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.
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/
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Without the ability to form a union, or wage protection, workers are going to be racing to the bottom.
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.
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."
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.
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.
If we don’t allow artificial scarcity/restrictions on number of cars on the road, maybe we should stop subsidizing fossil fuels too.
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.
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.
Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. The oligarchy wins again.