681–690 of 781 posts
It strikes me that these articles are always biased in the direction of the benefits of being an employee. I have several friends that actively choose to be contractors because they prefer the (legally protected) flexibility to decide their own hours, among other things. It's a personal decision, and there are upsides and downsides in both directions. Sure - some (non-insignificant) portion of Uber and Lyft drivers w…
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It’s incredible how many people just start from the assumption that these services must exist and then work backward from that. Obviously you run into serious dissonance when you arrive at the pricing problem, where the solution is quite simple: they shouldn’t exist. Then you can start thinking about real solutions to urban transit that have existed for more than a century.
The starting assumption is that free and rational adults are choosing to work for the wage and customers are choosing to pay a sufficient price, so it should exist. That's not working backward, or dissonance--it's an acknowledgement of reality. It's a different unrelated group claiming that it shouldn't exist if it doesn't provide the pay / benefits they think it should.
And there are plenty that argue that under capitalism one isn't fully free. There is always the threat of losing the roof over your head.
What a lot of people in this thread dont seem to understand is that the article is not making the case for Uber/Lyft drivers to be classified as employees (traditionally cab drivers have almost always been self-employed contractors), its simply reporting that under the current arrangements, Uber/Lyft drivers clearly _are_ employees. Legal scholars frequently cite the ability to set a price as a key criterion for bein…
This is literally what drivers do today in California.
Lots of HN comments are here like "I know people who prefer to be contractors", "My sister's neighbours little brother actually doesn't want to be treated with respect by Uber", blah This is utter nonsense. Being a contractor means being self employed. You don't get paid leave or sick pay. It's a risk taking and doesn't make any sense in the gig economy where the wages are close to minimum rates. If you are truly sel…
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>All gig workers are slaves and we should treat each other with more dignity and upgrade them to employees. It's our bloody duty as a decent human being. Lyft/Uber can upgrade them to employees but the arithmetic of bottom-up economics means Uber has to raise prices to cover full employment benefits. The raised fares conflict with what passengers are willing to pay . E.g. even though yellow medallion taxis often cost…
This is a straw man argument. Only because other jobs also have issues doesn't mean we shouldn't try to start improving somewhere at some point. Also customers NEVER want to pay more for anything, so that is hardly an argument to treat some people like slaves. It is the duty of the strong to fight for better treatment of those who can't fight for themselves because they lack financial security or for other practical…
Please don't paint my intention to describe the underlying economics for higher quality focused discussion as me being against humanity's improvement and you being the one with the moral high ground.
I was emphasizing that there's a dynamic interplay between what drivers (whether Uber or non-profit driver co-op) can charge and what customers will willingly pay. Your comment left the dynamics of out of it which can lead to a naive assumption of what law can realistically accomplish. Consider your next statement:
>It is the duty of the strong to fight for better treatment of those who can't fight for themselves because they lack financial security or for other practical reasons. Law is exactly doing that.
The law isn't just exactly that. A law that attempts to add economic advantage to one group will inevitably make another group worse. The other disadvantaged group often becomes the "unseen"[1] group. Instead of talking in feel-good sentiments that nobody can debate (e.g. "duty of strong to fight for the weak")... let's try to discuss via math/probabilities:
Uber has about ~150,000 drivers in California. A law that forces all drivers to become employees does not automatically mean 150000 get minimum hourly wage of $15 and 2 weeks of paid time off. No, what happens is that many (I'm guessing more than 50%) Uber drivers would be removed from the system to comply with the "drivers-must-be-employees" law. The drivers that remain in Uber would be the ones on profitable routes in more affluent regions of the cities than can pay higher prices. The unemployed drivers that lost income from Uber now become the "unseen". Do the unseen who get $0 because Uber can't afford them as employees get also get attention in our moral framework?
[1] Bastiat's essay on "that which is seen and unseen": https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Essays_on_Political_Economy/T...
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You think, if Uber let drivers bid on customer fares, they could classify the drivers as contractors again?
I think giving the ability for one driver to promote their services over other drivers is also a key feature. Each driver needs to be able to differentiate themselves and not be essentially interchangeable.
Is that an opinion on the legal situation, or meant as a suggestion for how to build a better business?
Lots of HN comments are here like "I know people who prefer to be contractors", "My sister's neighbours little brother actually doesn't want to be treated with respect by Uber", blah This is utter nonsense. Being a contractor means being self employed. You don't get paid leave or sick pay. It's a risk taking and doesn't make any sense in the gig economy where the wages are close to minimum rates. If you are truly sel…
If gig workers are slaves, then we must conclude that slavery isn't that bad. Nobody is forcing people to sign up to drive for these companies, and if they don't like it, then they can choose to drop out by tapping on their screen to indicate that they're out of service.
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The starting assumption is that free and rational adults are choosing to work for the wage and customers are choosing to pay a sufficient price, so it should exist. That's not working backward, or dissonance--it's an acknowledgement of reality. It's a different unrelated group claiming that it shouldn't exist if it doesn't provide the pay / benefits they think it should.
>The starting assumption is that free and rational adults are choosing to work for the wage And there are plenty that argue that under capitalism one isn't fully free. There is always the threat of losing the roof over your head.