The big companies they were obviously targeting have the resources to get around it, but in the meantime it killed independent journalism in the state, as an example.

I know a few journalists who can no longer work in CA, despite liking the system they had. The publications won't touch them for fear of violating AB5.

There are lots of other folks in CA who like being contractors who are finding it much harder now, because the people hiring them are afraid of running afoul of AB5 but also can't afford to hire them as employees.

They really need to scrap AB5 and rewrite it, now that they've seen how much it missed the mark.

AB5 has had a chilling effect on 1099 work in California.

One option that seems very reasonable to me would be to introduce a third option: Employee (W-2), Independent Contractor (1099), Dependent Contractor (new gig economy group).

Yeah that's my preferred option too if we must keep the system, but it has a lot of the same problems.

Small orgs don't have the resources to hire lawyers to figure out if they can do 1099 or "new thing", and so it will still have the same chilling effect on 1099 work.

Sure, journalists get the short end of the stick, as well as gig workers who don't need the income and just want to do it part time. Edge cases are unfortunate.

Exactly. Fix that problem instead.

I'm spending low six figures annually on political donations to those who support universal healthcare. I still support shims like this until it gets here. Sorry I'm not fixing it fast enough for you.

That's exactly the point. Everyone wasn't suffering and in dire need of rescue by the state of California. Now, we have a law that hasn't helped the people it was supposed to help and has put quite a few legitimate businesses out of work. Good intentions or not, AB 5 is worse than the old status quo.

We became great as a nation without having to rely on a nanny-state to "protect" those poor poor people who are "obviously" unable to do it themselves...

But then you couldn't work anymore, and so you died or begged for charity.

The nation was built on the fact that if you became unable to work, or were never able to work at all, you were discarded by society.

I don't want to live in a society that discards people because they can't work.

They are not looking for another job and just want to maximize flexible revenue.

There are also thousands of people every year who do gig jobs and then get significantly hurt financially when they fall through a job benefit crack (health insurance etc) when they lose a job.

Well there you have it. If small orgs don’t generally have the legal capability to correctly classify employees among three whole choices, then many probably also can’t choose well between two. AB5 helped them make the correct choice, and good thing, given what you’ve said here, but maybe even two choices is too many. Maybe there should be no 1099.

Can the California state legislature create a new federal class of worker?

I keep seeing this in threads, but I don't understand the rationale. The United States Federal Government recognizes W-2 and 1099 filings, the State of California cannot invent a new Federal filing status or amend the United States Code, correct?

What's the criteria for determining whether someone is a dependent contractor?

I'm not against the idea, but it's important to have clear unambiguous criteria.

   Work for money -|-- employee
                   |-- contractor -|--- independent
                   |               \--- dependent
                   |
                   \-- youtube ad revenue / patreon / other?

CA may be holding out for some increase of the public safety net at the Federal level in 2021 post-election, and might be forced to move on it's own if things don't turn out as desired.

I'm not convinced of that (all laws are made with good intentions) any more. In retrospect, I don't know what I ever based that belief on.

I'll support a third worker category once gig platforms aggressively support the safety nets (universal healthcare, some sort of income protection besides unemployment) those classified workers would need. Until I see Uber and Lyft yelling as loudly for Medicare for All as Bernie Sanders, let them crumble under a torrent of damages at the hands of the court. Go for the cash reserves while they still have them.

hence, laws with pretentious sounding names where opponents are shouted down or branded baby killers. seriously, does it ever stop? I have as have others worked more than one job to make ends meet because this is what you do. I decided where to work not the person or company offering the job. If the work conditions were not to my liking I certainly wasn't going to stay there and the same goes for many in similar situations.

You don't attempt an intelligent and thoughtful debate with a bully. You punch the bully in the face before they punch you. Progressives should've learned to be less polite sooner (the majority of Americans support universal healthcare [1], and those with government provided healthcare are most satisfied [2], the public already supports the policy, its the politicians who stand in the way). Lessons learned from the last half decade of political observations.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/03/most-contin...

[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/186527/americans-government-hea...

I really can't think of a more fitting analogy for what has happened with Bernie bros over the past 6 months.

Regulation never raises the floor. It raises the first step. To raise the floor you have to actually provision services.

> let them crumble under a torrent of damages at the hands of the court

That's the problem though. Uber/Lyft can weather the storm with their cash reserves, many of the other companies can't. So they just bow out of the system entirely because they can't afford the risk nor the lawyers to even figure out if they are at risk.

The California Supreme Court ruling went into affect in January. Without AB5 things would be even more confusing now than it would have otherwise been, and the legislature is already looking at fixes to the law to deal with the other issues that have come up.

I keep seeing this in threads, but I don't understand the rationale. The United States Federal Government recognizes W-2 and 1099 filings, the State of California cannot invent a new Federal filing status or amend the United States Code, correct?

What stops the state from adding its own set of classifications and filing requirements in addition to the federal ones?

I think California could have said "pay gig workers with a W-2 but you don't need to give them all the exact same benefits as employees (health insurance, 401k, disability)”. Basically I'm not sure that it matters much, but you are correct in that California cannot amend federal law.

If you make them W2, then there are a bunch of federal rules you have to follow that may not make sense.

How much cash?

Same as the W2 employees but prorated?

Technically even full time W2 employees don't have to get health insurance or paid time off. So what if they company doesn't offer insurance or PTO to their employees. Are they off the hook?

Your system sounds good but unfortunately isn't tenable.

Ironically, if we had single payer healthcare that was funded by taxes, the entire thing would be moot. You'd pay into health care based on what you earned, and you'd get out the same as everyone else.

One week of health benefits into the common pool.

I would prefer that the driver get it. I am also okay with it being used to pay for the healthcare of the indigent who show up at an emergency room (which is what the driver will present as, eventually).

> Technically even full time W2 employees don't have to get health insurance

Huh? Your employer doesn't have to provide it. But I'm pretty sure that people being required to carry health insurance was one of the provisions of the ACA. I have to file a form with my taxes showing coverage. Has that changed?

> Ironically, if we had single payer healthcare that was funded by taxes, the entire thing would be moot.

This is misdirection.

That doesn't solve the fact that Uber and Lyft drivers are being paid below minimum wage. That ALSO needs to be fixed.

Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which eliminated the individual mandate penalty, effective January 1, 2019

When they write laws like this they know that CA represents 10% of the population and more than 10% of the wealth of the nation. No company would pull out of CA like that and they know it.

Uber uses the tech startup strategy of funding aggressive growth with VC. This means operating at a loss as long as revenue and the customer base grows.

California is a very mature market for uber. There is little to no growth potential left there, and the government is about to increase the operating cost dramatically. It would make good business sense to pull out of that market.

What complicates matters is that Uber is based in San Fransisco. What kind of power does the state of CA have over companies based in CA but that don't operate in CA?

This comment was typed on a keyboard manufactured with chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.

While sitting in a chair manufactured with chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.

At a computer manufactured with chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.

And the cables supplying power to that computer were also manufactures with chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.

Off the top of my head I also have California to thank for leading the way on:

- Puppy mill bans

- Clean, smoke-free air at work and in bars & restaurants

- Tanning booth restrictions for minors

- Single-use plastic bag bans

- Gay conversion therapy bans

California was also the first state to label Roundup as a known carcinogen. Years before the landmark cancer judgment against Monsanto. So it seems Cal/EPA knows what they're talking about and is providing valuable information not just to their constituents but to the rest of the country as well.

No offense, but that could only be written by a Californian.

I can think of automotive performance and firearm products that while legal in CA, the companies refuse to sell there on the extra regulatory or ideological grounds. I’m certain there are more examples.

There are definitely companies that don’t want to deal with California and willingly remove themselves.

Yes. Barrett (for one example) entirely pulled out of the state including sales to police. They left 10s of millions in sales.

For automotive performance, no one as large but I can tell you hundreds of millions don’t go to California because it isn’t worth the ridiculous rules CARB put in place and how one regulator will approve and the next will deny.

I have no idea why people think this.

You know how people stop driving? They just don't do it. There's no contract to break, there's no boss to tell. They just stop. In fact, they have to go out of their way to drive! It is entirely volunteer work, every single time.

It's the same thing people used to say about Walmart destroying mom-and-pop stores, but Walmart doesn't do anything. If they build a Walmart, nothing happens until people flock to work there, and again nothing happens until people flock to shop there.

Actually, if you read my other replies in the thread I make the opposite argument. People not having other options is an argument for ride-sharing companies, not against them. If they can't find work elsewhere, how are these jobs not good enough?

If you force Uber to party significantly more then they simply stop doing business. You can have your corrupt taxis back.

It really grinds my gears when people use the terms "pay someone fairly", "stop exploiting them", and "pay them a living wage". These are all terms that on face value seem reasonable - pay someone enough that they can live off of it, but for some reason it's never enough. $34,000 a year puts you in the global top 1% by income. Apparently that's still not enough for many people in the US.

That same argument also argues that a job for $1 per hour is reasonable, or that a dangerous job is OK. Do you believe that jobs need minimum standards to protect the most powerless in our societies? Most first world countries accept that restrictions are necessary, and many restrictions have come about to avoid the gross abuses that occurred without restrictions.

All minimum standards hurt some proportion of potential employees, and any one average individual may have a significant marginal gain by ignoring the standard.

The judgement to be made is about whether the potential for benefits is realised, and how much the harms are restricted, and how much the harms are not concentrated on particular subgroups.

The issue is that some people are desperate so that's what should be addressed, not that Uber only pays $x/h to a college kid that wants to make some money on the side to go out with friends.

Jesus man, did you just write that? Seriously? WTF? The fact that our society's economic structures do not allow these people meaningful employment is NOT justification for some capitalist to come along and exploit them as modern-day coolies. Rather, it is justification for reforming those structures so these people can obtain meaningful employment. Get your head on straight man, you are off-base.

As the above poster wrote: ride share drivers that can get better jobs quit and take their jobs. It turns out, though, that there are a lot of people for which driving for a ride share company is their best opportunity for their skills and schedules.

What? I really had to do a double take.

If the net cost of employing a driver rises while the revenue per employee stays the same, then the business could easily become non-profitable. If each driver is netting the company an average of $200 in profit per month, and the insurance they now have to buy costs $300 per employee then now the company is losing $100 per employee. And that's a conservative figure for healthcare, the average plan in California costs over $400 per employee [1].

I'd have to say the same thing back to you: claiming that jobs are secure even if authorities mandate a substantial per-employee expense ignores basic economics.

1. https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/single-coverage/?c... And my choice of source was conservative, too. Other sources claim more than twice that: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/09/employers-to-spend-about-100...

Uber and Lyft are already massively unprofitable. If you require them to give drivers expensive benefits, they are either going to raise their rates or cut driver pay (probably a little of both). If they raise rates, fewer people are going to use their services, and they are going to have to cut drivers.

You're basically advocating for a fraction of their drivers to be put out of work so that Uber can give the remainder better benefits but a reduced income.

I've also never encountered a driver that actually complained about Uber/Lyft. As far as I know the conditions with Uber/Lyft are still much better than with cab companies of days past.

It could be argued that the very idea government – which in some way is in charge of prioritizing and allocating resources on a macro scale – is founded on the antithesis of this assumption: that in the long run what's best for everyone isn't always aligned with the short term, and they're tasked with the balancing act. Different governments tend toward different extremes, of course, but every government is on the spectrum.

If individuals doing what was best for themselves at the present moment was intrinsically tied to longterm collective stability and wellbeing, then we wouldn't need government at all!

This is all an abstract way of saying that: yes, all of those customers and employees at a Walmart in small town may be doing what's best for themselves individually by working and shopping there at the time, but once Walmart puts all those mom-and-pop shops out of business, the only place for people to work now is Walmart, the only place for people to shop now is Walmart, those who set up shops in the town (who are statistically more likely to have kids and homes in the area) now have nothing tying them to the town (and indeed, may be incentivized to move out to somewhere else to set up shop!), home vacancies go up, community events die out, and suddenly your town is a glorified Walmart parking lot off the side of a highway, and not much else. So yes, you yourself may have gotten your eggs for 20% cheaper for a time, but was it worth the longterm detriments to your home?

Hyperbolic, yes, but I've personally seen this happen to a small Texas town I drive through year after year (though, as with any rural town, there's a lot of other factors at play): eventually the protests stopped and Walmart set up shop next to the local grocery store. The grocery store went out of business, even though everyone knew the owners. The grocery store lot sat and still sits vacant. Eventually the grocers moved away with their family. The sports team shuttered in the next 3 years. Then the local school merged with the new, consolidated county school. Then the Walmart eventually closed to lack of customers. The "downtown" is a shell of what it once was, with most businesses closed and some historic buildings once worth being proud of just 10 years ago now literally crumbling beyond repair.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/walmart-effect.asp

I don't think that this helps your argument as much as you might think. Governments didn't spring up as some kind of a mutual agreement in society to benefit everyone. Governance in most places arose after someone conquered and subjugated them. Then through a very long cycle of violence and subjugation we arrived at more modern forms of governance, where governments pretend that it's for the good of the people. Yet at the same time those governments will not give people a choice - they will use force to make you comply. That is to say, we need governments to protect us from other governments. Nobles/royalty didn't rule because they all wanted to improve the lives of people. They ruled because they were nobility/royalty.

It could be argued that, because the powers that be willingly prioritized their individual interest over their subjects ' collective wellbeing (be it intentionally "Let them eat cake"-style or because they were just dysfunctional rulers who couldn't keep their subjugates from starving, it doesn't matter; either way they dedicated more resources to themselves at the expense of everyone), these rulers were overthrown: the United States Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Cultural Revolution, etc. were all products of the elite few irresponsibly divvying up resources for themselves to the point where their subjects decided en masse it would be better to fight to change the system and possibly die rather than live under present conditions; regardless of how each of those revolutions turned out, what is clear is that if the government (or whatever powers that be) prioritizes its own interests too much over those it supposedly represents, it, too, will be overthrown (or at least, changed by external forces).

Modern day governments have an intrinsic interest in making sure that doesn't happen, and a big part of that means making sure society is collectively content enough to not pull the plug. But now I'm just philosophizing.

Prioritize sustainable growth over short term growth.

- There is no salary negotiation for each job. Earnings are unknown until after the job is completed. This is worse than both normal 1099 contract work and hourly wage work - but it more closely resembles hourly work than a freelancing situation.

- Drivers do not choose work based on accepting the full parameters of the job (pickup and dropoff location). They have to accept the job without knowing all the conditions like a contractor would.

- The company tells the “contractor” what to do in the sense that refusing too many pickups punishes and de-platforms the driver. In other words, once you are “on the clock” you have to perform all tasks assigned to you or face disciplinary action, a subordinate situation similar to an hourly job. The only difference is that you can clock in or out when you want.

If ride-sharing apps switched to such a system would it then satisfy you to declare drivers contractors?

I'd expect Uber and Lyft could easily implement a system to do just that, but I'm not sure it would make the situation any better for riders or drivers. Riders would now have to wait longer to get a ride and drivers would have to be constantly typing bids into the app to try to win their next trip. It's not obvious to me that this would alter driver compensation in any meaningful way.

How often has your ride been in a very new car?

The middleman companies actively incentivize the drivers to take on significant personal debt.

In my view, that's evidence of longer term contracts in play.

Contracts between whom? Uber/Lyft and auto companies?

After so many hours of your stomach grumbling, you accept bad work involuntarily.

Someone always says this, but its an emotional, irrational non-argument and hard to respond.

Your argument is that someone unemployed and starving found a job where they could feed themselves - but its not a good enough job? What exactly is your argument?

Ah but that's the rub. They still can't feed themselves, but it's the only job in town, and some money is better than no money.

If we don't create a set of rules that prevents the behavior of places like Walmart, it allows them to create a monopoly of available jobs in an area by being the only one who can operate profitably (or can absorb a loss until all other choices are gone).

At that point they can create jobs that aren't good enough, but also leave no other choice.

1. New jobs will spring up in the place of Uber driving that will be better and the level of employment stays the same or increases.

2. New jobs will spring up, but there's fewer of them and the level of employment decreases.

I would have to go with #2. Urbanisation has been happening for a long time. People most often move to big cities because of work. I'm from a former Soviet country and most of our small towns and villages are dying because there are so few jobs. If those places set a really high bar for jobs then those areas would die even quicker. The same thing can happen in bigger and richer cities. Detroit is an example of that.

I will concede that some people do get stuck in jobs and could do better and some areas get stuck with jobs that can do better. However, this makes it a question of how far should we go rather than if done at all. Even very bad jobs for starving people are likely a net benefit, but few people in the US are actually starving.

Starvation and malnutrition are problems worth worrying about. Hunger in the absence of starvation or malnourishment is not.

I dont see how the first half changes the argument, as the second half points out.

> If we don't create a set of rules that prevents the behavior of places like Walmart

We have rules. Monopoly-busting is a fundamental role of the government. Corporations can accrue more power than their surrounding communities, as history has shown. Besides, other corporations oppose the actions of Walmart, keeping them in check - capitalism!

lol! Guilty as charged, I suppose.

> I used to believe in that too.

What is the other option? To dive into the deep end: the failure mode of capitalism appears to be the blending together of government and corporations/money to reduce the regulations that prevent strictly free-markets from being inherently self-destructive. However, the other options start from this premise! When the government already owns AND regulates the corporations, the only game in town for monopoly busting is violent revolution.

> But the real world doesn't work that way.

Previously, American capitalism has driven an increase in the world's standard of living by a staggering amount. Currently, it certainly appears there are some fundamental flaws not being addressed, but I don't know what we should do aside from return to the same capitalist system just without the corruption.

Please avoid calling arguments emotional / irrational just because you disagree. The parent argument is that people are forced into bad situations by contingencies that aren't facts of nature but human policy choices. There's nothing emotional or irrational about that.

I wasn't.

> people are forced into bad situations by contingencies that aren't facts of nature but human policy choices.

What human policy choices are forcing ride-sharing companies to provide jobs to people that HN commenters think are substandard but 100% of people do willfully?

> 100% of people do willfully?

You've personally interviewed every gig worker? Do you really think every single one of them would agree that there are no coercive forces at play here?

I did. You have ignored half of my comments both times you replied.

> You've personally interviewed every gig worker?

There is a process to become a driver that people must choose to do. They also stop driving the second they don't do it purposefully. How do you think they're NOT choosing to do it?

> no coercive forces at play

I have no idea what you're driving at. No one chooses to be born, no one chooses the cell structure that requires consumption. There are thousands of choices we don't make to live in society.

"Your argument is that someone unemployed and starving found a job where they could feed themselves - but its not a good enough job?" is not an explanation for why the argument is emotional.

> How do you think they're NOT choosing to do it?

Because I don't have a idealistic view of free will that assumes all choices are ultimately unconstrained? I view the distinction between an armed robbery and being forced into a job to prevent starvation only a matter of abstraction not kind.

The whole moral argument behind laws like AB5 is that it's Uber that's ripping off the drivers, who are helpless and powerless, and cannot do anything to stop getting short end of the stick. The legislature then decides that they should adjust the terms of the contract to be more fair in the legislature's opinion. However, this whole argument hinges on the question whether the drivers are in fact coerced or defrauded: if the drivers are free to quit working for Uber at any point, and yet they don't, how can you argue that they are being coerced by Uber to anything? Usually it pivots to the argument that it's the hard facts of social reality that "coerce" them to work, but then regulating Uber in particular seems unwarranted, because why is Uber singled out, instead of other options that are even worse, as shown by the fact that the drivers choose Uber instead of those even worse options?

I think that the point of view of "social reality coercion" is also ultimately misguided as a tool to explain the political decisionmaking. Consider this: imagine California institutes UBI (and ignore for a while the question of how to pay for it). Do you think that California would also repeal all kinds of labor regulation, including AB5? That since the drivers, or waiters, or everyone else now has an option of just leaning on their UBI, and no longer be coerced to work by social reality, those regulations are now superfluous, and the people who don't like the deal presented by Uber or Amazon can just leave instead of taking it? I seriously doubt that it would happen. I think that the desire of government and the society to micromanage other people's lives is too great to resist, and the "coercion" is just an excuse to get moral justification for meddling in the deals other people make.

Right, but my point is that it shows where the priorities are, that it's not about actually helping people.

> This only seems like a relevant argument if the sole purpose of UBI is to create some kind of deregulated libertarian society. I don't view deregulation and UBI as being intrinsically linked -- indeed I would prefer to see UBI and more regulation.

That's exactly my point: some people just have a strong desire to have a say in everything. It's perfectly natural thing for human to wish for, the power to control everything. What we actually want as a society from our superiors who rule us though is to control things for our benefit, not to allow them to satisfy their power urge.

When you say you want "more regulation", you most likely mean "more beneficial regulation", because I'm quite sure you can imagine all kinds of detrimental regulation that could be introduced (and if you're having trouble, just think of what kind of regulation your political opponents would introduce). To circle back to the Uber question, when you regulate the its relationship with its drivers, you need to ask yourself: who's benefiting? Who's losing? Is the regulation bringing surplus for everyone, or does it actually result in deadweight loss? If, for example, you require Uber drivers to be paid at least $200/hour, everybody loses, because hardly anybody is going to take the cab anymore, and we're all worse off.

If you don't do this analysis, then the regulation becomes pure exercise of power, of the ability to control the world as you please. That's not what the society signs up for in representative democracy, and I don't think you really want more of that.

I think the entire question is distorted right now by the fact that they've been in massive growth mode for years so we don't actually know what the equilibrium of the gig economy looks like in many markets.

Like, I think there are interesting broader questions here about regulation and the social safety net -- but I think we need to be clear that Uber is basically a payday loan on your car's title. People are bad at understanding depreciating assets.

Maybe if there were a stronger social safety net there would only be a labor market for drivers for whom Uber is actually a good fit? It's certainly possible.

This is simply untrue. Cars do depreciate, but not so much to make the whole business unprofitable.

A double digit percent of the Uber drivers (probably even close to half of all) drive in rented vehicles. Hertz for example has a program[1] where you pay $200-300/week for renting a practically new vehicle. This makes the depreciation costs explicit to the driver. I think Hertz has some pretty good experience with valuing vehicle depreciation. Assuming Uber drivers do 1000-2000 miles a week, Hertz rate translates to something like $.10-.20 per mile in vehicle depreciation & maintenance. A non insignificant cost, but hardly a deal-breaker.

Maybe if there were a stronger social safety net there would only be a labor market for drivers for whom Uber is actually a good fit?

Maybe now there are drivers for whom Uber is actually good fit? Have you talked to your drivers? In my experience, most of them are pretty happy about the arrangement in general, and the only complaint is low rates.

[1] - https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/misc/index.jsp?targetPage=ube...

why do you put this in quotes? do you think people are not responsible for their own actions when they choose where to spend their money?

To make a tortured analogy to illustrate a point, are the victims in the movie Saw not responsible for their own deaths, as they voluntarily chose the actions which lead to their untimely deaths?

Voluntary choices don't imply preferrable or desirable choices. When Walmart arrives and lowers prices to the point of bankrupting small business in the town, residents certainly welcome the provided conveniences and lower prices, but are faced with the choice between paying higher prices, or paying lower prices and destroying small business within their towns. Humans aren't perfect economic machines, so they're likely to pick the lower prices, paying the long-term consequences for those decisions. Hence, people don't want Walmarts moving into their towns, since the outcomes are fairly predictable at that point.

Nice.

> bankrupting small business in the town

I don't agree that this is a negative long-term consequence, but I see your larger point. Do you think the government is capable of correcting problems such as these without negative consequences?

> Voluntary choices don't imply preferrable or desirable choices.

But what other metric is there? You intend for the government to regulate into existence preferable or desirable for everyone?

> Humans aren't perfect economic machines,

Should the government force people to do what's best for them against their will?

No I don't believe that it is possible to avoid negative consequences with government correction. That said I don't think it's possible to avoid negative consequences with strictly market solutions to certain classes of problems, so I think each case needs to be taken on its merits.

With Uber and Lyft for example, I don't really see a problem with what they're providing people, in the same way I don't see a problem with check cashing stores or most classes of short term loan companies. The problem with Lyft and Uber IMHO is with how the service they provide interacts with the systems of today, a system where healthcare and benefits are tied to full-time employment. Gig economy companies compete quite favorably on price with companies offering full-time employment, meaning the country is shifting in parts from a workforce that had healthcare and benefits to one that doesn't. I think it's worth the government looking into its laws and the countries systems and wondering if there is a better way to classify employment and to have people acquire healthcare and benefits.

> But what other metric is there? You intend for the government to regulate into existence preferable or desirable for everyone? > Should the government force people to do what's best for them against their will?

In the case of broad market inefficiencies I think there is a case to be made for it. Tragedies of the commons, public health issues, etc.

the phrase ""volunteer" behavior" was about people shopping at Walmart, not people working there so I don't understand your point.

Not under AB5 they can't. You can't hire a corporation as a contractor if they are in the same line of business as you are.

If you're a newspaper you can't hire a journalist or a "journalism company" under AB5.

Not at all. How many bills have you read? Did you study political science? Have you not seen how you’ve personally benefited from the laws (and case law) on the books? Or could you be perhaps overgeneralizing?

> it killed independent journalism in the state

This seems patently false given that I read lots of independent journalism from California journalists every day. Maybe you are conflating independent journalism, the sort that exists in an organization devoted to practicing journalism that is not subordinated to the interests of another organization, with freelance journalism. (And you’d still be wrong, but at least choosing the right words. “Independent journalism” has a longstanding meaning.)

They have the power to direct the attention of millions to the solution, yet continue to miss the forest through the trees and get swept up in the us vs. them techlash BS.

Uber and Lyft are not screwing over workers. Our system of government is screwing over workers by not providing the benefits of every other developed nation with similar tax rates for the average person.

Companies and workers (whether as a collective or as individuals) should be free to arrange employment simply around time and money.

The fact that this is impossible indicates a problem with the system itself, not with the individual actors in the system.

I would argue that the system is fine, the government just did the wrong thing here. If the same group of voters that passed AB5, instead passed a bill guaranteeing some minimum basic income, or even some state-tax funded single payer healthcare system, then we wouldn't even be in this predicament.

Something so important should not be in the hands of states. There's a reason we don't have every state building separate armies and nuclear arsenals. Why have them create their own disparate patchwork of healthcare approaches?

The strength of any nation's economy relies on the health of its citizens, as we are now learning the hard way.

However, with the way tax revenues are collected in the US (with anywhere from 80-100% going to the federal government, not states), a vast majority of states would not be able to pay for such a big program.

It seems Americans have the worst of both systems. A strong, wealthy, do-nothing federal government; and motivated, weak, underfunded state governments.

The same thing that happens to your healthcare when you travel out of country — this is an edge case that systems don't typically have to adjust for. California's single payer healthcare system could even guarantee travel health insurance up to a certain amount. It's something that happens so rarely that the state can probably cover it. The vast majority of healthcare costs go towards non-emergency care, anyway.

> Something so important should not be in the hands of states. There's a reason we don't have every state building separate armies and nuclear arsenals. Why have them create their own disparate patchwork of healthcare approaches?

Well we're not talking about armies or nuclear arsenals here. Decentralized healthcare isn't a novel concept, that's how it works in the European Union: there are open borders, no need for work visas between states, and yet they all have different healthcare systems with varying degrees of generosity.

In Switzerland, healthcare is a matter entirely left to the Cantons and is outside the purview of the Federal government.

In Canada, the single payer system is Provincial, and came about exactly like this: as a so-called "patchwork". Saskatchewan was the first Province to offer single payer in 1947, followed by Alberta in 1951, etc. By 1961, all Provinces had some form of a single payer healthcare system.

> The strength of any nation's economy relies on the health of its citizens, as we are now learning the hard way.

Sure, but we're at an electoral deadlock at the Federal level, partly owing to the structural nature of the Federal government that heavily encourages doing things at the State and local level.

The political will to do this exists in many States, it's just a matter of executing on it.

I was not aware of this example. You make some very good points, especially re: deadlock at the federal level.

However I do wonder if the way tax revenues are distributed in the United States makes this a non-starter.

For example, maybe California can afford it with 10% state tax rates. But what about states with 0% tax rates?

Meanwhile a large bulk of your tax dollars is going to a single payer federal heathcare system already (medicare & medicaid).

It seems the current structure of the US would lend itself more an implementation of single payer at the federal level, via an expansion of our existing single payer systems.

IMO state taxes are WAY too low. Any state that wants to fund a single payer system should raise their taxes. We all just got a massive Federal tax cut in 2017, so there's a lot of slack to work with there. States that have the political will to enact a Federal single payer system likely have the political will for their Federal income tax to increase by X%. Why, then, does it matter if this X% tax increase happens at the Federal level vs the State level? The taxpayer is still out the same amount of money net-net.

Switzerland is actually a great example of what a sustainable decentralized taxation regime can look like. The Federal marginal tax rate is 9%, while the Cantonal tax rate can be anywhere from 10% to 26%, depending on the Canton[1]. This kind of a system also makes it very difficult to enact broad tax cuts, because you would have to capture every single Canton's legislature — not a scalable attack.

> Meanwhile a large bulk of your tax dollars is going to a single payer federal heathcare system already (medicare & medicaid).

> It seems the current structure of the US would lend itself more an implementation of single payer at the federal level, via an expansion of our existing single payer systems.

Sure, but while we wait years for the Federal consensus to expand this to materialize, we're better off acting NOW at the State level, and we can do this by simply passing a State level single payer system that exempts people over the age of 60. Over time, the Federal government might reduce Medicare to allow States to continue to increase coverage to old people, especially once States like California and New York support that. Medicaid is already jointly funded and wholly administered by States.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Switzerland#Taxes_...

Earnings Guarantee:

Drivers always receive at least an amount equal to 120% of minimum wage, plus 30 cents per mile compensation toward expenses, with the potential to earn more and no limits on how much drivers can make.

Health care

Health care contribution equal to 100 percent of the average employer payment toward a Covered California Plan, or $367 per month to a driver on average.

Drivers start earning this amount at 15 hours per week and reach the full amount at 25 hours per week

Drivers can earn multiple contributions from multiple companies

Occupational accident insurance to cover on-the-job injuries

Automobile accident and liability insurance

It looks like this may be settled at the ballot box.

https://protectdriversandservices.com/get-the-facts/

Full initiative: https://www.oag.ca.gov/system/files/initiatives/pdfs/19-0026...

willing to bet they'll just cap everyone at 15 hrs/wk

"Benefits kick in at 30hrs / week"

Oh, you're scheduled for 28 hours every week and no more, no matter how short staffed we are? Sucks to be you.

This seems different than google employees working for microsoft - which I think would be prohibited.

If these workers are misclassified will they have to work for just one company? Will uber/lyft then be able to set their working hours?

If the workers are locked to a single company, then entry to the market becomes much more difficult for new competitors.

I definitely want gig workers to be paid fairly and to enjoy a generous social safety net, but it's good to keep such potential unintended consequences in mind as well.

Do you think that an Uber driver driving for Lyft can be construed as a "conflict of interest"?

Even if not at the same time, if Company A is having to pay for the vehicle or whatever other costs and equipment are being used - in what world can someone driving the comcast truck start installing for AT&T?

This logic is so twisted.

Fortunately, not too much of a problem. I just stopped hiring Californians there.

I think it's reasonable to say that companies that can't be started without treating their employees fairly shouldn't be started, and that improvements in regulations around employee treatment may impact which businesses are started. That said, I assume you weren't mistreating workers so am curious to hear more.

In the past, it was market that decided whether a business should exist or not, and that involved the decisions of the employees or contractors to work there. But now you are proposing a new, "fair treatment" decision process, that is extraneous to the market. Has this been successfully tried before, in any country that has become wealthy due to such business selection process?

Capitalism in the US isn't so unfettered that only the market determines whether businesses exist. Some countries have stricter regulations around employee treatment (France started mandating paid vacation in the 1930s) and some have less strict (Singapore doesn't have a minimum wage), but this isn't some new idea.

And where should the line be drawn? For example, web browsers are also apps that facilitate different kinds of transactions, but surely nobody wants Google to be responsible for paying benefits to anybody whose services can be bought through Chrome.

They basically introduced a bidding system that lets drivers increase fares up to 5x Uber’s set price. Uber matches the rider with the driver who has set the lowest price, and then the next highest price...gradually dispatching up to the highest price as more riders request rides.

It actually benefits the drivers to have Uber set prices. Uber's revenue is a percentage of drivers' earnings, so prices that maximizes driver revenue maximizes Uber's revenue. It's very easy for individuals to set prices in-optimally which means they either lose out on surplus (priced too low) or can't find riders (priced too high).

To me, the most important aspects of independent work is to set one's own schedules, hours per week (0 for as long as I'd like), and not bound to work for any single company. Though I might be biased because of the disclaimer.

edit: grammar fixes

I wouldn't expect them to be able to prohibit being active on one service while not active on the other (except maybe if you've got committed hours, and working another driving job would put you over DOT permitted hours, as prima facia evidence that additional driving hours would be unsafe)

Amazon doesn't sell their app...it maintains partnership with businesses, and manages their business using technology. Why shouldn't Amazon employ their retailers, who power their app just as much as the developers who created it?

Also: Uber is set to announce 25% layoffs, but not a single driver will be affected by this. To the extent that Uber drivers are "out of work", it's because there are no riders requesting rides — but that's a direct relationship between buyer and seller.

Instead, the strongest argument in favor of classifying Uber drivers as employees is the fact that they are unable to set their own prices. On the flip side, Uber has been gradually rolling out a new feature that allows drivers to do just that, which makes that argument moot.

It was fun while it lasted. I have some great memories. I guess I'll go back to programming for extra cash.

It depends. For a lot of drivers, the car is a sunk cost. That is to say, they would own the car regardless of whether or not they were driving for Uber because they need to meet their own personal transportation needs regardless of Uber/Lyft. For example, you can't take into account vehicle depreciation, because the vehicle depreciates regardless of whether or not you drive for Uber/Lyft.

The one significant cost that increases strictly as a consequence of driving for Uber/Lyft is vehicle wear-and-tear. However, when you take into account vehicle maintenance, Uber/Lyft drivers still make far more than minimum wage.

For taxable depreciation, which is generally equally spaced over a fixed time, ok. For actual economic depreiciation, as in the difference in what you paid vs what you could sell it for, time and mileage are both factors, extra miles from driving for hire reduce the sales value of the vehicle.

Yes, but time impacts depreciation far more than mileage, and the time-based portion of depreciation is a sunk cost. You can definitely argue that drivers accrue more miles driving for Uber/Lyft, and that they should be reimbursed for that, and I would agree with you. However...

Compare the Bluebook value of a typical car that might be used for this kind of work at ten years old with 120k miles (12k/year) vs. ten years old with a million miles (100k/year). The difference will end up being around $2500, because after ten years the car will be worth hardly any more than that no matter how many miles it has on it, and it can't lose more than 100% of its value due to higher mileage. ~$2500 amortized over 880k additional miles is <0.003/mile.

A 2016 Camry with 60,000 miles is worth about $5000 more than a 2016 Camry with 500,000 miles, which works out to about ~$.01/mile of depreciation.

So in a regime where drivers are compensated for the mileage-based component of the vehicle depreciation, and if the average number of miles per trip is, say 10 miles, you're looking at drivers earning about 10 cents more, per trip.

Raise prices, stop subsidizing their rides, shift some resources from marketing and tech to the people who actually drive the cars? Plenty of options.

They don't subsidize their rides on a per unit basis. The driver expects to earn a base fare + some amount based no distance + time, and Uber takes a 20% cut from that. The actual marginal cost to providing a second ride, for Uber, is maps licensing, server costs, and maybe marketing promotion costs for that market.

The loss that Uber makes, instead, is because the amount that they pull in from the service fee isn't enough to cover the facilities and corporate salaries (they have 27,000 employees).

Uber rides were "adjusted EBITDA" profitable for 2 straight quarters before this — take "adjusted EBITDA" with a grain of salt, but it's also not "nothing".

Instead, Uber will almost certainly have to raise prices. We all collectively pay for the Uber drivers' welfare, but rather than having it be progressively paid for through taxation, it will be regressively paid for through price increases that disproportionately impact the poor / middle class.

Sounds like a very American centric view to me and not even sure it applies in the US. In most countries personal ride services are consumed by upper-middle-class professionals at the expense of public transportation and road congestion.

I think it's very likely that the utilisation of ridesharing services skews heavily towards people with lots of disposable income in urban areas so having them pay higher prices is actually correct and internalizes the cost they put on public infrastructure.

edit, some stats according to Gallup: People with incomes over 90k are almost twice as likely to use ride-hailing services than people who make under 25k, and usage rises with income. (https://news.gallup.com/poll/237965/snapshot-uses-ride-shari...)

Usages definitely rise with income, but that's true for most goods...

Consumers of ridesharing are anywhere from white collar workers with college degrees, to working parents that use Lyft/UberX to get to the airport, etc. But a $10 increase in fare means literally nothing to a millionaire / billionaire, but means a lot to a new grad, or even a median white collar worker. It's still regressive.

And also, this argument applies to any form of wage floor, not just ridesharing. We as a society try to guarantee a minimum standard of living (which is a good thing), and we can do that either by employing wage floors, or through raw welfare — we collectively pay for it in one way or another. The moment you institute a wage floor, for any kind of wage: food worker, transportation worker, etc — we collectively pay for it through price increases, which means nothing to a billionaire. Instead, having a robust social welfare system ensures the same standard of living, except the new grad worker pays less into it than the billionaire.

There is nothing regressive about this. If usage of Uber increases as fast, or faster than income then shifting some money from consumers to drivers (who are very much at the bottom end of the distribution) is progressive. Ensuring that public infrastructure is maintained which the poor rely on disproportionately is progressive. Pumping money into privileged forms of transport which has horrible consequences for the environment by pushing reliance on cars which worsens pollution as well as congestion is regressive.

It's completely cynical to suggest we need a 'robust social welfare system' which in this context means tax payers taking on the obligations of employers so that a bunch of tech workers can become millionaires at the age of 30 after an IPO, which is what Uber is. It's a distribution of money from the bottom 80% to the managerial and tech class while offloading risk onto the public and creating an underclass of disposable gig workers whom the company has no stake to ever invest in.

This isn't an externality, this is the market price of labor. Some labor has a high market price, some has a low market price. We draw a socially constructed line of what it means to be "at the minimum". There's no guarantee that all labor will be worth that minimum value, how could it? That means every service that you could possibly outsource to another individual, from cleaning your house to unscrewing a light bulb...would cost $15 / hour (or some hourly rate that society collectively determines). This is, by definition, a wage floor.

> Why should the taxpayer have to jump in to save gig workers who are essentially living in a permanent state of precarity? Why should we encourage companies who cannot take care of their employees? Or for which separating themselves from obligations is actually their entire business model?

You can make this argument about literally any welfare system. Why should the taxpayer have to jump in to provide single-payer healthcare? By doing so, we encourage companies who cannot take care of their employees by providing health insurance. Single payer healthcare is a taxpayer subsidized way of absolving corporate responsibility over its employees. We both probably disagree with this framing.

The obligations of a corporation's business model maybe SHOULDN'T include the provision of health insurance, in the same way that it maybe SHOULDN'T be in the business of providing a "minimum standard of living" that we collectively come up with. The business's role is to simply provide goods & services based on the conditions of the market.

> It's completely cynical to suggest we need a 'robust social welfare system' which in this context means tax payers taking on the obligations of employers so that a bunch of tech workers can become millionaires at the age of 30 after an IPO, which is what Uber is. It's a distribution of money from the bottom 80% to the managerial and tech class while offloading risk onto the public and creating an underclass of disposable gig workers whom the company has no stake to ever invest in.

You're just talking about Uber here, but this line of argument applies to literally any business that makes use of any labor whose market value is below the "minimum line" that society draws. Think about how high McDonald's share price will go if we institute a taxpayer funded Single Payer healthcare system. It would essentially be a distribution of money from the bottom 80% to the managerial class of _any_ corporation that is currently obligated to provide their employees health insurance.

Which is why I made the more fundamental, industry-agnostic argument: We as a society (rightly) try to guarantee a minimum standard of living, and we can do that either by employing wage floors, or through raw welfare — we collectively pay for it in one way or another. The moment you institute a wage floor, for any kind of wage: food worker, transportation worker, etc — we collectively pay for it through price increases, which doesn't discriminate against the buyer. A low class consumer experiences this the hardest, the middle class consumer the next hardest, the upper middle class the next hardest. Who cares the least about this price increase? The billionaire. It's essentially a regressive tax.

This line of thinking applies not just to Uber, but local businesses, fast food joints, grocery stores, anything that requires manual data entry — really any low-skilled labor.

EDIT:

I've found it helpful to visualize what this looks like with a concrete example:

Imagine a pizza maker's market value is (say) $5/hour. They are able to produce (for simplicity's sake) 5 pizza's per hour, or $1/pizza. Including other operating costs + 3-5% profit margin (that's the average for most restaurants), let's say that the pizza sells for $5. Thus the pizza maker can expect to earn $40/day, on the market. Suppose the "livable minimum wage" should be $15/hour, or $120/day. There are 2 ways to guarantee this:

A) The government deposits an extra $80 to the worker, allowing them to make $120 that day. They can buy a pizza for $5, which is about 4% of their daily wage.

B) The government mandates a minimum wage of $15/hour, which means that the labor portion of the pizza cost goes up from $1 to $3 per pizza. The pizza now sells for $7 so that the shop doesn't go out of business. The worker makes $120/day, and can buy a pizza for $7, which is about 6% of their daily wage.

Notice that in (B), the worker is actually worse off, even though they have the same amount of money in their pocket. The worker has to pay a higher percentage of their pay to afford to eat, but this $2 extra means absolutely nothing to a billionaire, it's pennies to a rich person. In scenario (A), the worker is better off, and the welfare system that sustains it can be funded through progressive taxes, which targets rich people.

Look at the reality in the US and in Germany right now during the crisis. Germany, which employs a model of corporate responsibility has seen only modest unemployment increases as companies take care of their workforce and collective bargaining ensures that companies are directed towards long term goals and fostering human capital.

The US is seeing great depression era unemployment and if you happen to have the wrong political party in charge who doesn't want to tax rich people and hand everyone welfare you're just screwed.

In the real world, this idea of efficient markets and generous governments is just a fantasy. There needs to be decentralisation and autonomy in the system and a distribution of responsibility at the local and regional level. If that means I pay 50 cents more for my burgers during regular times because nothing is optimised so be it. At least the whole thing doesn't come crashing down just because the government doesn't work.

Of course, taxi drivers are employees of taxi companies. What other industry are the primary workers not considered employees?