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Comment by Iv | Hacker News Reader

Freedom is never won forever. Every generation has to fight to keep it back. We got great gifts from our elders: an internet that is based on open specs. Open source licenses that are legally tested. An ethos of sharing. Organizations with real power. Cryptography.

We have to continue on new fronts. Right now people are making open source silicon, but it is still in its infancy, it is to Intel as Linux 1.0 was to Microsoft: a laughable threat.

We need to find better licenses for AI models, promote the Affero GPL. Forge new tools to protect privacy. Maybe work more closely with governments that have understood that privacy is not just a geek's concern?

Enjoy your freedoms, but don't take them for granted. Fighting for them, forging the tools to preserve them, it is worth a bit of your money and a bit of your time.

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You can see the same patterns in the society, in the erosion of workers' rights that our ancestors bought literally with their blood and suffering. It's the same force acting on all fronts.

Which workers rights laws have been repealed?

Gig economy and driving an Uber are good examples. The latter doesn't even recognize you as an employee -- hence no rights.

It's been that way forever. Contractors/individual proprietors/whatever are not employees.

Those guys are no contractors. There are laws with different treatment based on telling signs that a worker is an employee. I can't tell about the USA, but around here you're an employee when you work for one employer that decides the hours and other details, and provides the basic means for the job (the app in this case).

basic means/tools -> car you set your time and drive whenever you please or not at all

so in conclusion even by your test you are not employee

Pretty sure that Uber/Lyft drivers set their own hours and many of them use many different ride sharing apps.

The guys that deliver food have been declared covert employees recently here in lower jurisdiction. Not sure about taxi apps, there must exist a loophole at least to start. The question is you are very dependent of some party.

The are still subject to work law.

If the work law in US does not protect them, that is another matter.

This is no different than handyman services, plumbers, tile layers, etc. When you work as a subcontractor, you are employed on a per job basis. Same goes for Uber and Lyft. I've heard far too many stories from these drivers about how their life has improved from the often supplemental income to be against it.

Except Taxi services were at least reasonably well regulated and had award wages, including vacation and sick leave (Australia) and now people work for less than minimum wage and have jack shit entitlements, can be terminated at will.

Same goes for many other gig economy roles.

I don't know about Aussie but in the U.S. the only good cities for cabs were the very large and dense cities like NYC. Everywhere else cab services were awful. Cars were not clean, they often wouldn't take credit card, it would take 30 minutes or more to get picked up, it was just terrible service. I know Lyft only takes 20% of fare, so drivers get the bulk of fee and I pay $25 for a 15 minute ride to the airport and tip $5. I've heard drivers average between $18 and $25 an hour, so well above minimum wage.

The quality of the service is unrelated to current discussion about workers' rights being dismantled by the gig economy. Minimum wage is only one aspect of workers' rights.

Maybe that isn't a thing in US, but there are countries where work conditions of handyman services are regulated either by unions or guilds.

There have been a number of laws that diminish collective bargaining. Things like "right to work" laws ostensibly give individual workers more rights, but they have a devastating effect on union membership and collective action.

Sure, you might have more "rights" if you were to tally them up. But human psychology is easily gamed, and things like this end up hurting employees on the whole.

Im sick of seeing these sorts of nonsense questionons on HN. This isnt a question at all, it's an assertion which offers no evidence. This sort of thing wastes everyone's time and draws attention away from fruitful discussion, perhaps even by design. People who earnestly want to engage should avoid falling into the trap of responding and thereby increasing the visibility of these bad faith comments.

You also had Reagan bust the Air Traffic Controller's Union.

No particular change in laws, the corporations just got better at exploiting loopholes.

For example by hiring contractors in place of employees.

>Freedom is never won forever. Every generation has to fight to keep it back.

This reminds me of the Daniel Kahn song 'Freedom is a Verb'. Great listen that argues exactly this.

p sure GPLv3 does anything the Affero GPL would do, the problem is that absolutely fucking everyone is terrified of it.

I don't think so. If you build the next gmail with GPLv3 software, you don't have to share your code as you are not selling any binary. The Affero mandates that you share the code with clients who use the service, not just people who execute the binary.

And freedom of speech. Without that, code will become the domain of only big industry. Code is speech. And when speech is free, even when dangerous, so is code.

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