California is cracking down on the gig economy

You'd prefer that I answer "because gig economy companies provide unmatched flexibility and freedom to their employees^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcontractors", right? I'm not really here to play that game, so how's this?

- They may not work in an area where In-n-Out exists or Starbucks is hiring. Note: this doesn't mean that the other available low/no skill work pays less than Uber or other "gig economy" jobs.

- They may not realize that retail work pays more than Uber or they may believe Uber's exaggerated wage claims while not realizing that Uber would continue to take a larger and larger share of the driver's earnings

- They may have fallen prey to Uber's predatory financing and bought a vehicle expressly to drive for Uber

- They may believe that working in "gig economy" serfdom makes financial sense. I've a friend like that. They "work" for Instacart, but instead of driving their own vehicle (which they're upside down on) they use Uber to get to the grocery store, then another Uber to the person's house, and then another Uber home. Trust me, it's costing them money to do this but in their head it makes sense

- They could be Travis Kalanick and drive under the Boober[1] model — basically driving as a means of meeting sexual conquests.

- They could believe that retail work is beneath them

- Back before Uber was forced to institute background checks another option is that the driver failed a background check elsewhere or was otherwise unemployable in retail.

1: https://qz.com/1011300/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-pissed-peopl...

> Roman slaves could hold property which, despite the fact that it belonged to their masters, they were allowed to use as if it were their own.[58] Skilled or educated slaves were allowed to earn their own money, and might hope to save enough to buy their freedom.[59][60] Such slaves were often freed by the terms of their master's will, or for services rendered. A notable example of a high-status slave was Tiro, the secretary of Cicero. Tiro was freed before his master's death, and was successful enough to retire on his own country estate, where he died at the age of 99.[61][62][63] However, the master could arrange that slaves would only have enough money to buy their freedom when they were too old to work. They could then use the money to buy a new young slave while the old slave, unable to work, would be forced to rely on charity to stay alive.

The opportunity to buy one's way to freedom was not the norm, and typically only skilled or educated slaves could aspire to do this. And, as the article mentioned, this could take a very long amount of time and its only something that skilled or educated slaves might aspire to achieve.

> Although in general freed slaves could become citizens, with the right to vote if they were male, those categorized as dediticii suffered permanent disbarment from citizenship. The dediticii were mainly slaves whose masters had felt compelled to punish them for serious misconduct by placing them in chains, branding them, torturing them to confess a crime, imprisoning them or sending them involuntarily to a gladiatorial school (ludus), or condemning them to fight with gladiator or wild beasts (their subsequent status was obviously a concern only to those who survived). Dediticii were regarded as a threat to society, regardless of whether their master's punishments had been justified, and if they came within a hundred miles of Rome, they were subject to reenslavement.

First of all, this only applies if the slave was freed which is up to the discretion of their master. Also, I wrote an essay on Roman slavery and the patterns of slavery evolved over the course of Rome's roughly millennium long existence. Some periods saw reduced or even eliminated paths for slaves to become free let along citizens. Slaves in the Roman Empire varied as far as their conditions. Educated slaves might lead decent lives, but on the whole slaves are on the lowest rungs of society and did not even remotely have the kinds of worker protections we have today.

Middle Eastern soldier-slaves aren't really slaves as Westerners understand the term. They were effectively a military caste. In fact, the article even says this in its opening section, "The most enduring Mamluk realm was the knightly military caste in Egypt in the Middle Ages, which developed from the ranks of slave soldiers."

> And yes. I am personally convinced that bringing poor people and immigrants with limited citizenship rights into perpetuating economic relation where they cannot make economic progress and mostly accumulate debt and obligations with limited social benefits is modern version of serfdom.

These companies don't set immigration policy so I'm not sure what you're trying to say in this paragraph. And besides, many citizens also drive for these companies. And most importantly, if they decide that there are better opportunities than Uber and Lyft they are free to take those opportunities. This isn't serfdom at all, it's objectively wrong to call it that. The defining feature of serfdom and slavery is that the workers do not have agency to decide their form of employment. Uber and Lyft drivers do. If a serf thinks they can make more money as a craftsman instead of as a farmer they are not allowed to change their jobs because they're a serf. If an Uber or Lyft driver decides they can make more money working the checkout counter at Safeway they have the agency to take up that opportunity because they're not slaves or serfs. Calling Uber and Lyft the "modern version of serfdom" either demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of these terms on your part, of it's a bald faced lie.

The point remains, comparing Uber and Lyft drivers to slaves is absolutely inane.

I explicitly defined 'bad employee' as 'takes many job hops to find a place'. It's coarse grained to make a point, which you perhaps missed.

My point is: There is a % of the workforce that could work, but it is economically more efficient for them not to.

> When firing an employee is easy, employers are much more willing to hire because they know that they will be able to terminate employees that are not productive.

This is a separate idea: The job market should be such that people are free to find the best place for them. It'd take multiple essays to cover all the angles on how to best do that, or why the US is as it is, etc. For example, different cultural standards play quite a role there.

> This doesn't seem to be the case seeing as how most of Western Europe has a higher unemployment rate than the US.

It is the case now. Check just about any european politician's speeches. Unemployment rates don't prove anything here.

> You're seriously saying that if we don't employ people who are incapable of doing their jobs, then the only other option is summary execution?

Not what I said. I said: If you want to make an economic argument, given the fact that there are a few people where it's economically more efficient to not employ them, one should accept this. Or take on ridiculous extremist positions such as summary execution, which I assume nobody wants to take.

> 0% unemployment is a crazy goal and I don't know why you seem to think that making it harder or easier to fire employees

You seemed to be making the point that gig economy jobs are a good solution for perennially bad employees because they can easily get these jobs and be easily fired from them. I was countering said point.

With respect to the latter, these are people who I don't see in any other occupation. I assume the reason they work these jobs is that they cannot get traditional jobs which generally have higher barriers-to-entry due to higher guaranteed wages and more benefits.

If gig economy jobs are made to be more like other jobs, then the same barriers to entry are going to emerge.

It's the very low-cost nature of providing these jobs that makes them accessible to those at the lower end of the skill scale.

Th US has actually seen wages for low-skilled workers grow very quickly over the last couple of years and perhaps it is not a coincidence that it has been over the last couple of years when the number of gig economy jobs has grown to become a significant portion of the total job market.

Basic economy theory dictates that increasing the sources of demand for low-skilled labor will increase wages for low-skilled labor. That's why gig economy jobs shouldn't be prohibited.