uber to continue allowing unlimited amount of drivers to be "online", when they have to pay for them is absurd. I don't recall anyone demanding that. Maybe things have changed since then, but back when I worked in restaurants if things were slow I'd be sent home and know when I was expected to be back be that the next day or in time for the dinner rush. I wasn't randomly clocked off for 15-30 minutes, and…
I've had the same opinion for a while now. Something has malfunctioned with the market economy if jacking up prices does not bring in competition that can do it for less.
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A real world example: wage theft in the US is bigger than all other forms of theft combined. How often do you hear about it? We hear endlessly about shoplifting rings and lax enforcement by lefty prosecutors. When was the last time you saw coverage of workers not being paid what they’re owed? When was the last time somebody went to jail for not paying their workers what they’re owed?
That's not actually true. Wage theft is maybe third: https://truthnotoutrage.com/2023/12/05/retail-theft-dwarfs-w... By all indicia, shoplifting is a much bigger problem. I know this myth and wage theft in general are really popular on social media. I think its lacking of representation in traditional media and prosecution is a mix of how much more clear-cut shoplifting is and just the victims report it more.
They provide theft data from the FBI, that is then contradicted directly by a non-scientific survey performed by a lobbying group of their members, for political purposes. It also fails to differentiate between shoplifting and outright robbery (the difference in my mind being the use of deception vs the use of violence).
They then choose the latter as a representation of fact with no caveats.
I have no idea whether wage theft is more or less than shoplifting. Anecdotally, I am among numerous people who have had 5 figure sums stolen through wage theft, yet none of these people have shoplifted anywhere near that amount.
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>To avoid having to pay any difference to make up the hourly wage to drivers, Uber runs an algorithm which kicks drivers out of the app randomly if demand gets too low, without warning or indication of when they can get back in. It can be minutes or hours. So the drivers remain on the road, driving/idling, waiting to get back into the app. The "work" is still getting done, but it doesn't count against Uber. I get leg…
A lot of jurisdictions require 4 hr minimum pay when called in to work. I wonder, would cabs be more competitive of Uber's alternative business model, if Uber had to be fairer? If so, then isn't Uber a sham? And shouldn't market forces see them go? Airbnb used to be cheap... at the start. Then people added insurance, people had to get permits, and so on, just as Hotels, and other do. Now it's not so cheap any more. O…
>I wonder, would cabs be more competitive of Uber's alternative business model, if Uber had to be fairer?
None of which applies to cabs, who are also independent contractors. For instance
>The tight margins of the hack trade can leave cabbies feeling frustrated. “Sometimes, I don’t like it, because I have the potential to lose money,” said M. D. Islam, a cabby from Queens who has been driving for six months. He often earns less than $100 a day, he said; if his cab breaks down, or he can’t find passengers, he may end up in the red.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/nyregion/new-york-taxi-dr...