It is entirely volunteer work, every single time
After so many hours of your stomach grumbling, you accept bad work involuntarily.
After so many hours of your stomach grumbling, you accept bad work involuntarily.
Someone always says this, but its an emotional, irrational non-argument and hard to respond.
Your argument is that someone unemployed and starving found a job where they could feed themselves - but its not a good enough job? What exactly is your argument?
Ah but that's the rub. They still can't feed themselves, but it's the only job in town, and some money is better than no money.
If we don't create a set of rules that prevents the behavior of places like Walmart, it allows them to create a monopoly of available jobs in an area by being the only one who can operate profitably (or can absorb a loss until all other choices are gone).
At that point they can create jobs that aren't good enough, but also leave no other choice.
I dont see how the first half changes the argument, as the second half points out.
> If we don't create a set of rules that prevents the behavior of places like Walmart
We have rules. Monopoly-busting is a fundamental role of the government. Corporations can accrue more power than their surrounding communities, as history has shown. Besides, other corporations oppose the actions of Walmart, keeping them in check - capitalism!
lol! Guilty as charged, I suppose.
> I used to believe in that too.
What is the other option? To dive into the deep end: the failure mode of capitalism appears to be the blending together of government and corporations/money to reduce the regulations that prevent strictly free-markets from being inherently self-destructive. However, the other options start from this premise! When the government already owns AND regulates the corporations, the only game in town for monopoly busting is violent revolution.
> But the real world doesn't work that way.
Previously, American capitalism has driven an increase in the world's standard of living by a staggering amount. Currently, it certainly appears there are some fundamental flaws not being addressed, but I don't know what we should do aside from return to the same capitalist system just without the corruption.
Make it so that employee protections aren't necessary by giving people the safety to walk away from bad contracts.
If we had universal healthcare and UBI and minimum income, you wouldn't need minimum wage laws anymore, because no one would take a job for $1/hr if they could just sit at home, and that's a good thing. Or maybe they would because that extra $8 a day would mean something to them. But at least they would have the freedom to do it.
I'm ok with the government being in charge of wealth redistribution, because that is where the pure libertarian system fails.
There is no safety for people who can't work, just aren't smart enough to work, or were not born into a situation where they can get the basic education needed to be successful.
One of the main problems with libertarianism is that how you fare is highly dependent on what resources you start with (ie what you were born with and what your parents have). If we can even that out a bit, the system would work much better.
1. New jobs will spring up in the place of Uber driving that will be better and the level of employment stays the same or increases.
2. New jobs will spring up, but there's fewer of them and the level of employment decreases.
I would have to go with #2. Urbanisation has been happening for a long time. People most often move to big cities because of work. I'm from a former Soviet country and most of our small towns and villages are dying because there are so few jobs. If those places set a really high bar for jobs then those areas would die even quicker. The same thing can happen in bigger and richer cities. Detroit is an example of that.
I will concede that some people do get stuck in jobs and could do better and some areas get stuck with jobs that can do better. However, this makes it a question of how far should we go rather than if done at all. Even very bad jobs for starving people are likely a net benefit, but few people in the US are actually starving.
Starvation and malnutrition are problems worth worrying about. Hunger in the absence of starvation or malnourishment is not.
Please avoid calling arguments emotional / irrational just because you disagree. The parent argument is that people are forced into bad situations by contingencies that aren't facts of nature but human policy choices. There's nothing emotional or irrational about that.
I wasn't.
> people are forced into bad situations by contingencies that aren't facts of nature but human policy choices.
What human policy choices are forcing ride-sharing companies to provide jobs to people that HN commenters think are substandard but 100% of people do willfully?
> 100% of people do willfully?
You've personally interviewed every gig worker? Do you really think every single one of them would agree that there are no coercive forces at play here?
The whole moral argument behind laws like AB5 is that it's Uber that's ripping off the drivers, who are helpless and powerless, and cannot do anything to stop getting short end of the stick. The legislature then decides that they should adjust the terms of the contract to be more fair in the legislature's opinion. However, this whole argument hinges on the question whether the drivers are in fact coerced or defrauded: if the drivers are free to quit working for Uber at any point, and yet they don't, how can you argue that they are being coerced by Uber to anything? Usually it pivots to the argument that it's the hard facts of social reality that "coerce" them to work, but then regulating Uber in particular seems unwarranted, because why is Uber singled out, instead of other options that are even worse, as shown by the fact that the drivers choose Uber instead of those even worse options?
I think that the point of view of "social reality coercion" is also ultimately misguided as a tool to explain the political decisionmaking. Consider this: imagine California institutes UBI (and ignore for a while the question of how to pay for it). Do you think that California would also repeal all kinds of labor regulation, including AB5? That since the drivers, or waiters, or everyone else now has an option of just leaning on their UBI, and no longer be coerced to work by social reality, those regulations are now superfluous, and the people who don't like the deal presented by Uber or Amazon can just leave instead of taking it? I seriously doubt that it would happen. I think that the desire of government and the society to micromanage other people's lives is too great to resist, and the "coercion" is just an excuse to get moral justification for meddling in the deals other people make.
I'd agree that this is a more effective path than attempting to regulate Uber, but also do not think it's mutually exclusive with the view that Uber has exploitative labor practices, even if they are not directly coercing drivers to work for them.
> I think that the desire of government and the society to micromanage other people's lives is too great to resist, and the "coercion" is just an excuse to get moral justification for meddling in the deals other people make.
This only seems like a relevant argument if the sole purpose of UBI is to create some kind of deregulated libertarian society. I don't view deregulation and UBI as being intrinsically linked -- indeed I would prefer to see UBI and more regulation.
Right, but my point is that it shows where the priorities are, that it's not about actually helping people.
> This only seems like a relevant argument if the sole purpose of UBI is to create some kind of deregulated libertarian society. I don't view deregulation and UBI as being intrinsically linked -- indeed I would prefer to see UBI and more regulation.
That's exactly my point: some people just have a strong desire to have a say in everything. It's perfectly natural thing for human to wish for, the power to control everything. What we actually want as a society from our superiors who rule us though is to control things for our benefit, not to allow them to satisfy their power urge.
When you say you want "more regulation", you most likely mean "more beneficial regulation", because I'm quite sure you can imagine all kinds of detrimental regulation that could be introduced (and if you're having trouble, just think of what kind of regulation your political opponents would introduce). To circle back to the Uber question, when you regulate the its relationship with its drivers, you need to ask yourself: who's benefiting? Who's losing? Is the regulation bringing surplus for everyone, or does it actually result in deadweight loss? If, for example, you require Uber drivers to be paid at least $200/hour, everybody loses, because hardly anybody is going to take the cab anymore, and we're all worse off.
If you don't do this analysis, then the regulation becomes pure exercise of power, of the ability to control the world as you please. That's not what the society signs up for in representative democracy, and I don't think you really want more of that.
I think the entire question is distorted right now by the fact that they've been in massive growth mode for years so we don't actually know what the equilibrium of the gig economy looks like in many markets.
Like, I think there are interesting broader questions here about regulation and the social safety net -- but I think we need to be clear that Uber is basically a payday loan on your car's title. People are bad at understanding depreciating assets.
Maybe if there were a stronger social safety net there would only be a labor market for drivers for whom Uber is actually a good fit? It's certainly possible.
This is simply untrue. Cars do depreciate, but not so much to make the whole business unprofitable.
A double digit percent of the Uber drivers (probably even close to half of all) drive in rented vehicles. Hertz for example has a program[1] where you pay $200-300/week for renting a practically new vehicle. This makes the depreciation costs explicit to the driver. I think Hertz has some pretty good experience with valuing vehicle depreciation. Assuming Uber drivers do 1000-2000 miles a week, Hertz rate translates to something like $.10-.20 per mile in vehicle depreciation & maintenance. A non insignificant cost, but hardly a deal-breaker.
Maybe if there were a stronger social safety net there would only be a labor market for drivers for whom Uber is actually a good fit?
Maybe now there are drivers for whom Uber is actually good fit? Have you talked to your drivers? In my experience, most of them are pretty happy about the arrangement in general, and the only complaint is low rates.
[1] - https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/misc/index.jsp?targetPage=ube...
I did. You have ignored half of my comments both times you replied.
> You've personally interviewed every gig worker?
There is a process to become a driver that people must choose to do. They also stop driving the second they don't do it purposefully. How do you think they're NOT choosing to do it?
> no coercive forces at play
I have no idea what you're driving at. No one chooses to be born, no one chooses the cell structure that requires consumption. There are thousands of choices we don't make to live in society.
"Your argument is that someone unemployed and starving found a job where they could feed themselves - but its not a good enough job?" is not an explanation for why the argument is emotional.
> How do you think they're NOT choosing to do it?
Because I don't have a idealistic view of free will that assumes all choices are ultimately unconstrained? I view the distinction between an armed robbery and being forced into a job to prevent starvation only a matter of abstraction not kind.