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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

#401

Post by stjohnswarts »

atomi wrote: post #317
dragonwriter wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?" is it the Legislature/Governor or is it special interests who can spend enough to put bespoke laws into effect and make bespoke changes to the state constitution? Neither. It's the people, who, after all the spending choose both the legislature and the governor, and choose the results ofinitiatives and referenda, and who have, on making all th…

No kidding. Did op forget that it's actual people who are voting on these referendums? California allows any coalition to initiate referendums and bring the vote to the people, if that's not democratic, I don't know what is. Edit: And it's a bit insulting to say California voters don't have the wherewithal to digest political advertisements and make their own decisions.

Just because "the majority" want it doesn't make it a good thing. That's why there is a Constitution (in the USA) and courts to protect various minority from the over-reaching majority. If I make a few bucks on the side working for uber in the evenings does that mean they should give me an insurance policy and retirement plan?

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

#402

Post by youeseh »

908B64B197 wrote: post #330
youeseh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to go back to the medallion system? Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very…

No doubt, many taxi drivers have been getting screwed over by the current and pre-ride-sharing state of the industry.

I'm a big believer in incentives and how they influence behavior.

For better or worse, ride sharing systems have put drivers in a situation where they have to provide amazing customer service, and due to supply pressures, the price has been falling to levels that make it difficult to make a living.

Before ride-sharing came along, cities had set the rates to protect customers from being gouged. I think they can safely remove the ceiling now. They may have to set a minimum per-mile rate to protect drivers now (if they aren't doing already doing so).

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

#403

Post by int_19h »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #361
atomi wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No kidding. Did op forget that it's actual people who are voting on these referendums? California allows any coalition to initiate referendums and bring the vote to the people, if that's not democratic, I don't know what is. Edit: And it's a bit insulting to say California voters don't have the wherewithal to digest political advertisements and make their own decisions.

There is an old sailor's joke about who do you believe when the sailor on the deck says, "there is no land in sight" and the one in the crow's nest says "land off the starboard bow." The wisdom in the joke is that both are correct from their own point of view but as a matter of trust, you want to go with the point of view with the person who has a better view of the bigger picture. Representative forms of government…

There are different representative forms of government, and their priorities are correspondingly different. What you describe is more or less the basis on which US was organized back in the day. However, by the time the West Coast states were being settled and granted statehood, there was a pushback against elitism in government, and more interest in direct democracy. Which is why those states ended up with extensive provisions for referendums written into their constitutions. If the citizens of California decide that it's not in their interest to govern themselves directly, they can always amend the constitution to remove those provisions.

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

#404

Post by int_19h »

ryandrake wrote: post #362
strawberrypuree wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it's a bit insulting to say California voters don't have the wherewithal to digest political advertisements and make their own decisions. On top of this, voters don’t even need to digest political advertisements. The state sends a booklet that describes all the proposition, the pro position, rebuttals to the pro position, the con position and rebuttals to the con position , plus how much money was spent from ea…

Unpopular opinion, but I think we're giving a little too much credit to the average voter. There are a lot of low-information voters out there who don't pour through the booklets and published rebuttals and rebuttals to the rebuttals. Media saturation works. It doesn't always work, and you can always go back and find exceptions, even some very high profile ones, but if it didn't work in general , we wouldn't see so m…

You don't solve this problem by ditching direct democracy in favor of representative one, though. The end result is that people still vote for populists, who are either clueless and quickly run things into the ground, or are pandering sociopaths. The "philosopher representatives" has been shown to be as much of a sham as philosopher kings.

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

#405

Post by int_19h »

ericmay wrote: post #293
vincnetas wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And i think it's OK. There is a reason why professional truck drivers must not drive longer than specified amount of time without taking breaks. Work safety regulations are usually written in blood.

But the work is fundamentally different. You can work 80 hours in retail for example. With Uber drivers it's not "drive down long stretch of road without a break for 8 hours".

Uber drivers are, well, drivers. I wouldn't trust somebody working 80-hour schedule (with everything that implies about their quality of rest, or lack thereof) to be regularly driving a car in public. That's just accidents waiting to happen.

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

#406

Post by int_19h »

WalterBright wrote: post #239
nemothekid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> democracy under capitalism Left wing systems also have powerful special interests.

They do, but without such extreme concentration of wealth, they're not so powerful when it comes to public discourse.

(Note that we're talking specifically about democracy, regardless of the economic system.)

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

#407

Post by int_19h »

mehrdadn wrote: post #252
tomp wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> casting an informed vote is quite arduous for the average person This argument always comes up when discussing direct democracy or similar ideas, but it completely collapses under even the most basic scrutiny! Direct voting is strictly better than delegated voting, because you can always ... wait for it ... delegate your vote! You don’t care enough about the issue to educate yourself? Simply cast the vote for the o…

> This argument always comes up when discussing direct democracy or similar ideas, but it completely collapses under even the most basic scrutiny! > Direct voting s strictly better than delegated voting, because you can always ... wait for it ... delegate your vote! You don’t care enough about the issue to educate yourself? Simply cast the vote for the option your government/party/favourite expert recommends! After a…

In a system like this, parties would look very different - instead of "big tents" that promote groupthink long term, you'd have multiple small, often single-issue parties. And similarly, voters would pick different parties to represent them on different issues.

Too complicated? It's basically the same as splitting the ballot, and that used to be the norm rather than exception in much of American politics.

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

#408

Post by int_19h »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #384
dmitriid wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not academic literature, it's an op-ed piece. And every one of the 5 reasons can be challenged. Especially the "less choice" one.

I actually think the argument about committee chairing is a bit more credible than what's been said in this thread. Stability definitely can help nurture depth more than a parade of different positions.

Policy stability overall is valuable, but staggered terms can provide for continuity of policy without changes that are too rapid.

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

#409

Post by WalterBright »

int_19h wrote: post #406
WalterBright wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> democracy under capitalism Left wing systems also have powerful special interests.

They do, but without such extreme concentration of wealth, they're not so powerful when it comes to public discourse. (Note that we're talking specifically about democracy , regardless of the economic system.)

The public labor unions in Washington are as powerful as they get, as it is very hard to get elected without their endorsement.

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

#410

Post by 908B64B197 »

youeseh wrote: post #402
908B64B197 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to go back to the medallion system? Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very…

No doubt, many taxi drivers have been getting screwed over by the current and pre-ride-sharing state of the industry. I'm a big believer in incentives and how they influence behavior. For better or worse, ride sharing systems have put drivers in a situation where they have to provide amazing customer service, and due to supply pressures, the price has been falling to levels that make it difficult to make a living. Be…

> the price has been falling to levels that make it difficult to make a living

I'm really curious to know how much drivers are making. I recall when Uber arrived, a lot of guy driving taxis (not medallion owners but renters) were really happy to switch over.

AB5 has this paternalist (and somewhat racist) undertone that drivers are too stupid to know how much it costs them to operate their business.

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