Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

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> A ride sharing dApp on a blockchain? Or is the British government going to ban peer-to-peer networks too?

There'd be no need to ban peer-to-peer networks - the payment method does not change anything. If there is an employer-employee relationship it'd break the law if they don't follow the regulations for such a relationship. If the drivers are genuinely small businesses, it wouldn't.

> So it's okay if they offer to work for a "slave wage" as a self-employed small business owner, but if they work through a third party, then it's not okay?

The implication is in part that the paperwork necessary to operate as a small business acts as a deterrent for people to enter into it without at least some degree of understanding of what they're entering into.

It is providing what you're arguing for (the ability to set whatever salary you want), but at the same time protecting society against some of the worst exploitation by providing some hoops you have to jump through.

> How it taking away an option in their interest? You're reducing the avenues through which they can sell their labour, which cannot possibly be to their advantage.

This is nonsensical. If I offer to pay you to work in conditions that are guaranteed to be lethal, according to your arguments it can't possibly be to their advantage, because I'm reducing the avenues through which they can sell their labour. Clearly reducing the avenues alone is insufficient to determine whether or not the decision is to their advantage.

> It worked incredibly well. Wages grew rapidly throughout the industrial revolution.

And through most of the period, worker activism grew rapidly as well. In a great many cases, workers died during actions taken to improve working conditions and salaries. The fantasy that those improvements are purely down to lack of regulation is just that. It took repeated bloodshed to bring about those improvements, and a lot of regulations that were often also paid for in blood.

If there is any takeaway from the growth in wages during the industrial revolution, it is that aggressive direct action by workers provides results.

I think they were proposing using a distributed ledger to advertise rides / driver / rider state -- not just payments.

A DAO on the blockchain can be indistinguishable from a platform run by a company from the point of view of the driver.

>>This is nonsensical. If I offer to pay you to work in conditions that are guaranteed to be lethal, according to your arguments it can't possibly be to their advantage, because I'm reducing the avenues through which they can sell their labour.

There are no jobs that are guaranteed to be lethal. If there were, there are only two conditions under which someone would work them:

1. They are mentally incapable of making decisions for their own life, and thus should be placed under conservatorship where they are not free to make their own decisions.

2. The jobs is fraudulently advertised.

In either case you don't need to resort to creating mandatory minimum employment standards like minimum wage. What you're effectively endorsing is conservatorship for the entire population.

>>And through most of the period, worker activism grew rapidly as well. In a great many cases, workers died during actions taken to improve working conditions and salaries.

I'm dubious about this claim. It sounds like another pop-history claim that is baseless. Do you have a source?

I remember reading that workplace injuries were decreasing throughout the industrial revolution era. From what I understand regulations had no positive impact on this upward trajectory in safety.

What did definitely happen during the industrial revolution is that life expectancy rapidly rose. The famines and starvation that frequently occurred prior to to the 16th century became increasingly uncommon as the economy of the West industrialized.

>>If there is any takeaway from the growth in wages during the industrial revolution, it is that aggressive direct action by workers provides results.

The opposite is true. There were very few labour regulations and no minimum wages instituted during the Industrial Revolution (thanks largely to legal doctrines of substantive due process guaranteeing the freedom to contract in place since the Supreme Court Lochner ruling). After the propaganda victory of the socialist parties and labour unions, extensive labour regulations were introduced.

This has accelerated since the creation of the OSHA in 1970. The last 40 years have seen wage growth stagnate and life expectancy to even decline for some demographics.

The Nirvana fallacy has cost generations improvements in their quality of life.

> A DAO on the blockchain can be indistinguishable from a platform run by a company from the point of view of the driver.

And it's entirely irrelevant. If the driver is genuinely acting as an independent company, then it's not a problem. If the driver is being treated as an employee, then some entity is the employer and that entity is on the hook for the legal requirements, and it'll be down to courts to figure out who to hold responsible.

> There are no jobs that are guaranteed to be lethal. If there were, there are only two conditions under which someone would work them:

You're evading the question by being pedantic. Reduce "guaranteed to be lethal" to whatever threshold you prefer and it stands.

> I'm dubious about this claim. It sounds like another pop-history claim that is baseless. Do you have a source?

Each and every history book that covers the labour movement and workers rights. I'm not going to fill in gaps in what is high school level history for you. Go read some wikipedia pages for that matter.

> The opposite is true. There were very few labour regulations and no minimum wages instituted during the Industrial Revolution (thanks largely to legal doctrines of substantive due process guaranteeing the freedom to contract in place since the Supreme Court Lochner ruling).

Lochner post-dates the most significant gains in US labor history by decades.

> After the propaganda victory of the socialist parties and labour unions, extensive labour regulations were introduced.

... and so did this. By the 1920's the support for socialism in the US was rapidly headed for collapse.

> This has accelerated since the creation of the OSHA in 1970. The last 40 years have seen wage growth stagnate and life expectancy to even decline for some demographics.

Nonsense. Ca. 1920 or so the US lost it's leadership in labour rights improvements, and especially so after World War II when the social democrats had gained massive influence in Western Europe, and most European countries built universal healthcare systems and expanded unemployment rights and other welfare dramatically while the US mostly stood still.

If you want to blame US stagnation in the last 40 years on something, consider that the US is lagging further behind Europe in workers rights and welfare than it ever has, so whatever the cause is, you'll have to look elsewhere.

>>And it's entirely irrelevant.

I explained the relevance:

>So it's okay if they offer to work for a "slave wage" as a self-employed small business owner, but if they work through a third party, then it's not okay? How it taking away an option in their interest? You're reducing the avenues through which they can sell their labour, which cannot possibly be to their advantage.

To rephrase: when DAOs are created, drivers will be able to offer their services without meeting these arbitrary employment standards, without going through a company, and just as easily as going through a company. How is making it illegal for a company to hire them under terms that don't meet employment standards in their interest, when doing so won't prevent them from working for terms that don't meet these standards, and when all it will do is reduce the avenues through which they can work for terms that don't meet the standards (translation: all it will do is reduce their market power)?

Maybe I'm still not clearly communicating my point. If it's not clear what I'm asking please let me know and I'll try to rephrase it.

Either way, could you please address my argument?

>>You're evading the question by being pedantic. Reduce "guaranteed to be lethal" to whatever threshold you prefer and it stands.

The pedantry is in you making this a point about how I worded the beginning of my argument and ignoring the bulk of my argument, and its substance, that applies to any threshold. Here it is again:

--

If there were, there are only two conditions under which someone would work them:

1. They are mentally incapable of making decisions for their own life, and thus should be placed under conservatorship where they are not free to make their own decisions.

2. The jobs is fraudulently advertised.

In either case you don't need to resort to creating mandatory minimum employment standards like minimum wage. What you're effectively endorsing is conservatorship for the entire population.

--

I really don't have the patience to deal with bad faith debating. Just know that if you win the public relations campaign through rhetoric and sophistry, but you're advancing the wrong cause, you're hurting yourself too. So there is no sense in debating disingenuously about public policy using these tactics. Western Europe and the US have seen wage growth stagnate over the last 40 years due to the kind of behaviour you're exhibiting now.

Our human society only functions at all due to the extraordinary efforts of numerous people to cooperate and honestly debate issues to reach a consensus on the right way forward.

Even a small portion of the population acting in bad faith to push their own narrow interests at the expense of society at large is enough to cause the whole thing to break down, because it's nearly impossible for society at large to arrive at a consensus on the truth about complex topics when there is a significant amount of misinformation being injected into the debate. Please be part of the solution.

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