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Comment by SilasX | Hacker News Reader

Hm, the screwiness of AB5 is a reason I'd vote against 22 [0]. Basically, it just compounds the existing problem of AB5 being totally capricious by making it hard to streamline and fix long-term now that there's a Proposition-locked special exemption.

IOW, the only thing worse than the legislature making arbitrary carveouts, is carveouts being claimed by anyone who can fund a prop campaign. At least with the former, there can be a compromise later that rationalizes the whole system; but post-prop 22, everyone will also have to work around Uber's carveout.

[0] Though I don't live there anymore FWIW.

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People should be free to work for whom they please under the terms they want. As a Californian, I am proud of the people for getting this passed.

We already have laws that restrict how Californians work (eg minimum wage, OSHA, EEOC). Do you think we should rollback those requirements as well, in the name of freedom?

Employment and work are not always the same thing.

Yes. There are developed countries without a minimum wage. Having a floor only limits labor’s ability to find buyers.

> Having a floor only limits labor’s ability to find buyers.

It is not a priori true that a minimum wage is not utility maximizing, depending on the regime of the supply/demand curve we're on. This is supercharged when you consider the diminishing marginal returns to wealth.

Yeah, they can have no minimum wage because they have organized labor. But if you’re a 1099 for Uber and you attempt to organize a union, you’ll just get fired.

Without the ability to form a union, or wage protection, workers are going to be racing to the bottom.

Also in those developed countries without minimum wage, they have national healthcare. So a poor comparison in my opinion.

If they don’t derive benefit, they wouldn’t work for Uber. There are other jobs available. Also we’ve stopped expecting people to move to find a better life.

You can make your own Uber. There is nothing stopping people from doing that. Lyft and Uber are all powered by VC money. There is nothing stopping a communalist approach to software and profit distribution.

I cannot “make my own Uber”. I don’t have a bottomless pit of Saudi Oil money to throw into this unprofitable space.

The only people that have the money to compete have no desire to put workers first. They are just trying to establish a monopoly and drive existing, successful, more efficient and sustainable forms of transit out of business.

Yes you can. You don't want to. That's not the same thing.

Its been my experience over the decades that when people say, "I can't do "x"", they really mean, "Doing "x" is going to be really, really hard and I don't want to work hard."

First, I highly doubt any investors would be interested in yet another Uber/Lyft competitor with nothing to differentiate. They operate at billion dollar losses and just laid off a bunch of employees. It's just a race to who can drive prices lowest and establish a monopoly.

Second, you're right in part, I don't want to build another uber, but not because its hard work (I like hard work). It's just that ethically Uber is pushing our country in the wrong direction, furthering our dependence on private individual transit, while further burdening the worker and the environment.

The barrier to entry for a taxi service, in a sensible jurisdiction, is very low - put a sign on your car and start driving people around.

Uber and Lyft became so popular precisely because there are so many insensibly-regulated jurisdictions that made even this start-your-own-taxi-service illegal in order to create artificial scarcity. Highly-regulated medallion taxi services suck - both independent taxis as well as Uber are a threat to them because they're comprehensively better for customers. You literally have to legislate good service away for medallion taxis to work. And that's exactly what AB5 was.

And I’d argue the barrier to entry for taxi businesses should be higher. More cars on the road doesn’t help the environment, or speed up anyone’s commute. Allowing Uber to circumvent this is moving our state in the wrong direction. And uber’s experience while better in some ways, is only better at the cost of the environment, and workers rights.

If we don’t allow artificial scarcity/restrictions on number of cars on the road, maybe we should stop subsidizing fossil fuels too.

How on earth does that address climate change? Get rid of ride share and encourage personal car ownership? The fundamental problem is that gas is cheap and no one is forced to pay for the externalities - not those shitty medallion taxis, not rideshare, not personal car owners - no one. Another fundamental problem is that people need to get around and personal cars are more attractive than public transit.

Impose a revenue-neutral carbon tax and you’ll address the externalities by encouraging more carbon efficient travel. Medallion taxis are a solution to exactly nothing.

AB5 has nothing to do with climate change. It’s grubby cartel-building disguised as labour-championing policy.

When there were higher barriers to entry, with the medallion system, it was awful. How to balance the two?

Even accepting that, what's the relevance to Prop 22/AB5 -- let alone my comment?

Here you have a system of ruleset 1 being applied to one group, and ruleset 2 being applied to another. The CA legislature passed AB5, which changed who ruleset 2 to applied to in a very arbitrary way. Prop 22 said, "oh, add this subgroup to 1, permanently, regardless of what the legislature does with anything else". Per my orginal comment, that's not an improvement, even you believe as you do.

Many Californians would willingly work in 1900s factory conditions with machines eating body parts and people passing out from exhaustion because that's the only work they can get. This kind of completely unregulated employment market that you seem to want is exactly the thing that people fought against for decades for damn good reasons.

There is plenty of unfilled demand for the trades, so I’m skeptical that there is a large pool of labor willing to work those kinds of jobs.

Sure, but the post you are responding to isn't talking about things like electricians or plumbers - which require some amount of training and licensing/certification. They're talking about things like garment workers - jobs with little to no requirements.

Unskilled day labor in the Bay Area easily charges $25/day with breaks and, if your GC is ethical, workers comp. I also think it's incorrect to characterize factory workers as unskilled. Labor intensive manufacturing in America usually involves qualities of dexterity, since those are hard to automate, which inherently have a skill component.

Your statement is factually false. If there were that much pent up demand for the trades, wages would be going up. That is not the case.

The characterization of "completely unregulated" seems pretty silly, given that Prop 22 imposes a decent number of new regulations on the app-based employment market.

Then it would make sense to look at what makes California such a job wasteland and maybe try to fix it instead of limiting job opportunities even more.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire[1] was a real-life example.

People in that factory worked there of their own free will.

Children working in mines[2] also did so of their own free will.

It is the fondest dream of many a libertarian to take us back to those days, where people could work freely, without government interference.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...

[2] - https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/child-miners-lewis-hine/

The fact that you have to go 100 years in the past for your examples speaks volumes.

Today's companies pay employees hundreds of thousands while enticing them with onsite massages and ping pong tables.

People have choices and it’s thanks to a healthy, diverse job market, not due to government intervention.

You want to help workers? Go ahead and build companies that offer well paid, decent jobs. Don’t rob people of their best asset: choice.

Factory fires are not terribly uncommon in developing nations, much more recently than 100 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fir...

Again - a developing nation is pretty much how the USA was 100 years ago...

How many drivers is Uber paying hundreds of thousands of dollars plus massages and ping pong tables to?

We're talking about people not even getting health care coverage, and who may actually be losing money on the balance, due to the depreciation of their cars, insurance premiums, maintenance, and other costs which they, rather than their employer, have to bear, thanks to Prop 22.

The point I was making, however, was not about Uber drivers specifically, but about the position that as long as an arrangement is freely agreed to it's ok.

That attitude leads to all sorts of exploitation. Uber's arrangement with their drivers is just the tip of the iceberg. Amazon's exploitation of their warehouse workers is a related example, with much worse done in countries that have no labor or workplace safety laws.

How many drivers is Uber sending to work in mines or in unsafe garment factories?

But more to your point: are you sure you know better than the people entering arrangements if they are exploited or not? Are you sure you are taking into consideration all their particular situation and their current life trade offs to take their decision for them? Are you sure you are so smart and all knowing that you absolutely know what this way their life will be better in the long term?

Secondly, are you sure there are no drawbacks and downsides for the society when you take away people's options through the power of law? No unexpected results or side effects? No historical precedents where this attitude backfired?

Finally, are you sure you are fighting a good cause and not helping someone else’s plans? Have you asked who and why wrote AB5? Have you asked how many exceptions it came with and how many more where added afterwards? Have you wondered if this is even proper governance?

Honest question: do you feel it’s noble to tell that supposed person in your scenario that he or she he’s not permitted to except that job? Or that his employer is not permitted to offer it?

In other words there are two consenting adults, one offering a position and one willing and eager to except it. Enter you, who wishes to get in the middle of it.

For what it’s worth, I have great compassion for someone who is stuck in a situation where they feel compelled to take a difficult, or dangerous, or Low paid job. But at the same time I Cannot muster the hubris needed, nor do I think I have the moral authority, to insert myself into two other peoples business. I believe there must be other ways to remedy the situation, that don’t involve prohibiting free trade.

> People should be free to work for whom they please under the terms they want.

The genesis of the whole issue is that Uber and Lyft are claiming people can work "under any terms they want" as ICs, but they aren't actually able to do things that ICs can do, like set their own rates and pick their own customers.

My understanding is that as of recently Uber does allow drivers to opt out of automatic pricing and pick their own multiplier[1]

[1] https://www.uber.com/blog/california/set-your-fares/

Certainly appears to be a step in the right direction. If the result of government regulation is that Uber and Lyft wind up treating the drivers like actual ICs on "their own terms", that seems like a win for everyone.

Do you remember how we gave Uber/Lyft drivers unemployment in the CARES Act even though they never paid unemployment insurance?

Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. The oligarchy wins again.

I vote NO on a lot of propositions for this reason. Passing legal hacks does not make the overall situation better and in fact makes things harder to unwind later.

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