Uber and Lyft expected to prevail in CA ballot measure | Hacker News Reader

Uber and Lyft expected to prevail in CA ballot measure

cnbc.com

42 pointsburnaboy41 comments

Thank you to everyone in California who voted for it. This means that as a retired computer programmer, I can keep part-time Uber/Lyft driving. It's a good thing for me and the people I pick up.

That's what I thought, it should just mean more options overall. I don't understand the downside if it's always an at-will employment opportunity. Workarounds exist if one doesn't pay enough. Some people act like one app taking advantage is the end of civilization.

People complaining that $200 million was spent promoting Prop 22 don't understand that gig companies were up against some very powerful forces in California: Namely Democratic congress persons and California unions they were allied with. Unions tried to strong arm Uber and Lyft because they hoped to unionize drivers. CA lawmakers passed AB5, which was a disaster at the start because musicians could no longer pick up backing musicians when they toured, for example, and freelance writers were suddenly having a hard time getting work. Lawmakers had to carve out a bunch of exceptions. It became clear that they were only going after mainly Uber and Lyft. Most people I talked to understood AB5 was a bad law because a lot of people do extra work on the side or have family members that do.

Surveys showed most drivers wanted to stay independent. About 70% are part time drivers and wanted to continue to work where, when and for how long they wanted. Of the 30% that are full time drivers, it was never clear to me what percentage of them wanted to be employees. As I explained here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24866382], many drivers who wanted employee/union protection were not very good drivers. For example, one driver the unions put in front of cameras said he only made $67 on a 12 hour shift in San Francisco. You have to be doing something very wrong to only make that much in 12 hours in San Francisco. If that were the case then the many drivers from the Central Valley wouldn't work SF. It wouldn't be worth it.

Out of curiosity, which personal auto insurance are you using that covers your vehicle while driving for Uber/Lyft?

Progressive

https://www.progressive.com/auto/insurance-coverages/ridesha...

We just learned that it takes only $200m to buy a law in the state of California. The state legislature said these workers are employees. The state judicial system said these workers are employees. These companies wouldn't accept that as an answer so they turned to funding the most expensive proposition battle in history with 90% coming down on the one side. This is also in addition to all sorts of free marketing they did through their apps. And to make matters worse, this proposition is near impossible to amend, reform, or repeal by the state legislature.

Curious, would you apply the same logic to the other propositions that received massively disproportionate funding on one side (e.g. Prop 16) but still are failing? Perhaps the voters of California don't 100% share the views of the people elected to represent them. That is the disadvantage of first-past-the-post democracy.

From ballotpedia[1][2]:

Support Prop 16 - $20m

Oppose Prop 16 - $1m

Support Prop 22 - $202m

Oppose Prop 22 - $20m

We are talking about a $19m difference verses $182m. These are in no way similar campaigns.

[1] - https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr...

[2] - https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based...

From another angle: the Support Prop 16 people spent 20x their opposition, while the Support Prop 22 people only spent 10x their opposition.

Why didn’t you use the ratios?

Haven’t seen a single unskippable yt ad about prop 16

'Buy a law'? Do you think everyone who voted for it is isn't capable of independent decision-making?

Everyone? Certainly not. Some people? Sure.

Obviously these companies agree with me too. Why else would they be willing to spend $182m more than the other side in this debate?

I think this is an unnecessarily cynical take. Money certainly matters in politics, but it can't buy enough votes to win on its own. The contingent of people who genuinely dislike AB5 was very motivated, and clearly sizeable

I doubt that AB5 was itself the target of much particular care.

Prop 22 is viable this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the dire straits so many are in. It's supported by those who need any source of income they can lay claim to, no matter its quality, and by those who know someone like that, and so on. In a year (or a society) in which fewer people were so desperate, I would very much like to believe that this perverted lawbuying would be shot down by a wide margin.

That's an interesting observation. I didn't really think about the fact that a lot of people may be quite desperate and that Uber/Lyft just going away (which they wouldn't dare--but that was the threat) immediately might be quite bad for a lot of people right now.

Wasn’t this put to a vote? Why do you call it “lawbuying”? Because you don’t like the result?

> but it can't buy enough votes to win on its own

Money can't buy love either, but being a billionaire makes that way, way, way easier.

So it can't buy something with 100% guarantee, but if it gets you to 90%, the difference is ... academic.

Why should the state legislature get to override a referendum? I am not really fans of them for decision making, but I don't see why it is less valid than electing representatives and having them vote on it.

There's nothing wrong with this. What's a more American way to clarify a disagreement than to put the topic on a ballot and let the voters decide?

If it comes down to which side spends more money, then there's something wrong with it.

California has a long and happy history of badly-conceived but very-well-funded propositions going down in flames. Prop 33 in 2012 comes to mind, losing badly despite $17m for and only $275k against: https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_33,_Automobil...

Noted. However we could remove the question entirely by limiting advertising/funding for propositions. I realize that's a short answer to probably a long question, but I'd like that experiment.

>We just learned that it takes only $200m to buy a law in the state of California.

Incredibly cynical and reductive. I cast my vote on prop 22 based on my personal beliefs about where the government should sit in a relationship between two consenting parties. I haven't used a ride share app in about 2 years. It has nothing to do with the money spent on the campaign, or my loyalty to any company, or marketing through an app.

Despite what people on the internet like to think, people actually have beliefs that aren't based on cynical, simplistic, one dimensional worldviews. People who've never used a rideshare app might object to the government demanding companies solve a problem few people had. Especially in California, where the State is extremely paternalistic and overbearing.

That explains why when Bloomberg spent like a $1B to become the Democratic nominee he was successful.

Oh wait he wasn’t.

Money has an influence, but saying a vote is “bought” is just sour grapes.

You just said yourself money has an influence. That means it buys votes. That's facts, not sour grapes.

AB5 was a shit law that should never have passed and destroyed independent contracting in California. I’m only annoyed that this ballot measure only affects certain gig workers instead of fixing it for the rest of us.

So I wouldn’t read too much into this bill passing.

media coverage on prop 22 & gig cos has been almost universally against. voters chose to vote the way they did. how is this buying a law? seems like some people call any political outcome they don't like corrupt in some way.

money can buy advertising but to believe it can literally buy votes means you don't believe people are capable of making up their own minds. it's incredibly paternalistic and demeaning.

I didn't see any ads (I mean it, I'm very wel insulated from ads in general) but I voted for it.

I did that because the uber drivers I've driven with unanimously wanted the status quo.

Prop 22 was carefully crafted to give drivers enough benefits that it would reach popular support. If it just invalidated AB5 it wouldn't have passed. This means that democracy worked, instead of making gig work illegal prop 22 made gig work get guaranteed benefits without making them employees. Seems like a much better solution to me.

To me the big question is why so many democrats are against this? Why do they have to be employees instead of its own category with its own protections?

I hope that this ties the legislature's hands so thoroughly that they have to pass a whole raft of laws making the idea of "independent contractor" a lot less attractive.

I'm tired of big companies shrugging off employment law and legal liability by outsourcing to "contractors". It's time that companies have to allocate benefits regardless of whether they are paying an employee or a contractor.

Wow and it only needs a 7/8 super-duper majority to overturn.

Even though it won't be as expensive for Uber/Lyft as AB5, it will be interesting to see how much they end up spending on driver healthcare and the other new benefits

Meta: should there maybe be some kind of cooldown on threads based on election results? This one seems mostly fine, but there are a few discussions soon to come that I think would very much benefit from a preemptive 24 hour time out.

That's a question you need to take to the moderators by email, using the footer Contact link. They won't see this comment otherwise and the guidelines request that.

This link doesn't deserve a post, as it contains only rumors, not any actual news. The specific line in question that clearly states this is:

"according to projections from NBC News"

You can see the votes for yourself:

https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CA/Santa_Clara/1060...

Irrelevant. The source cited declared itself to be speculation based on projections, at the time that the link was posted. That they were proven right later is no excuse for bringing speculative political uncertainty to this forum. This should not have been posted at the time that it was, with the source that was used.

The projections are based on the same vote tally I linked. The votes were posted at 8pm and updated every hour after that. I watched them in real time.

This - in addition to all the other results tonight, no matter which candidate ultimately wins - should give pause to many people on HN. Polls are incorrect, you probably live in a bubble, and people of all races and demographics don’t fit in neat stereotypical categories. I hope some serious post-mortems occur that do more than blame foreign interference.

There aren't many polls on California ballot propositions, but all the ones I saw correctly predicted this result.

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