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Comment by dsr_ | Hacker News Reader

The article points out that for many DoorDash workers, they aren't getting paid a positive sum, even if they count their time as worth zero.

Look, we have the technical ability to handle millions of people as hourly workers on timescale granularities of seconds. Require these companies to treat their "contractors" as part-time employees being paid minimum wage: start paying them when they accept their first job on day, pay them for periods of up to ten minutes between jobs, and stop being reviled by everyone who hates slave labor.

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>The article points out that for many DoorDash workers, they aren't getting paid a positive sum, even if they count their time as worth zero.

This just doesn't pass the smell test. It's much, much more likely that their method is flawed than it being the case that a bunch of workers pay DoorDash to work for them.

Instead of posting your personal idea that this must be wrong because it seems extreme, you could read the very lucid and clear article giving exact numbers on how they calculated this and why they are confident in this calculation.

The article says they gathered their data from a non-random sample of 200 drivers. I think the “smell test” is more accurate. Or DoorDash’s own claims, that drivers make $18 an hour.

Their sampling is biased, but DoorDash muddies their own claims by saying that pay is per "active hour". It's possible they're not counting time that drivers still need to allocate towards their work, making it inaccurate. I imagine you at least have to spend time pulled over to look at and accept an order (or break the law) so even that time getting in and out of traffic is probably not counted in "active hours". Imagine working retail and your employer only counting your time actually spent at the till when they say you're paid $20 an hour. You could be doing a whole lot more work than that but they don't consider it in that calculation.

They use the IRS 0.58$/mile tax deductible to estimate the car related costs. This is probably on the high side, especially for a small car.

I'll agree you absolutely have to watch what you're doing and count miles and whatnot, but having the option is a powerful thing (even when you're making negative money) and I wonder if regulating it too aggressively might take that away.

I am 100% ok with using regulation to take away the ability to earn negative money.

Obviously. But are you going to do that so neatly it doesn't trigger unintended consequences? Which have the potential to make things worse.

It's easy to say "let's do X to make Y better", but it's not that simple with any real world complex system.

Look at bill AB5 for an example currently in progress and ostensibly about helping gig workers. Here's a sobering sample of second order effects:

https://twitter.com/ms_andiloveall/status/120670581104242278...

https://twitter.com/delightedbite/status/1216834042881949697

I have 0% trust in regulators ability to do this without doing more harm to workers than good

Imagine all the alternative ways this valuable human time could be used. Do you really think the majority of people feel empowered and freely do this, or is it rather that they are stuck in a negative loop and can't get out.

Also to highlight that currently the government is subsidising these companies by paying food stamps and Medicaid (in the case of the US), and the workers are subsidising them by taking any and all economic and personal risk (injury, accident, car breakdown, long term health issues, etc.)

"Empowered" is a spectrum. Do I think the majority of gig economy drivers find their job empowering in some cosmic sense - no, probably not. But I'd certainly be much happier as a driver for Doordash than a sales clerk at Walmart, and the reasons are empowering things like "I don't have to spend 100% of my time around annoying customers" and "there's no manager who will come yell at me if I play around with my phone for a few minutes".

I agree human time is undervalued in the modern economy and it’s often waisted, but I think door dash because of its flexibility might actually be part of a change that results in it being more valued rather than less.

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