Lower prices at the cost of turning a group of people into a serf class, is not a good tradeoff imo
All of the estimates I've seen range from $10-20 an hour after all of their expenses are factored in. Let's be really conservative and take the bottom quartile, so Uber drivers make $10-12.50 an hour.
That's.... a perfectly normal wage for tens of millions of people. Have you eaten a meal out or gotten a coffee, ever? That's how much money the people behind the counter were making. Did you feel like you were contributing to a 'serf class' when you bought a coffee this morning, or bought dinner last week?
And if these people weren't employed by Uber, they'd be working for $10-12 an hour at a different employer instead. Kind of by definition, they lack the ability to earn more money in the market (especially this job market!) because if they could they'd already be doing so
The minimum wage in California (the subject of the OP) for companies with more than 25 employees is $13.00. I know you were trying to be conservative in your estimate and I don't know if that $10-20 range you're referencing is for California, the USA, or all Uber drivers. Maybe the real average is higher than that, but it's wrong to present $10-12 as a "perfectly normal" wage for workers in California.
I just think it's overly dramatic when people present lower wage jobs as literally serfdom or whatever- especially when the HN crowd has undoubtedly eaten out, had drinks, hired a contractor, got coffee, or employed a cleaner that was probably making the same as an Uber driver. There will always be low wage jobs. No one's picketing coffeeshops for making their employees 'serfs', why single out Uber?
https://www.businessinsider.in/the-32-places-uber-and-lyft-d...
Also keep in mind that pretty much no minimum wage job except ridesharing allows you to earn to and from your way to work.
If you make $13 and hour on an 8 hour shift in California with a 1 hour commute each way and a $3 bus fare each way, it comes out to $9.80/hour not $13.
The end result will be that many people just won't be able to drive for Uber or Lyft any longer. So you are taking money making opportunities away from many people and giving to a select few (the ones that can make the cut as employees).
The next step will be unionization..and then we will be back to the taxi cab situation: high prices, difficult to become a driver, and sub-par technology that stays decades behind the rest of the world.
Quite frankly anyone that thinks they can suddenly make a decent living off of just driving people around and had that vision of making it rich doing Uber was stupid in the first place. If it is easy enough for anyone to do it then rest assured it won't be lucrative. The corollary is true if something takes great skill and is difficult and people need it then you are probably going to be able quite a bit more. Supply and demand economics 101, if we keep trying to approach economic issues from social perspectives we are going to end up with lots of stupid decisions that cause more problems than the solve. Classic example rent control.
Also, tax credits can be (and are) paid weekly.
A UBI of course has a lot of other benefits (being distributed monthly or more often, going to people who are unable to work, being universal and therefore more resistant politically).
You’re right that annualized refunds are far from ideal. Monthly would be better.
Argument in video form, with diagram below.
https://mru.org/courses/principles-economics-microeconomics/...
Machines work 24/7, never get sick, and don't unionize.
Cutting checks is a lot simpler than policing the terms of private transactions. Particularly when not all those transactions look like full time work for one corporate employer.
She drives to talk to people and make a bit of extra money, it was never meant to be a job to support us. I personally think she is crazy for putting up with all she does. Anytime she is waiting for passengers or going through a drive through (for the passengers) for 15 minutes she makes NO money, because the ride price is fixed (and yes after events passengers will get in the van and one will be outside talking to someone else and she has to wait for them to get in, not getting paid for her time). She tells me all the time, a few riders are really grateful, but most don't care and the driver is just some person they hired (she has hard candy and the large things of bubble gum for riders, a few weeks ago a group of guys stole one of the things of gum, she saw them walking away with it and laughing, $6 down the drain).
There are also the passengers who order the Lyft, she shows up and they are 2 streets over from where they said and tell her to go to a different location. Again, she could cancel the ride, but unless someone is in the same location waiting for a ride she would be losing more time and money.
So i think charging for ride time is fine. If the driver does take extra turns and time for more money you can always give them a lower rating, i am unsure about Uber, but the driver rating at Lyft really does mean something.
I think it would have come across more clearly and been better received if you'd made that point directly rather than ironically.
Edit:
On top of that, I'm not coming into this thinking that this is whats best for all those people in their current situation. This is what I think is best for my society and country. I do not want companies to be able to push off large costs of doing business to their employees by just calling them contractors. I don't think this is good for _me_ in general and so I would support laws like this
Could you be wrong? Perhaps Uber drivers chose the profession by choice. Perhaps before the company Uber existed, these drivers would be less content.
Perhaps you or I are not smart enough to calculate what each individual wants and needs.
Despite the fact that we commit the world's most powerful computers to the cause, weather prediction systems are incredibly inaccurate. Should those wearing inappropriate attire be fined?
Yea, but I can turn the question right back around at you. You are trying to claim that this law shouldn't have passed because people can make the best decision for themselves. I am saying that I view this law passing as one of the best decisions for me. I do not want to work in an environment where companies can be this predatory without regulation. Letting companies do so will embolden other companies and then put downward pressure on my wages.
Have you ever asked an Uber driver how they feel about the law? All the ones I spoke with dislike it. You think you're doing good by forcing people how to live? Your position is either arrogant or uninformed. Uber driver loved their jobs and the freedom they provided until politicians came in to enforce your view of the world. If they couldn't figure out taxis, what make you think they can figure out Uber?
I literally do not care about their opinion. I believe how Uber acts is bad for a society to let continue. The Uber drivers may be getting a good deal for themselves, but I think it has negative externalities that they themselves don't care about.
Someone may be fine getting abused, or it may even be the best deal they personally can get at the moment. When we watch it happen and let it happen we are implicitly condoning the behavior which leads to others to act just as bad or worse.
You are not going to change my mind on this by trying to convince me that the drivers don't want it, I already believe you and it is not influencing my decision
The other thing sounds like "this policy is good for me personally so I'll support it", which is at least honest.
>There is no commonly accepted modern definition of feudalism, at least among scholars
"As with slaves, serfs could be bought, sold, or traded (...), abused with no rights over their own bodies, could not leave the land they were bound to, and could marry only with their lord's permission."
Does anyone really think this is how Uber drivers live?
They have very little control over their lives and work, Uber does not let them set prices and they arent making enough money to go retire early. I refer to them as serfs in that they have to answer to Uber with no actual negotiating power on their own.
How is that "they have to answer to Uber"?