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Comment by deusofnull | Hacker News Reader

I dont overly care what regulatory framework we place Uber into, I care that they dont misclassify their workers as independent contractors. The whole gig "economy" is a scam, people smarter than I have broken down the numbers about the cost of maintaining your vehicle (in uber's sake) and the tax bill due in april exceeding the pay. Not to mention theres little to no job security or benefits. Pay Your Workers.

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You should care. Uber has lobbied in my state to not be classified as a taxi (or common carrier), and their drivers are classified as independent contractors. They were able to successfully lobby for this classification by guaranteeing a $1,000,000 liability insurance policy for injury caused by their drivers.

If your injuries due to driver negligence exceed this amount (which is very possible if you are severely injured and become disabled for the rest of your life, unable to work), you have no recourse. You cannot currently go after Uber because they are not classified as a common carrier. You are screwed.

You can get vastly different analysis results depending on the assumptions you make about the marginal cost to run a vehicle - If someone is leasing a high end SUV they wouldn't otherwise need the pay is far worse than if someone is driving around in a 5 year old car they already needed. It also makes a huge difference if they are doing this as a full time job or only during peak times.

And all of these factors are in the driver's control, rather than Uber's.

Can you clarify what exactly you think is a "scam"? People are free to drop in or out of the 'gig economy' at their discretion. For things like Uber there are services available to rent cars with time frames as low as by the hour, to help drivers determine if the wages and work are what they're really looking for. At worst, they could simply chat with another driver for the service.

What's worse, Uber's interests and and "independent contractors" interests are not fully aligned. When Uber wins, there's plenty of drivers on the street and no surge pricing. When drivers win, it's surge pricing all day long. This adversarial relationship is inevitably going to produce bad results for the drivers, who are undoubtedly the weaker party.

Taxi drivers are usually independent contractors.

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