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Comment by cseleborg | Hacker News Reader

This is rather cynical, isn't it? Mr. Khosrowshahi is suggesting that rather than finding ways of making employment more flexible, let's remain in the gig economy and re-invent benefits, conveniently forgetting how long it took to get to the benefits of employment in the first place.

The calculation is ridiculous. According to his example, if someone had been working almost full time for a year, they would have accumulated enough funds for a whopping 2 weeks of paid leave OR medical insurance -- but not both! And they couldn't have done it any other way because they wouldn't be so big otherwise.

Further, his central argument revolves around the fact that since Uber recruited drivers as gig workers promising them flexibility, their survey shows, unsurprisingly, that their drivers want... flexibility. Proof that nobody needs benefits, for sure.

Mr. Khosrowshahi isn't even trying to sound convincing.

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I'm currently reading Anand Giridharada's 2018 book "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World" which, while not exactly revealing anything new , does present a good collection of behaviour from the elite class wrapped in a good narrative structure.

There is one thing that never changes in their behaviour; Problems are not solved by acknowledging their underlying root causes (usually erosion of regulation, civil liberties or other social contracts), but by 'inventin' our way out of the problem. Usually to the financial gain of the elite in question.

As someone currently living in a country with strong unions and regulatory agencies, I have a hard time imagining how the U.S society could have eroded to this degree over time without the general populace taking notice and standing their ground against it.

The word "elite" in this context has always bugged me. It's to good of a word to be wasted for such a label. Elite(s) should be something positive.

You might also find Michael Woodiwiss' "Gangster Capitalism: The United States and the Globalization of Organized Crime" interesting.

https://www.amazon.com/Gangster-Capitalism-United-Globalizat...

Yes it is somewhat cynical, particularly that bit you call out, effectively saying that if Uber had to do things properly it wouldn't be so big, people would have to pay more etc etc.

This is what a lot of folks had been saying from the start was a huge negative - you're using a get-out of employment rights to undercut other companies!

I'm sure there must be a way to have both employment rights and flexibility over hours worked. That has to have been done before.

> we support laws that could make that possible

> But America needs to change

He's not here to make a case for what Uber should do to make it better. He's asking for America to change the frame of reference so they can look better without actually changing a thing.

> you're using a get-out of employment rights to undercut other companies!

Uber and the media branded this as "disruption". Uber played by their own rules to get big. With that goal achieved and with no more need to keep running afoul, they're asking for their rules to become the official standard.

He is trying to make it sound like they are trying to do better. Note the layers there. It's tactics.

Doing nothing while sounding like you're trying to do something will maybe be a little more sustainable for Uber than doing nothing while putting on a pair a of sunglasses and yelling "This is capitalism, baby!" with a big grin, which would be my summary of the previous tactic.

The end goal remains to do nothing, of course, but maybe they've accepted that they need to send more people to more meetings with the Government and pay for a ghost-written whiny NYT opinion piece once in a while.

We just went through 4 years of the nu80s again. Which puts us on track for nu90s.

As far as I can remember, "This is capitalism, baby!" didn't play quite so well with the latter crowd.

Then again, free trade and outsourcing did. So maybe Uber's new plan is to complain about the cost of US workers and hire remote drivers in lower CoL nations?

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