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.)