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Comment by hnewsshadowbans | Hacker News Reader

With Uber want to work? Press a button. Want to take a break? Press a button. Want to work again? Press a button. Take as long a break as you want. Work as long as you want. No timecards. No obnoxious coworkers. No intrusive questions. No douchebag bosses making your life a living hell. In what other job do you have this sort of freedom without the instability of traditional selfemployment? What more could you ask for? Now it'll all be ruined for everybody because of the greed and entitlement of a few.

Its side hustle money for bored college kids with some free time. They NEVER promised anything more. They're not forcing you to work for them. If you're a a single mother raising 5 kids on Uber alone you're doing it wrong.

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> Its side hustle money for bored college kids with some free time.

Except it isn’t. If it was then Uber wouldn’t be trying to setup vehicle leasing schemes for their drivers.

If it was true then I would actually meet some college kid drivers, rather that 30 year old migrants.

If you’re a single mother raising 5 kids on Uber, then you probably have no choice. Telling them they’re “doing it wrong” won’t feed their kids. It’s just a callus relegation of someone you find undesirable and have no wish to help.

Fact is that every time you create a new way to earn money some people will do it full time no matter the feasibility. So basically you argue that we should have the current wage-slave economy forever instead of giving workers more choice. The only reason Uber is even a hint of a problem today is that we only have a single occupation following this model, but if it was more widespread and you could pick between a plethora of different things to earn money by as easily as Uber then suddenly the problems with Uber today would disappear instantly.

I understand that the current wage-slave model is better for employers, workers can't go home early if they feel tired that day for less pay since it would get them fired. Instead they have to tough out their hours every day. Similarly if a part time worker wanted a bit of extra money they could just choose to work more a few times, but that is also impossible in the current model. It assumes that workers are like machines who reliably work XX hours per week with no deviations. And even hourly jobs requires you to pick shifts beforehand and often you can't even get as many hours as you want or need, and you can still get fired for picking too few shifts etc.

So I feel that Uber is a much more humane way to handle labor than current employment contracts.

Don’t assume that US wage slave practices are universal.

Most of the developed world has very strong worker protections and a recognition that mental health and flexible working is important.

We can provide jobs with good benefits, flexible hours, accommodations for parents etc without resorting to the employment model Uber trumpets. The EU proves this is possible (it’s far from perfect, but empirically better than the US), and the fact that it’s one of the worlds largest trading blocks shows it can be done without sacrificing economic progress.

Then you get less innovation, less productivity, and less upward mobility. Don't pretend there isn't a cost.

Goofing off in your cubicle and then going off to a picket line to keep your UBI isn't real independence.

The future lies in something greater than the wageslave model of America or the dependency model of Europe.

Empirical evidence suggests otherwise.

For productivity the US trails behind most EU countries and the EU as a whole [1]

Same again for social mobility, US trailing badly [2]

So if the cost of the EU model is higher productivity and social mobility, then I’m all in.

As for innovation, that’s harder to comment on. But the success of US tech companies is certainly notable.

[1] https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm

[2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-...

" But the success of US tech companies is certainly notable."

One of the funniest statements ever following an assertion of empiricism.

The left's idea of "leading" is always amusing. The left in the socialist paradises in Europe will keep depending on US technology and posting on sites created by US innovation. At least until they depend maybe on China and then they won't even have the choice to practice evading their own country's speech laws.

The leftists in the US will just keep abusing the privileges they are afforded by those who keep them in luxury because that's just what they do. The system is good to them that way.

I'll now go "wage slave" so I can afford to travel to places that produce old buildings you visit.

I agree lets look at this empirically. Or as close to it as we casually can. Lets take the top 3 results for Googling "productivity nation" (without quotes) where we can easily get a list to avoid cherrypicking.

https://collectivehub.com/2018/02/15-of-the-worlds-most-prod...

Lists US as 6th ahead of most European countries

https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/

US is 5th ahead of most European countries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

US is 3rd ahead of most European countries. (I think this is a slightly more trustworthy number because its simpler and less prone to monkeybusiness like adding 'worklife' balance into the equation like other figures do.

So yes the empirical evidence seems to indicate that the US model is ahead of the EU in general. Its not the best but then again I never said that employment models is the be all end all of everything productivity.

Let's look at mobility, when I say upward mobility. I don't mean simply making do or even living adequately. I mean being ambitious and actually breaking out and being very successful and maintaining it. One straightforward way is to look at USD millionaires per capita.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/262687/countries-with-th...

US is 3rd ahead of all the EU.

If people want to work for Uber so badly then whats Uber's place not to accommodate them? If single mothers need help so badly then thats not Uber's problem, they're out to run a business not save the world. The government should do something useful for them instead of effectively putting them out of work.

Yes the main effect of this is the company will have to restrict its standards and probably less of these people we're supposedly so concerned about will be able to work anymore due to qualifications or being able to cope. And those left now get to enjoy more regulations, supervisors, time cards, and workplace surveillance and the daily grind just like the rest of us drones. Heck Uber is barely scraping by as is. This might be the killing blow and now everybody is out of work. Good job.

There are plenty of Uber competitors out there. There model of employment isn’t the only one possible. We can do better, and we should try.

On the basis of your arguments business should make no attempt to care for any of their workers, and all worker protections should be abolished.

That model only works if you buy into the fantasy that employees have any real negotiating power, they don’t. The only negotiating power they have is collective actions taken by governments. France is nice strong democracy, it’s not unreasonable to say this is the French people’s rejection of Uber’s exploitive employment practices.

Uber and Lyft dominate the market as far as I'm aware in the US and neither of them have shown much enthusiasm for these kind of laws afaik.

You're not protecting the worker. You're taking away their freedom and choice and turning them into a different kind of worker.

Perhaps if you speak to some drivers, you'll find the overwhelming response that shows they want flexibility, not another full-time job.

These kind of laws do not take a majority to pass, and France had violent protests and riots by taxi drivers against ride-sharing with plenty of political infighting. The only votes that matter are Uber drivers, and you would find a very different conclusion if you only asked them.

There is nothing that prevents Uber from providing flexibility. The court has not ruled that Uber contracts were illegal, but that they were employment contracts (obviously, with the flexible hours Uber is known for) rather than (Uber) company to (the driver's) company business contracts.

Full-time employment will mean people work when and where Uber decides they do, with a flat-rate and no bonuses or surge pricing.

Only if Uber chooses to, it does not have to.

> the main effect of this is the company will have to restrict its standards and probably less of these people we're supposedly so concerned about will be able to work anymore due to qualifications or being able to cope.

This kind of whining and fear mongering is done in response to absolutely every kind of employment regulation or workers rights improvement. Somehow it never seems to come true.

Detroit says hi

It's come true many times and is already happening in California because of AB5.

Full-time driving jobs have existed for a century. There's nothing stopping people from driving FT if they want to, but they usually want the freedom and flexibility of working when and where they can that Uber is specifically designed for.

You can always come up with some scenario where it doesn't work while ignoring millions of drivers who are doing just fine. Would that mother in your example be better off without Uber? What if she can't work steady shifts every day and needs the flexibility?

People are perfectly capable of choosing what's best for themselves, they don't need the government to tell them what to do.

> With Uber want to work? Press a button. Want to take a break? Press a button. Want to work again? Press a button. Take as long a break as you want. Work as long as you want. No timecards. No obnoxious coworkers. No intrusive questions. No douchebag bosses making your life a living hell. In what other job do you have this sort of freedom without the instability of traditional selfemployment? What more could you ask for? Now it'll all be ruined for everybody because of the greed and entitlement of a few.

Interesting that you forgot to mention the below-minimum-wage rates here

What below minimum wage rates? In most of Uber's markets the price is based on supple and demand, and the drivers get a portion of that price. It's a market driven scheme where you agree to driving at that price. If you don't agree, then just change platforms, or don't drive!

Just eat cake!

Literally you're describing the reason minimum wages exist.

> Its side hustle money for bored college kids with some free time

So a side hustle for bored college kids is undercutting people who need a real job to feed a real family. Hardly an argument in favour of Uber?

So college kids shouldn't be allowed to offer a lower price for a service because someone else decided to finance their family through Uber?

If college kids on Uber are hurting families who rely on the income of a taxi/cab/whatever driver, why wouldn’t we step in? There’s no golden rule that says we can’t intervene in the market to ensure people can have a decent life.

It's also not a favourable free market practice to protect inefficient jobs

Desperate people will always try to make a living on any money source. Say I live in an area with lots of litter. If I made a program that paid 5 cents per piece of litter picked up from the streets, some desperate person would try to do it full time to support their family, fail, sue me for not paying a living wage and providing full health benefits and a pension, etc.

College kids should very well be allowed to offer a lower price for a service that someone else does at a higher price point - the problem is a multi-billion-USD-valued company trying to weasel around laws to profit off of both of them.

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