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Comment by Matticus_Rex | Hacker News Reader

Uh, yeah. When I was younger I got to choose between working as a contractor with no health care or not working, and I happily chose working as a contractor. Once I found something better, I voted with my feet and went there, but I don't appreciate legislatures "looking out for me" by reducing my options.

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All regulations (worker protection and otherwise) exist because the required changes are things that wouldn't have happened on their own due to good will or market forces. They're always an above and beyond thing which costs someone money, potentially reducing the number of jobs available, increasing the end-user cost, or triggering automation efforts.

So it's a balance. There are probably also people out there who would happily drive a fork truck with no training or handle chemicals with no PPE, and resent that the government places limits on those jobs. But the reason we do it is because sane and safe work is in the end a commons— without some floor in terms of what's acceptable, it would be (and has been historically) a straight up race to the bottom. Banning certain types of contract work is on the same scale as limiting the number of hours a person is supposed to work in a given day or week.

Is that floor of acceptability in exactly the right spot at present? Maybe, maybe not. But there are good reasons to have your elected body and regulatory agencies "looking out for you."

In this case, there is no option. You either work contractor or don't work. This law is in place to establish this option of "better job". You wouldn't have an option without it.

No, that's the thing. It's not turning 300 contractor positions into 300 better jobs. It's turning 300 contractor positions into a very small number of better jobs (not all of which will actually go to those contractors), leaving a lot more people unemployed.

US unemployment is the lowest it’s been in 50 years and wages are starting to rise due to employers desperate for labor. This is the best time for labor policies that cause churn to be established.

I think it's the least damaging time for those policies to be established, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing to do.

...and those unemployed people will find better jobs with other companies, since all California companies are required to comply with the new law, and the collective amount of work performed by California companies (and thus the collective number of workers required to do this work) is not affected by the new law.

Why wouldn't the collective amount of work performed by California companies be affected? It seems very likely that consolidating a lot of contractors into a few employees would reduce the total number of working hours needed.

The collective amount of work performed by California companies is absolutely affected by the new law, because it's not a constant. The amount of work a company has to do is affected by the cost of performance. If costs go up, a lot of work is no longer affordable to complete, so that work doesn't happen.

Except that there are 49 other states that don’t have meddlesome legislation like this.

> California contractors can apply for a full-time or part-time position in California

> A writer named Rebecca Lawson, who covered the NBA's Dallas Mavericks from San Diego,

AB5 created good jobs in CA at the expense of worse jobs outside of CA. Seems like a win for the people of CA.

Sounds like a pretty big loss for Rebecca Lawson, person of CA.

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