California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers | Hacker News Reader

California Voters Exempt Uber, Lyft, DoorDash from Having to Reclassify Drivers

wsj.com

280 pointsra7363 comments

A special exception for a narrow set of companies with an established history of abhorrent behaviour with requires a 7/8ths vote to overturn/modify and then pretending that this is something the legislature can update.

It's hard for me to not feel disappointed with the public on this one.

My understanding is that a ballot measure must be modified only by ballot measure. Adding in a 7/8ths clause is a way of allowing, with difficulty, the legislature to change things.

That's just a way to pretend it can be modified by the legislature. The only thing that gets 7/8th majorities is renaming post offices.

It's only a special exception of they don't repeal AB5!

The only thing worse than democracy is all the other -cracies.

58-42 is a wide margin. Ideally the government shouldn't be legislating stuff which has only 40% support.

Not really. Black people might still be slaves if we left that up to popular opinion. That was NOT a popular opinion at the time. Same for women's voting rights. Black voting rights. Gay marriage.

All these were passed when public support was hovering at 25% - and shortly after they were passed, public opinion quickly shifted in an S-curve.

Exactly! Democracy is a process used to encourage deliberation - it's a means rather than an ends.

That's why we have a constitution, three branches of government, an electoral college for the executive, and had indirectly elected senators. It was all to force deliberation and buy enough time for saner minds to prevail through the moral panics of the day.

The system is broken because the process was corrupted decades ago with the greatest of intentions.

Do you have data on slavery? My understanding was the North was pretty anti-slavery and had 3x the population of the south. I'd be interested if there is actual polling data to suggest if a popular vote was held it would have failed.

I thought part of the point of the strange election process we have was to "ensure" that southern states would have a vote even in the face of a more populous north…

They did. Which was why they were able to hold out until 1860 when the writing was on the wall. Since slavery didn't die on it's own and was the underpinning of the economy of many states violence was somewhat bound to happen.

You can't just expect to make any sizeable minority of your nation's economy non-viable and not have all the people's lives you just ruined start shooting. You might be able to get away with it if the people losing out are an evenly distributed minority but if there's a huge block where they are the overwhelming local majority it's gonna get ugly.

The alternative path out of slavery would have been to boil the frog but with the uneven geographic distribution of slavery that wouldn't have been reasonably possible to do socially (e.g. convince people to spend more any more money treating slaves better until wage labor is competitive and slavery can be legislated away without a war). You might be able to boil the frog legislatively but the weak government structures of the 19th century were not well equipped for that kind of thing and that requires a lot of support anyway. In order to get the nation bootstrapped the founders intentionally put off any action for several decades. Something calamitous was kind of bound to happen. Frankly I think we were kind of lucky we got off with a "one and done" war over it (yes I know there was a bunch of background violence after the fact) rather than a perpetual slow boil conflict that turns into a low intensity shooting war every few decades like you see in other parts of the world.

>rather than a perpetual slow boil conflict that turns into a low intensity shooting war every few decades like you see in other parts of the world.

End of Reconstruction, Bloody Summer, Brown v Board and the subsequent CRM, the War on Drugs, Trayvon Martin et al. I'd say we're on schedule.

Enjoy the gritty crunch, it tastes just like chicken.

And this is part of why it's a cycle instead of a one-and-done pain point: people who try to bury how much work we have yet to do.

The electoral college was created during America's founding.

Untrue, the South was more populous than the North during the ratification of the Constitution -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

In fact, it was the slave owning southern states that wanted the Senate to be apportioned proportionally, rather than equally (this was the Virginia Plan). The Virginia Plan created a two-chamber legislature with proportional representation based on population. The New Jersey Plan would have allocated one member of Congress to each state. The Connecticut Compromise that led to the current allocation received buy-in from both slave and non-slave states, because it was about small vs large states, which were present in both sides.

The population advantage of the South was the impetus behind the infamous "three fifths compromise". The 3/5 compromise was designed to reduce the interest of slave-holding states in Congress as well as the elections.

The South had more people, but far fewer voters (partially because of slavery, partially because they had more restrictive rules even for white males).

The Senate was done for small states, but the Electoral College was definitely invented to appease the South.

> but the Electoral College was definitely invented to appease the South

No it wasn’t. Under both the Northern proposed New Jersey Plan as well as the Southern proposed Virginia Plan, the President would have actually been elected by Congress. There were concerns that having Congress elect the President would jeopardize separation of powers. So the Electoral College was created, with one elector for each member of Congress. It had nothing to do with protecting the interests of slave-holding states, but instead was designed to make the Presidency more independent of Congress. The fact that the President would be elected by States as opposed to people directly was uncontroversial. What was controversial was whether the apportionment of those votes should be proportional to the population (where both chambers of Congress had proportional votes) or whether it should be the degressive proportionality that we have today (where the upper house has equal representation). The slave-states wanted the former, not the latter, owing to their population advantage.

Also, degressive proportionality as a concept is fairly uncontroversial in the context of Federal electoral systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degressive_proportionality

It’s what’s used to allocate seats in the European Parliament, who vote to elect the President of the European Commission, who is the Head of Government of the EU. In many ways, the structure of the EU is identical to that of the US, especially prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment.

The North wasn't a single, unified entity. There were 4 major polities in the Union during WW2:

- New England and the Great Lakes were virulently anti-slavery for primarily economic reasons, but some moralist reasons also.

- New York City was mercantile and not thrilled about being in the war. Lots of protests and political violence in NYC during the Civil War.

- Pennsylvania and the Lower Ohio Valley were generally more anti-slavery for moral and economic reasons, but generally more pacifist and amiable toward the South than New Englanders.

- Appalachia, which covers all the border areas along the mountains running from central PA to northern AL, who were completely ambivalent about slavery, but extremely patriotic and anti-secession.

Pre-1860 a vote on slavery certainly would have failed in the North and may have led additional states to secede. Lincoln was explicitly not pro-abolition for this reason.

> All these were passed when public support was hovering at 25% - and shortly after they were passed, public opinion quickly shifted in an S-curve.

You're mistaking correlation for causation.

Things first pass when they have ~25% popular support because that's when they first get enough votes to pass in a two party system. You get 51% of the party that controls 51% of the legislature, your measure passes.

Then support for it increases because that's what it was doing to begin with, which was how it got to 51% of 51% from whatever smaller amount of support it had before it passed.

If you require a higher bar to change the law, it takes longer. But change inevitably still happens.

Slavery wasn't doomed by voting, it was doomed by economics. Before the industrial revolution, working on a plantation (essentially serfdom) compared favorably with your other alternatives, which typically consisted of starving to death in the wilderness. After the industrial revolution, you could run away to a city and get a job in a factory, which is what everybody started doing and the whole system started to disintegrate.

And it was the same thing for women's suffrage. It came about following economic and social changes that essentially made it inevitable in a modern society. It would have happened anyway. It did happen anyway, despite being passed by constitutional amendment in the US, which has a supermajority requirement for enactment.

By contrast, ill-conceived ideas that aren't inevitable would die when they go out of fashion without ever being implemented.

I certainly agree that some things are so important they need to get done regardless of popular opinion. But to say that independent contractor classification clears that bar seems like a pretty strong anti-democratic commitment. Are there any matters of public policy you feel should be left up to popular opinion?

> All these were passed when public support was hovering at 25%

True for all except gay marriage. It was an exception in being popular when legalised.

Your claim about gay marriage is just empirically wrong. Popular "support" for gay marriage passed 50% in 2013 according to https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga... and passed the "oppose" level in 2011 (it looks like ~10% of survey respondents consistently pick neither option, so the lines crossed at the 45% mark). Obergefell v. Hodges was decided in 2015.

Support for gay marriage was at the 25% level nationally in ... well, per https://web.archive.org/web/20050517033538/http://www.aei.or... page 21 I would put it in the mid-1990s, 20 years before full nationwide legalization. Of course legalization in various states preceded national legalization, as expected.

The other things you list predate modern polling (except maybe Black voting rights, depending on how you define that). But just looking at women's suffrage, it was a constitutional amendment. That means is got 2/3 majorities in both houses of congress and ratification by 3/4 of state legislatures. It's hard to see how something with only 25% popular support could manage that, so at this point I'm going to ask you for data to back up that extraordinary claim.

If we are entertaining what would happen regarding gay marriage ...

> if we left that up to popular opinion

... then national polls are not relevant, because marriage laws are set at the state level. In fact, until Obergefell v. Hodges, it essentially was left up to popular opinion, and many people lived in states where it was unpopular enough to pass legislative, or even constitutional bans.

Sure, the mechanics of how things become "law" is complicated by the fact that you can have actual laws, constitutional amendments, supreme court decisions, etc, depending on the exact thing being discussed and where responsibility for it rests in the various levels of government in the US.

But no matter how you slice it, I see no obvious support in the data for the original claim that "gay marriage was legalized when popular support was only at 25%".

Now maybe there were some states that had support at only 25% in 2015. For example, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/where-same-sex-marriage... is a 2014 article that mentions that Missisipi had 14% support in 2004 and support went up by "1-2% per year since then". So _maybe_ it was at only 25%, as an absolute lower bound. But chances are it was higher than that even there.

> It's hard for me to not feel disappointed with the public on this one.

Well I'm sure you'll get over it when you consider that overreach and imperfect laws don't operate in a vacuum.

Fair enough, I certainly have sympathy for the comment above about "using it as a referendum on AB5", although I think it is an extremely poor tool for that.

Most Californian voters are pretty disappointing. There was one a few years back that basically eliminated paid breaks and meals for EMTs, and there are probably a string of other bad decisions going back as far as you care to look.

Prop 8 to ban gay marriage comes to mind.

(It passed only a few years back...)

I think it's easy to spin things however you want

If prop 11 was rejected, someone could go on HN and say that they're disgusted with how CA voters decided that EMTs shouldn't receive extra mental health care. Or that voters said that it's better to let someone die than require an EMT to postpone their (still paid!) break by 1 hour

In 2016 there was a proposition to abolish death penalty and another to expedite it. Expediting death penalty proposition won.

Another proposition was to legalize weed production. That one also won. If all the weed supporters would have also voted for abolishing death penalty...

Prop 11 required EMTs to remain on-call during paid breaks (I suppose you could spin it as eliminated non-on-call paid breaks). Most major newspapers endorsed it. There was very little opposition ($0 spent in opposition).

It’s an illustration of the flaws of “direct democracy”, the question voters should be asked is: “Do you want workers in CA to be entitled to meal breaks? Or, are you willing to give up protected meal breaks?”

The overwhelming majority of voters are not motivated enough to properly consider an issue which is going to impact a tiny minority of other people. And people will never feel responsible for their vote.

This is why politicians should exist, to be responsible for these decisions and to be accountable afterwards (in theory). Direct democracy lets everyone wash their hands of any responsibility.

Representative or indirect democracy allows much of the same with politicians who largely aren't held accountable by voters and don't seem to care about their actions on others. All we seem to do is shift the blame to someone with more moral flexibility while also losing power in the process. And our representatives are now selling our power to the highest bidder. At the same time, representative democracies at least help protect minorities against lynch mobs and group think a bit but that's far from guaranteed.

I'm not convinced which system is better or not, personally, or if a better system can exist.

The best part about Prop 22 is it reveals who reads their props before expressing an opinion on them. It's a litmus test for who speaks in an uninformed manner.

Here is the only reference to seven-eighths in Prop 22:

> After the effective date of this chapter, the Legislature may amend this chapter by a statute passed in each house of the Legislature by rollcall vote entered into the journal, seven-eighths of the membership concurring, provided that the statute is consistent with, and furthers the purpose of, this chapter

Seven-eighths to overturn, eh? Now where did you go get that?

Now secondarily, one might ask if someone "disappointed with the public" is sufficiently informed about ballot propositions in the first place. For instance, if you're a California voter and you can't answer "If a ballot proposition is passed through voter referendum, what majority of the legislature can overrule it?", then can you really be considered an informed voter?

Or, more directly, you are clearly expressing discontent with California voters while being the problem since you are clearly uninformed about Prop 22 and about how ballot props work (and perhaps about why they have to work that way).

That’s the only place that literal text appears, but there are several other references to it (“subdivision (a)”) —

> (3) Any statute that prohibits app-based drivers from performing a particular rideshare service or delivery service while allowing other individuals or entities to perform the same rideshare service or delivery service, or otherwise imposes unequal regulatory burdens upon app-based drivers based on their classifcation status, constitutes an amendment of this chapter and must be enacted in compliance with the procedures governing amendments consistent with the purposes of this chapter as set forth in subdivisions (a) and (b).

> (4) Any statute that authorizes any entity or organization to represent the interests of app-based drivers in connection with drivers’ contractual relationships with network companies, or drivers’ compensation, benefts, or working conditions, constitutes an amendment of this chapter and must be enacted in compliance with the procedures governing amendments consistent with the purposes of this chapter as set forth in subdivisions (a) and (b).

> (d) Any statute that imposes additional misdemeanor or felony penalties in order to provide greater protection against criminal activity for app-based drivers and individuals using rideshare services or delivery services may be enacted by the Legislature by rollcall vote entered into the journal, a majority of the membership of each house concurring, without complying with subdivisions (a) and (b).

Right, those pieces are there for good reason, but aren't really relevant to the discriminator question: "Can seven-eighths of legislators overturn this proposition?"

And the secondary discriminator question: "If a ballot proposition is passed through voter referendum, what majority of the legislature can overrule it?"

Answers:

1. N 7/8guf znwbevgl va gur yrtvfyngher pnaabg ercrny guvf zrnfher.

2. Va trareny, va Pnyvsbeavn, ab znwbevgl va gur yrtvfyngher pna bireehyr n onyybg cebcbfvgvba jvgubhg ibgre nccebiny.

If you get either of those wrong, the uninformed voter is you.

The point is, if you point to the 7/8 clause as an attack against the prop 22 by saying that it's incredibly hard to modify, you've just revealed that you're an uninformed voter. Ballot measures normally can't be modified by the legislature at all.

So it's quite ironic that someone against prop 22 is claiming everyone for it is uninformed while referencing said clause.

> Ballot measures normally can't be modified by the legislature at all.

We all know this. The point is that the alternative is one that can be overturned more reasonably. "Ah, but you see this one is slightly easier to modify" is crap, IMO. The choices weren't only "literally no way" or "7/8ths".

Going back to quote a section

> ...requires a 7/8ths vote to overturn...

This is just not right. You really have to tie yourself up in knots to believe it.

> The best part about Prop 22 is it reveals who reads their props before expressing an opinion on them.

Well, thanks for exposing that your heuristic is broken-- because the only place I've seen it brough up is from reading it myself.

(If you saw it discussed elsewhere you may well have seen /me/ writing about it).

The 7/8th's threshold is an insult-- it exists for the only purpose of telling an effective lie about the legislatures ability to amend these exclusions.

Perfect. Having read it yourself, perhaps you can explain to us why you have concluded that a 7/8ths majority could overturn it.

A substantial amendment to the Business and Professional code could defacto overturn it.

That isn't the only way the props effects could be effectively bypassed, they could be bypassed by other updates to california law, e.g. to unionize app workers, changes to laws governing working conditions for drivers, etc. All such changes are potentially pre-empted by prop22's language.

Prop22 arguably creates a fairly broad automatic veto for Uber/et. al. against any California law that could be argued to impede the rideshare business. For example, there is a clear argument post prop22 that a law which prohibited registered sex offenders from being rideshare app drivers would now require a 7/8th's vote.

Uber has repeatability shown itself more than willing to exploit loopholes in an unethical manner and we've now granted them a fairly generalized shield against loophole closing.

Ultimately the courts may not be willing to follow such a broad effect, but the recipe for a lot of time and money to be wasted litigating it is coded right into the proposition.

Do you think it passes the Equal Protection Clause of 14th Amendment of the US constitution? Treating some companies' employees differently than others?

Because I hope it does.

I also unfortunately have to hope that the ride-share companies give the benefits they suggest, but I also want the US to unbundle this from companies to begin with, across the whole republic.

We already have discriminated for a century on pay: tipped vs non-tipped wages. Also, they’re not modifying it to single out Uber and Lyft, but “gig economy workers”. Requiring someone who fulfills certain requirements to be classified as an employee isn’t unconstitutional.

Part of why I voted for prop 22 is because the list of special exemptions to AB5 is a mile long.

On top of the original exemptions, we even passed AB2257 which added a few dozen more (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...)

I think prop 22 is flawed, but I'm using it as a referendum on AB5 (and I think it's marginally better than the alternative). AB5 is a defacto ban on casual use of the gig economy. It would've required uber to reduce the # of drivers and/or start assigning them shifts

Same. The exception list is insane. I don't see how you can look at that list and _not_ think these drivers belong there as well. On top of this, most drivers I talked to were voting for it, and despite some cries about brainwashing by the companies via their apps, I'd imagine they do still have their own best interests in mind.

I'm assuming the drivers you talked to were working when you talked to them.

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, they might be scared to be honest with you under those circumstances?

Hey, no need to be snide.

Umm... why would they be scared? It's not like I was being aggressive about - I was just curious, and I was already casually chatting with them.

Here are two important facts about the world:

1. Poor people cannot miss a paycheck. Getting fired means not paying rent, not eating, or not repairing the car you depend on for your livelihood.

2. Bosses spy on employees. This country has a rather nasty history of labor spies, and that tradition is undergoing an unfortunate revival. Poor people seem to know more about that history than comfortable-but-not-rich people. Not sure why.

The difference in my opinion is with gig workers, there’s a contrasting concentration of power in the hands of a few companies, and those companies play a substantial intermediating role in matching “contractors” with customers.

From the exemption list, is there any that rival the likes of Uber or Lyft?

So... you're OK with having an exploited underclass of marginally attached gig workers? Or you're not?

You realize many of those exemptions were requested by the employees themselves?

I don't believe that, but would read any evidence you have that tends to substantiate your claim.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-12-17/freelance-...

People readily choose to let themselves be exploited. That's why minimum wages are compulsory not negotiable by employees. It's why human trafficking is illegal - the victims choose to be trafficked. It's why unions have compulsory membership. Here, individual drivers might be more concerned about losing their jobs or lifestyle (perhaps justifiably) than the consequences of the exploitation.

Prop 22 added minimum wage protection and benefits to gig drivers. Thinking that they need to be employees to receive it is conservative thinking.

Undercut by the fact that they need to be „actively“ working. Waiting for the next ride is excluded. Not really minimum wage IMO

Their minimum wage is 20% higher to adjust for that. Exactly how much higher it should be is arguable, but it can be worked out. Including waiting time in the equation will force Uber and Lyft to exit California, it is better to try to make gig work viable. This isn't a question about cost, but about business viability.

Also waiting time is very abusable. Uber could just force quit your app if there aren't any rides, and then you have to try to login and it will boot you instantly every time. Then once there is a ride it accepts you. Exactly how to meassure waiting time is therefore not viable, either uber wont be able to boot you making their business model unviable or you will never get any wait time anyway.

Uber and Lyft claim that they would exit. But I don't see much reason to believe that. And if they did, well, it would be a great opportunity for other companies. The barrier to entry for rideshare is very low; the main reason we have only two options is that they've been burning money trying to establish their monopoly/duopoly position.

And I see no reason why they would stay. The only reason they work is that they used gig drivers being paid per ride instead of using people with a wage. Without that they are just a regular taxi service with no advantage over the competition, meaning they will have to exit and you are left with the taxi services you had before uber/lyft. They have no experience at all managing a fleet of employees driving, that is much harder than maintaining their app.

They would stay because they have a strong brand and a lot customers who will pay the higher price a living wage requires. They'll stay because they make money. They have giant advantages over taxi companies.

It amazes me that in this hub of free enterprise and cheerleading for free markets, people act like companies will fall over the instant they hit a complication.

> unions have compulsory membership

In EU, compulsory union membership is generally prohibited as violation of right-to-work and freedom of association.

It was particularly interesting watching journalists cheerlead for AB5 right up until the point where they realized that it affected them too and not just Uber and Lyft drivers.

It’s been a depressing display of hypocrisy or short sightedness or something to see the amount of “That is exploitation and this needs to be the test of what constitutes an employee! For justice! (Except in the case of my job/industry, where it would be awful and destroy how I want to work)”

Err, is the "casual use of the gig economy" good? These are jobs, not hobbies, and people need to eat. This certainly isn't going to make getting bread on the table any easier except in the extremely short term—and that's assuming a collective, vindictive, corporate withdrawal from the state.

The People have voted and they desire low cost transportation options more so than protecting vulnerable transportation workers.

The state will not get its payroll tax.

The employees will not get their benefits.

Wait till the people get to vote on public sector pension plans...

The state gets its payroll tax, being an independent contractor doesn't prevent that.

The drivers will get their benefits, prop 22 added benefits to them without making them employees.

The big tax loss is all the removal of deductions that the state gets if they’re employees, which nobody talks about with AB5 on the govt side because they know it wouldn’t go over well.

>vindictive, corporate withdrawal from the state

Companies withdraw operations when they are unprofitable. That's how business works. Capital get allocated based in margins. The AB5 restrictions make profitability unlikely. That means uber/lyft jobs simply won't exist. Is that a better outcome?

Since when is uber profitable?

Uber has been profitable in the USA for years now.

https://fortune.com/2016/02/18/uber-profitable-us/

No it hasn't. Please stop saying this. If you read their actual financial filings instead of press releases, it is very clear that they are not profitable on a GAAP basis without accounting games in any region, especially this year. They hide their unprofitability with non-GAAP figures and loss allocation to departments where they don't really belong (ex. technology development).

If you knew anything about accounting you would understand that what you’re saying is preposterous. Hiding by allocating their losses to the technology department? If you have proof of this please bring it up because what you’re saying is blatantly illegal and the CEO, CFO etc will all be liable. Otherwise if you’re just speculating then say so.

As to GAAP you don’t understand what that term is because that’s more about having a standard way of representing numbers but GAAP numbers don’t show the true numbers because of many different accounting rules like accounting for employee stock, which does not hit cash flow.

I've read the filings many times. Ubers NA ridehailing business is vastly profitable.

Isn't this forum all about markets? I'm sure you can put where I'm going with this together.

Anyway it's beyond rich describing half these companies as "profitable" in the first place. They're burning the cash at both ends to not get kicked out of california. I have no clue how you could imagine they're the people with leverage with a straight face.

I'm not sure I understand your comment.

I sincerely doubt uber/lyft/instacart etc. will ever be profitable and have margins that make them viable businesses.

Lyft/Uber etc. have zero leverage; inorder for them to make their margin and retain profitability, they depend on low labor costs. If those costs go up they aren't in business (e.g.demand elasticity of price will kill them).

So they aren't pushing this as a 'I have leverage' play. It's an existential issue for them. They cannot exist with the labor prices demanded by the AB5.

If they cannot make their margin, they go out of business and then there is no more ride share business. Then the existing jobs go away. And this is the point of my comment. These jobs only exist with low wages. Raise the wages and the jobs go away because the business becomes unprofitable and exits.

> These are jobs, not hobbies, and people need to eat.

The point is that this often isn't someone's primary job. They take a job at Walmart or driving a school bus, it doesn't pay very well, so they get off work and pick up some rides to supplement their income before going home.

They don't need health insurance because they got it through their first job or their spouse, and imposing that cost on the second job only requires them to get paid less or have less flexibility etc. as the trade off the company has to make to justify paying the additional cost of mandatory benefits.

> The point is that this often isn't someone's primary job. They take a job at Walmart or driving a school bus, it doesn't pay very well, so they get off work and pick up some rides to supplement their income before going home.

> They don't need health insurance because they got it through their first job or their spouse, and imposing that cost on the second job only requires them to get paid less or have less flexibility etc. as the trade off the company has to make to justify paying the additional cost of mandatory benefits.

Interesting to follow your thinking and your strategies, thanks for open sourcing it. From a European perspective all this sounds absurd though. Having medicare for all and a social safety net is standard in all European countries and other Global North countries.

> Having medicare for all and a social safety net is standard in all European countries and other Global North countries.

No disagreements that having a robust social safety net is a necessity, but just want to nit-pick a little here and point out that not all European/Global North countries have "Medicare for all" or single payer systems. Germany has a public-private mix, Netherlands has a purely private universal healthcare system, Switzerland has a purely private universal healthcare system, Australia has a public-private mix (44% choose private), Singapore has universal catastrophic coverage but everything else is driven by savings accounts and private insurance among the upper-middle class, etc etc — Belgium, South Korea (technically "single payer" but only covers 60% of costs, private insurance fills in the gaps), Japan, etc.

Even "Medicare" in the US, is a public-private mix: roughly 37% of Medicare beneficiaries are on a private health insurance plan (Medicare Advantage), and we expect that number to reach 50% by 2025.

The Medicare “mix” is from supplemental insurance—insurance in addition to Medicare. It’s also contentious and arises due to the same issues that cause us not to adopt Medicare for All: the private insurance companies’ purchasing of politicians.

It's not. When you turn 65, you have the option to enroll either in "Original Medicare", which is what we usually think of when we talk about "single payer healthcare in America", or you can enroll in Medicare Advantage (aka Medicare "Part C"), where the premiums that would go to the CMS instead go to private insurers like Humana, United, Oscar Health, and Clover. These plans replace Original Medicare, also cover Part D prescription drug benefits, and often include supplemental benefits that Original Medicare doesn't already cover. The supplemental insurance you're talking about is "Medigap", and that's for people that choose "Original Medicare", but wish to fill in the gaps with private insurance. Today, Original Medicare only covers 80% of costs, and does not cover Part D drug costs. It does NOT apply to Medicare Advantage beneficiaries, which is what I'm talking about in my original comment.

36% of Medicare beneficiaries are on private Medicare Advantage plans instead of the public "Original Medicare". This number has been growing so rapidly, that we expect by 2025, more seniors to be on a private plan than the public one. There's also great variance by State. In Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Alabama, Hawaii, and Connecticut — over 40% of beneficiaries are on Medicare Advantage[1].

For most beneficiaries, Medicare Advantage costs about 39% less than Original Medicare[2].

Medicare Advantage plans are, on average, of higher quality than the public "Original Medicare"[3].

In Urban areas, Medicare Advantage costs less per capita to administer than Medicare [4] — and that's not including the extra Medicare Part D insurance that you would have to buy if you're on the Original Medicare plan. From this same research, public "Original Medicare" is still cheaper in rural areas, but not by a whole lot.

Disclaimer: I write software for claims processing and payment systems. I love talking about this stuff, so happy to chat more about it.

[1] https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/a-dozen-facts-about...

[2] https://healthpayerintelligence.com/news/medicare-advantage-...

[3] https://healthpayerintelligence.com/news/medicare-advantage-...

[4] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...

"Medicare Advantage plans are, on average, of higher quality than the public "Original Medicare"[3]."

I thought the difference between Medicare advantage type plans is that it is an HMO type of deal where you can't pick your own specialized treatment centers and have to jump through a lot of hoops for complex medical issues and drugs as opposed to original PPO resembling Medicare (80% costs) + medigap part F? (remaining 20%) + part D for drugs.

Also thanks for the thorough breakdown, I had to go through Medicare hell getting this information to manage my parents care on an advantage plan that denied their cancer treatment at our preferred cancer center so I switched them back to original + medigap and never looked back cause everything is covered now at the world-class top ranking cancer center in our neighboring city.

> I thought the difference between Medicare advantage type plans is that it is an HMO type of deal where you can't pick your own specialized treatment centers and have to jump through a lot of hoops for complex medical issues and drugs as opposed to original PPO resembling Medicare (80% costs) + medigap part F? (remaining 20%) + part D for drugs.

Nope, Medicare Advantage plans are usually just PPO plans on a nationwide insurance marketplace that covers the Part A, Part B, and Part D benefits. By default, "Original Medicare" is just a government run version of that which only covers Parts A and B. That plan is also not "free", per se, as the beneficiaries still have to pay a monthly premium — it's just that the monthly premium covers Part B benefits, and Part A benefits are all covered by FICA taxes. I think(?) there are also some HMO MA plans. Seniors are now on average choosing Medicare Advantage instead of "Original Medicare" more often because they happen to like the varieties/options. If you don't care about those options, you're still entitled to Original Medicare just like you did with your parents.

The closest the tech community has probably gotten to Medicare Advantage, as a concept, is Chamath's recent SPAC taking Clover Health public. They're an up and coming MAdv payer, and appear to be growing pretty quickly. Oscar Health, another hip tech company, has a big Medicare Advantage business as well.

Yes. I appreciate the nuance you bring. I would reword where I wrote 'medicare' as: 'affordable healthcare', which in it's current form is (as you described) often a mix between private and public mechanisms/institutions.

But that makes all the difference.

Affordable healthcare is what people really want. The current system of government incentives/mandates for employer-provided insurance in the US does that poorly and we're rightly criticized for it.

But there are a dozen plausible alternatives that are all better, and "Medicare for All" isn't even a particularly well thought-out one, because the existing Medicare system is premised on the continued existence of private insurance to do things like establish market prices. It's also the moral equivalent of having healthcare policy done at the level of the EU rather than the individual member states, which tends to invite more corruption and waste since both of those are compounded by scale and deep pockets.

Which is the real problem with the US system as it is. The employer-provided system is largely created and regulated at the level of the whole US, and as a result there are some specific businesses who are making out like bandits under the status quo, and affordable healthcare is inherently inconsistent with those companies continuing to make three point six trillion dollars a year. So they lobby hard against anything that would actually fix it, no matter whose solution you choose.

Healthcare costs per capita are generally higher in the US than they are in Europe. I am curious whether or not you think we should focus on increasing spending to increase medicare coverage or if we should focus on decreasing healthcare costs for the country as a whole.

The right answer is probably "both" but you can't exactly vote for "both" political parties. Its a boring answer anyway :)

> I am curious whether or not you think we should focus on increasing spending to increase medicare coverage or if we should focus on decreasing healthcare costs for the country as a whole.

Yes, both.

> focus on decreasing healthcare costs for the country as a whole

Most importantly, I believe that through the patent system 1) Pharmaceutical Corporations, together with 2), politicians - who are corrupted through lobbying and who thus make advantageous laws (for Corps) - are getting away with murder. Yash Tandon gives a great example of this below:

“During the 1980s and 1990s I worked in many countries in eastern and southern Africa, and then for four years at the South Centre—2005–09. I can say from my experience that the industrialised countries of the North have been trying systematically to block all efforts by the countries of the South to industrialise. Their mega-corporations have tried—and, alas, succeeded—in privatising knowledge, and using it to promote corporate profits over the lives of people."

[...]

“It is the seeds and pharmaceutical companies of the West that have pirated the knowledge of seeds and medicinal products from the South. But whereas in the South this knowledge was shared as a public asset, the Western companies, having learnt from the South, proceeded to claim it as their private property. They are guilty—morally guilty—for the avoidable deaths of millions of people in the South who cannot afford their ‘patented’ medicines against, for example, AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other killer diseases. It is a sordid story. But it is not all doom and gloom. Those who control the system (the global corporations and the international organisations that the West controls) do not get their own way entirely. Wars do not always end in the victory of the militarily or ‘intellectually’ powerful.”

- Yash Tandon, Trade Is War: The West's War Against the World

So, what proposals have republicans for decreasing healthcare costs? Remind people to get sick less?

> Trump Administration Announces Historic Price Transparency Requirements to Increase Competition and Lower Healthcare Costs for All Americans

> President Trump Signs “Most Favored Nation Price” Executive Order on Drug Pricing

Here are two headlines I offer without comment that can be searched with your favorite search engine for more information.

> Here are two headlines I offer without comment that can be searched with your favorite search engine for more information.

Headlines are not arguments...

I didn't realize we were arguing.

A proposal can be an argument.

"Legal Definition of argument. 1: a reason or the reasoning given for or against a matter under discussion — compare evidence, proof. 2: the act or process of arguing, reasoning, or discussing especially: oral argument."

I get this [1] when googling.

Fair enough. More transparency is certainly a worthwhile goal, however, this rests on the basic assumption that a consumer always has the opportunity to make a rational choice between different alternative products or services (drugs, medical procedures, etc).

From what I've read, I doubt this is the problem in practice. Are you going to compare prices during a medical emergency? If your doctor tells you that you need an X-ray, will you stop him and check the nearby hospitals whether their X-rays are cheaper? How useful is price transparency if your essential medication is only made by a single company that can do arbitrary price hikes? What do you do if the "market rate" for some essential operation is still more than you can afford?

[1] https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2019/11/15/trump-administrati...

I'm gonna need a big fat "citation needed" on the idea that this isn't a job to people. It doesn't square with, again, the drivers actually in my life. It sounds exactly like uncritically re-spewing the bullshit of these employers.

Suppose that Uber is allowed to exist as a "second job" for the people who need it for that, or who otherwise need greater flexibility or other advantages that they can't get from a company when working as an employee.

If the people you know don't actually want or need those advantages, why are they doing that job instead of working at Walmart or a gas station or a hundred other jobs where you are an employee?

> These are jobs, not hobbies, and people need to eat.

How about neither? They're overwhelmingly part-time side work. This was pretty clear in the polls.

Hm, the screwiness of AB5 is a reason I'd vote against 22 [0]. Basically, it just compounds the existing problem of AB5 being totally capricious by making it hard to streamline and fix long-term now that there's a Proposition-locked special exemption.

IOW, the only thing worse than the legislature making arbitrary carveouts, is carveouts being claimed by anyone who can fund a prop campaign. At least with the former, there can be a compromise later that rationalizes the whole system; but post-prop 22, everyone will also have to work around Uber's carveout.

[0] Though I don't live there anymore FWIW.

People should be free to work for whom they please under the terms they want. As a Californian, I am proud of the people for getting this passed.

We already have laws that restrict how Californians work (eg minimum wage, OSHA, EEOC). Do you think we should rollback those requirements as well, in the name of freedom?

Employment and work are not always the same thing.

Yes. There are developed countries without a minimum wage. Having a floor only limits labor’s ability to find buyers.

> Having a floor only limits labor’s ability to find buyers.

It is not a priori true that a minimum wage is not utility maximizing, depending on the regime of the supply/demand curve we're on. This is supercharged when you consider the diminishing marginal returns to wealth.

Yeah, they can have no minimum wage because they have organized labor. But if you’re a 1099 for Uber and you attempt to organize a union, you’ll just get fired.

Without the ability to form a union, or wage protection, workers are going to be racing to the bottom.

Also in those developed countries without minimum wage, they have national healthcare. So a poor comparison in my opinion.

If they don’t derive benefit, they wouldn’t work for Uber. There are other jobs available. Also we’ve stopped expecting people to move to find a better life.

You can make your own Uber. There is nothing stopping people from doing that. Lyft and Uber are all powered by VC money. There is nothing stopping a communalist approach to software and profit distribution.

I cannot “make my own Uber”. I don’t have a bottomless pit of Saudi Oil money to throw into this unprofitable space.

The only people that have the money to compete have no desire to put workers first. They are just trying to establish a monopoly and drive existing, successful, more efficient and sustainable forms of transit out of business.

Yes you can. You don't want to. That's not the same thing.

Its been my experience over the decades that when people say, "I can't do "x"", they really mean, "Doing "x" is going to be really, really hard and I don't want to work hard."

First, I highly doubt any investors would be interested in yet another Uber/Lyft competitor with nothing to differentiate. They operate at billion dollar losses and just laid off a bunch of employees. It's just a race to who can drive prices lowest and establish a monopoly.

Second, you're right in part, I don't want to build another uber, but not because its hard work (I like hard work). It's just that ethically Uber is pushing our country in the wrong direction, furthering our dependence on private individual transit, while further burdening the worker and the environment.

The barrier to entry for a taxi service, in a sensible jurisdiction, is very low - put a sign on your car and start driving people around.

Uber and Lyft became so popular precisely because there are so many insensibly-regulated jurisdictions that made even this start-your-own-taxi-service illegal in order to create artificial scarcity. Highly-regulated medallion taxi services suck - both independent taxis as well as Uber are a threat to them because they're comprehensively better for customers. You literally have to legislate good service away for medallion taxis to work. And that's exactly what AB5 was.

And I’d argue the barrier to entry for taxi businesses should be higher. More cars on the road doesn’t help the environment, or speed up anyone’s commute. Allowing Uber to circumvent this is moving our state in the wrong direction. And uber’s experience while better in some ways, is only better at the cost of the environment, and workers rights.

If we don’t allow artificial scarcity/restrictions on number of cars on the road, maybe we should stop subsidizing fossil fuels too.

How on earth does that address climate change? Get rid of ride share and encourage personal car ownership? The fundamental problem is that gas is cheap and no one is forced to pay for the externalities - not those shitty medallion taxis, not rideshare, not personal car owners - no one. Another fundamental problem is that people need to get around and personal cars are more attractive than public transit.

Impose a revenue-neutral carbon tax and you’ll address the externalities by encouraging more carbon efficient travel. Medallion taxis are a solution to exactly nothing.

AB5 has nothing to do with climate change. It’s grubby cartel-building disguised as labour-championing policy.

When there were higher barriers to entry, with the medallion system, it was awful. How to balance the two?

Even accepting that, what's the relevance to Prop 22/AB5 -- let alone my comment?

Here you have a system of ruleset 1 being applied to one group, and ruleset 2 being applied to another. The CA legislature passed AB5, which changed who ruleset 2 to applied to in a very arbitrary way. Prop 22 said, "oh, add this subgroup to 1, permanently, regardless of what the legislature does with anything else". Per my orginal comment, that's not an improvement, even you believe as you do.

Many Californians would willingly work in 1900s factory conditions with machines eating body parts and people passing out from exhaustion because that's the only work they can get. This kind of completely unregulated employment market that you seem to want is exactly the thing that people fought against for decades for damn good reasons.

There is plenty of unfilled demand for the trades, so I’m skeptical that there is a large pool of labor willing to work those kinds of jobs.

Sure, but the post you are responding to isn't talking about things like electricians or plumbers - which require some amount of training and licensing/certification. They're talking about things like garment workers - jobs with little to no requirements.

Unskilled day labor in the Bay Area easily charges $25/day with breaks and, if your GC is ethical, workers comp. I also think it's incorrect to characterize factory workers as unskilled. Labor intensive manufacturing in America usually involves qualities of dexterity, since those are hard to automate, which inherently have a skill component.

Your statement is factually false. If there were that much pent up demand for the trades, wages would be going up. That is not the case.

The characterization of "completely unregulated" seems pretty silly, given that Prop 22 imposes a decent number of new regulations on the app-based employment market.

Then it would make sense to look at what makes California such a job wasteland and maybe try to fix it instead of limiting job opportunities even more.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire[1] was a real-life example.

People in that factory worked there of their own free will.

Children working in mines[2] also did so of their own free will.

It is the fondest dream of many a libertarian to take us back to those days, where people could work freely, without government interference.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...

[2] - https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/child-miners-lewis-hine/

The fact that you have to go 100 years in the past for your examples speaks volumes.

Today's companies pay employees hundreds of thousands while enticing them with onsite massages and ping pong tables.

People have choices and it’s thanks to a healthy, diverse job market, not due to government intervention.

You want to help workers? Go ahead and build companies that offer well paid, decent jobs. Don’t rob people of their best asset: choice.

Factory fires are not terribly uncommon in developing nations, much more recently than 100 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fir...

Again - a developing nation is pretty much how the USA was 100 years ago...

How many drivers is Uber paying hundreds of thousands of dollars plus massages and ping pong tables to?

We're talking about people not even getting health care coverage, and who may actually be losing money on the balance, due to the depreciation of their cars, insurance premiums, maintenance, and other costs which they, rather than their employer, have to bear, thanks to Prop 22.

The point I was making, however, was not about Uber drivers specifically, but about the position that as long as an arrangement is freely agreed to it's ok.

That attitude leads to all sorts of exploitation. Uber's arrangement with their drivers is just the tip of the iceberg. Amazon's exploitation of their warehouse workers is a related example, with much worse done in countries that have no labor or workplace safety laws.

How many drivers is Uber sending to work in mines or in unsafe garment factories?

But more to your point: are you sure you know better than the people entering arrangements if they are exploited or not? Are you sure you are taking into consideration all their particular situation and their current life trade offs to take their decision for them? Are you sure you are so smart and all knowing that you absolutely know what this way their life will be better in the long term?

Secondly, are you sure there are no drawbacks and downsides for the society when you take away people's options through the power of law? No unexpected results or side effects? No historical precedents where this attitude backfired?

Finally, are you sure you are fighting a good cause and not helping someone else’s plans? Have you asked who and why wrote AB5? Have you asked how many exceptions it came with and how many more where added afterwards? Have you wondered if this is even proper governance?

Honest question: do you feel it’s noble to tell that supposed person in your scenario that he or she he’s not permitted to except that job? Or that his employer is not permitted to offer it?

In other words there are two consenting adults, one offering a position and one willing and eager to except it. Enter you, who wishes to get in the middle of it.

For what it’s worth, I have great compassion for someone who is stuck in a situation where they feel compelled to take a difficult, or dangerous, or Low paid job. But at the same time I Cannot muster the hubris needed, nor do I think I have the moral authority, to insert myself into two other peoples business. I believe there must be other ways to remedy the situation, that don’t involve prohibiting free trade.

> People should be free to work for whom they please under the terms they want.

The genesis of the whole issue is that Uber and Lyft are claiming people can work "under any terms they want" as ICs, but they aren't actually able to do things that ICs can do, like set their own rates and pick their own customers.

My understanding is that as of recently Uber does allow drivers to opt out of automatic pricing and pick their own multiplier[1]

[1] https://www.uber.com/blog/california/set-your-fares/

Certainly appears to be a step in the right direction. If the result of government regulation is that Uber and Lyft wind up treating the drivers like actual ICs on "their own terms", that seems like a win for everyone.

Do you remember how we gave Uber/Lyft drivers unemployment in the CARES Act even though they never paid unemployment insurance?

Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. The oligarchy wins again.

I vote NO on a lot of propositions for this reason. Passing legal hacks does not make the overall situation better and in fact makes things harder to unwind later.

How does the 7/8th requirement for changing Prop 22 square with your thinking of it as a referendum?

Everybody agrees that AB5 is flawed and needs more work. But Prop 22 let money-losing, worker-exploiting companies literally write the law they wanted and made sure nobody could change it. A referendum on AB5 would have forced discussion and improvement. This closes that off.

The 7/8th requirement is fantastic because we can all stop arguing about it now, unlike Prop 13. I’m glad that this issue has been decided basically once and for all, and I hope someone comes up with a future proposition with the same 7/8 requirement for Prop 13 so we stop arguing over that as well.

I'm trying to figure out if you're being sarcastic. I'll assume not.

Prop 13 is the landmark example of a ballot initiative that set super-majority thresholds for legislature. In it's case, the ability to create new taxes-- a property which has been specifically (and unsuccessfully) litigated against: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-xpm-2011-dec-26-la-oe-new...

By default propositions are unchangeable by legislature. 7/8ths is a very high bar but most propositions give the legislature no ability to modify it. Further propositions could modify or remove it by a simple majority.

For better or worse, this is the system working as intended. The point of the proposition system is to let the people pass laws the legislature refuses to. It would be pointless if the legislature could overturn or gut propositions with a simple majority vote.

> most propositions give the legislature no ability to modify it.

All the other statute initiative propositions on the CA ballot this year included a lower threshold than Prop 22 (ranging from 51% to 75%).

However, none of them (including Prop 22) allow the legislature to overturn it even if they achieve the threshold - only to modify "in furtherance of the original purposes" of the proposition.

The 7/8th requirement only applies to the state legislature, not to the people. prop 22 can still be overturned by a simple majority in a new referendum.

AB5 passed with 80% of the vote, so requiring a lower threshold would be self-defeating.

If your problem with AB5 is that it has too many exemptions, why did you think that voting for more exemptions would express your concern?

I think most people see this as Californians rejecting this type of legislation, not asking for it to be more broadly applied.

If everyone is exempt, then AB5 is dead

I thought your goal was to have AB5 without the exemptions. How does killing AB5 by increasing the exemptions get you closer to that goal?

Nope, my goal is to get rid of it because I think it was passed without considering the consequences. All of the loopholes and exceptions are just bandaids

So your objection is that it's poorly written, not that it has too many exceptions?

Did you know that CA has been busy passing special exemptions to AB 5 for a ton of professions ever since it first passed?

Here is an example of professions as of September, but I know they passed additional exemptions in October as well.

https://www.wagehourblog.com/2020/09/articles/california-wag...

I'm aware-- and if Prop22 just grafted the ride-share businesses into those lists or overturned AB5 I'd have less to complain about it.

Instead, Prop22 acts as a generalized shield against any act of the legislature which limits or imposes specific restrictions on rideshare app businesses by requiring a 7/8th's vote and requiring that they be "consistent with the purpose" of the prop22 amended law.

According to this link [1] the legislature can't change what the voter's passed through an initiative unless they send it back to the voter's again. So as per earlier comments, I'd interpret that as the 7/8th's vote requirement actually reducing the burden on the legislature. As long as they can get 7/8ths of the votes, they don't need to bring it back to the voter's again.

"The California State Legislature may not amend or repeal an approved measure without submitting the change to voters. However, a ballot measure may include a clause waiving this protection either entirely or conditionally."

[1]https://ballotpedia.org/Laws_governing_the_initiative_proces...

Yes, it technically reduces the criteria for direct adjustments, but:

Proposition 22 imposes the same 7/8th requirement across a _massive_ scope, not just the specific text amended by the proposition itself but also for any statute that prohibits ridesharing apps from "performing a particular rideshare service or delivery service" or "otherwise imposes unequal regulatory burdens upon app-based drivers". Additionally, any law that would unionize app-based drivers is similarly subject to this requirement.

The threshold is so high that the legislature is effectively barred, and rather than just having the limitation apply to the measure itself is a generalized shield against legislation.

For example: No sex offenders on ridesharing apps? 7/8ths vote required. Separate tax for road wear created by inefficient routing by ridesharing apps? 7/8ths vote. (Prop13 and Prop26 eat your heart out!) Additional liability insurance requirements for rideshare drivers? 7/8ths vote. Law requiring ridesharing apps to automatically forward user's reports of assaults by drivers to the police? 7/8ths vote.

Essentially Prop22 acts as a fairly generalized shield against new laws that would interfere with the core activity of particular set of businesses.

In addition to the 7/8th requirement all amendments or other statutes that trigger Prop22's oversight are also required to be "consistent with the purpose" of Prop22 ("...to protect the individual right of every app-based ride share and delivery drivers to have the flexibility to set their own hours for where, when, and how they work...").

And if there is a really good cause to impinge the right of 'app-based' rideshare drivers to drive whatever hours whereever, or however they want? It seems like the answer even with unanimous support of the legislature is: Tough luck, time for another ballot initiative but this time it'll have the ride-share companies spending a hundreds of millions against it instead of for it and it'll still be a sweet deal at twice the price.

Have these companies shown themselves to be such good citizens, going out of their way to protect the public interest, that they could be trusted with this near diplomatic immunity level of protection? Of course not.

However... the drafting of Prop22 does allow laws restricting app-based rideshare so long as these laws impose criminal penalties. I wonder what would happen if the legislature became as shameless at exploiting legal loopholes as Uber has been? "Overwork app-based drivers? CEO right to jail! Under-pay app-based drivers? Right to jail, right away. Driving too fast: jail. Slow: jail. You make an appointment with the rider and a driver doesn't show up, believe it or not, jail, right away." It would be quite interesting as a television drama ... but I wouldn't expect such absurdity to be a good use of our public resources. :)

If I had to bet the courts won't allow Prop22 to have quite that expansive an effect, it's simply too offensive.

The end result is that the state will inevitability end up in a pile of time wasting litigation with Uber arguing that the people of California really intended to make them as exempt from the law as they've been acting as though they were for all these years.

So it's less about altering the proposition itself but rather a built in guard to prevent the legislature from circumventing the will of the people?

Allowing 7/8th vote in the legislature to modify actually makes it (marginally) easier to modify, since ballot propositions by default cannot be modified by the legislature at all, only by another ballot proposition.

Are you talking about prop 22 or AB5?

It is a terrible response to a terrible law.

The whole concept of being able to pass laws and then being unable to repeal them by the same margins as before as always seemed totally insane to me. Basically the definition of an unstable system and totally undemocratic.

As I understand it, this can be repealed in the same way and with the same margins as it was passed by getting majority support for another ballot proposition repealing it. The 7/8ths provision only applies to attempts by the legislature to mess with it.

Okay that makes much more sense. Thanks a lot for clarifying that for me.

To add to what the other commenter said, it also could add stability, rather than instability. Imagine a popular opinion that’s right around 50%, fluctuating by epsilon every year. If every time it went from 50+epsilon to 50-epsilon, the law changed, it would be too hard to get anything done, so a little bit of friction isn’t a terrible thing (a little bit). A system where it takes a 7/8 vote has this anti-fickleness property, where 7/8+epsilon can pass, but 7/8-epsilon can’t undo (though 7/8 is way too much friction).

[Opinionated wall of text...I don't really mean this as an attack on you, but I figured I'd add the disclaimer after noticing how long it got :) ]

Honestly if a law has such variable support that both it and its complement could have majority support at any time, then why should either version have any precedence? This _is_ an example of unstable system. Passing A then ~A or passing ~A then A could have extremely varied outcomes just given random statistical variation.

Besides you saying "it gets hard to get things done" doesn't really square with the fact that the vast majority of things in most electoral systems don't jump back and forth even though there isn't any hurdle like this to keep it from happening. So it must not happen for other other reasons like being seen as someone who's just quickly flipping an old law or just throwing up votes and then counter votes just isn't very popular.

In fact, in this case the 7/8ths does _not_ apply to another proposition as the GP explained to me. So in fact there is nothing holding back another proposition next time saying the exact opposite (and it only needs the same support as this time) except the historical realization that it passed with enormous support and is backed by powerful interests.

This system _is_ stable because I misunderstood it and because the requirements to repeal are the same as to pass. If it weren't that way it really would be unstable and frankly undemocratic.

Many of those pro-voters are drivers who voted for what they want. Let's not pretend to know better than the people working in the field.

...disappointed with the public...

The whole episode, but especially comments here on HN: I'm getting a strong "Omelas" vibe.

Bear in mind that, without the 7/8 clause, it would be impossible to legislatively overturn or modify prop 22. It would have required a public referendum to do so. Now, it merely requires a legislative ultra-majority - improbable but more realistic than another public vote.

Also, please bear in mind that CA legislature has already exempted wide and arbitrary swathes of industry from AB5, seemingly based on each industry's political clout. While I wish for better worker protections than prop 22 provides, AB5 was bad legislature and implemented in a less-than-above-board way.

disclosure: I do work for a gig company, opinions are my own, etc. personally I want all the workers unionized, everywhere.

wow, it went from almost impossible to just improbable, everything is great then.

It's just a strange way to conceptualize the process. The whole concept of a ballot proposition is to give voters the final say on policy questions - if legislators could easily overturn propositions, what would be the point?

I assumed the idea was to allow popular but divisive issues to be decided upon without attaching the name of specific legislators to the issue.

Both factors are relevant, but the final say thing is pretty characteristic of California. For bond measures, it's actually mandated by the state constitution - once the legislature passes a bill for a new bond program, they have to create a ballot proposition to ask voters for approval.

I'll be the first to admit that it's not great. There's a pretty wide area between "great" and "unacceptable", and I think that prop 22 is in there.

Regarding 7/8 specifically, it's true that it's "not great" and it's also true that it is "better than the default".

Consider the authors' perspectives for a moment, if only to understand it. One party has a supermajority in the CA legislature, and they are openly hostile to prop 22. They didn't necessarily want an immutable proposition, but they also didn't want it to be immediately nullified. 7/8 seems like a way to guarantee that changes can be made if and only if there's broad bipartisan support for those changes.

You don't have to agree with that perspective but I think it should be said that there's a non-nefarious way to see it.

You might as well call it impossible, as long as the CA legislature has more than 12.5% Republicans -- which is basically going to be forever. Requiring a referendum would be better.

A referendum to modify or repeal prop 22 is definitely possible! The 7/8 clause is an additional mechanism to alter the law, not the exclusive mechanism.

One would hope that a truly wise policy could attract bipartisan support. A faint hope these days, to be sure.

> Now, it merely requires a legislative ultra-majority - improbable but more realistic than another public vote.

Public initiatives are far more easy to pass than legislative ultra majorities, which is why they are often used to bypass requirements for mere supermajorities in the legislature in CA.

It's true that the 7/8 out doesn't make it harder to pass change since it can still be overturned by vote of the people, but it doesn't make it meaningfully easier, either, since such an ultramajority is much harder to marshal than a simple popular majority.

AB5 passed with approximately 3/4 of the vote from both houses of the state legislature, so even a 3/4 threshold would have placed Prop 22 at immediate risk of being overturned by the legislature.

I don't think it's easier, exactly - if you can get 7/8 you could presumably pass a referendum. But it can certainly be faster (and cheaper), if you do have agreement.

I voted for it to tank the legislative achievement in AB5. It’s not the total repeal I would have preferred, but damned if I’m going to let AB5 stay intact.

Now the legislature faces the choice of letting the gimped version of AB5 stand without hitting their prized targets or repeal what’s left.

The legislature already took a stance that was counter to the will of the people rather than do their job.

Now we have a worse law on the books that can't be removed. Maybe next time legislatures will take the time to listen to what people want and write a decent law initially.

The way they blanketed my parents neighborhood with advertisement that senior citizens would no longer be able to get there groceries and meds delivered to their door makes me think they played dirty and misled the masses on the real issue of worker employment benefits. I bet if you asked those individuals who voted what the issue was at hand they could not even tell you the implication of the passing prop 22 on drivers. How is this a just system?

> then pretending that this is something the legislature can update

Where did the pretending happen?

Good. The users and the drivers both wanted this.

You may dislike hearing this, but it takes a lot to inject yourself into that arrangement and massively increase the cost because you want it done differently.

I recognise that it appears to create "rules for thee but not for me" for these companies, but when they are so thoroughly satisfying both their customers and their workers, you should ask yourself if forcing them into the existing regulatory framework is the right equilibrium to shoot for.

Uber and Lyft are examples of the best way independent contracting works. The problem is the way its eating industries that were not built for it. Drivers get the benefits of being independent. Other contractors, for example estheticians, get almost none of them. They don't get to set their own hours and rates.

> Uber and Lyft are examples of the best way independent contracting works.

"Best way" as in: Uber and Lyft are engaged in price dumping subsidized by endless investor money while at the same time passing most costs onto "independent contractors" who are just people looking for a job in an ever contracting pool of available jobs?

According to the companies lobbying its what the drivers want. No one has established it actually is, and in fact some drivers have quit and spoken out about the apps constantly nagging with propaganda. Also as a rider who’s gotten drunk drivers, idiots going reverse on highway when the exit was missed, or pulling up in beater cars where the engine stalls out, I’ll just say there’s a reason taxis were more expensive and not all riders wanted this outcome. In fact, drivers will be paid below minimum wage since the laws are crafted to only apply minimum wages while they have a passenger in the car

Have you talked to drivers? There have been many independent surveys that show drivers disproportionately want to remain contractors.

People in the US are disproportionately uneducated on how the rest of the world operates. And any idea left of hunting people for sport [1] is dismissed with ultimate disdain.

The US is overwhelmingly "why should I pay for some lazy slacker with my hard earned money". And this is especially prevalent among the lower income people.

[1] A joke from the internets that goes something like "In the US everything left of literally hunting people for sport is called socialism"

Another "user" is the taxpayer - who ultimately ends up paying for the social security, healthcare, and other unmet needs (lack of paid sick leave, lack of paid maternity/paternity leave etc.) of these contractors. So in a way, by exempting Uber from these rules, but not others, society is handing out a subsidy for both the passengers and drivers.

What's the tax burden of the people unemployed by AB5 versus the tax burden of the people lacking benefits by working for the gig economy?

What's the tax burden of enforcing a minimum wage vs not having one?

Which is fine, because that's progressively taxed. The alternative is higher prices which flatly burden everyone equally.

Higher prices are naturally regressive and burden people with lower incomes more than higher. If the gov't levied a hypothetical "everyone pay $2k in taxes right now" tax who do you think would be the most impacted?

> Which is fine

No it's not fine [that taxpayers "ultimately end up paying for the social security, healthcare, and other unmet needs (lack of paid sick leave, lack of paid maternity/paternity leave etc.) of these contractors"].

The Commons have been slowly plundered. It's the working class who is suffering. Look around you, homeless people everywhere. This is digital Rentier Capitalism, which enriches the ruling classes, and parasitally sucks dry the working class.

"[R]entier incomes from ownership and exploitation of assets are continuing to grow, sucking up ever more of global income. And the state is accentuating these two mega-trends by throwing more subsidies to the rentiers while cutting benefits for the precariat, and while the silicon revolution is channelling more income to those who own the robots, creating a perfect storm of economic insecurity.

A way out of this approaching impasse would be to create a new income distribution system in which more of the rent is captured for society, and used to buttress the precariat’s living standards. In 1936, John Maynard Keynes predicted the "euthanasia of the rentier" before the end of the 20th century. It did not happen. Now is the time to do it. One way would be by building up democratic sovereign wealth funds through a levy on various forms of rent, which are neither morally nor economically justifiable."

Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/the-precariat-populis...

Why is this truest in the bluest areas? It's not nearly as true in (say) Salt Lake City.

Yes, let's pretend that everyone of every economic class will be equally burdened by higher Uber/Lyft prices.

Look how SF voted on Prop 22. Doesn't reflect normal voting patterns against a regressive tax https://electionmapsf.com/

It's mostly paid out by Uber actually - Uber would start paying for healthcare, payroll tax, unemployment insurance, social security etc. Just like, you know, your average Facebook job except without the 401K matching, stock benefits, bonuses & other perks.

Uber could either burn even more secondary-offering cash to pay for it, or charge to passengers what that ride costs. Only people who hire private drivers with Uber would pay those costs, not "everyone" in a flat way. People who ride Uber more would pay more.

(And maybe, once we realize the actual cost chauffeurs for rent & private transportation, one can start paying more attention to housing patterns, sprawl, public transportation etc.)

> It's mostly paid out by Uber actually - Uber would start paying for healthcare, payroll tax, unemployment insurance, social security etc. Just like, you know, your average Facebook job except without the 401K matching, stock benefits, bonuses & other perks.

Yes, and that stuff costs money. It doesn't come out of the profit margins, of which there are virtually none since the market is so competitive. It instead manifests as price increases.

> Uber could either burn even more secondary-offering cash to pay for it, or charge to passengers what that ride costs. Only people who hire private drivers with Uber would pay those costs, not "everyone" in a flat way. People who ride Uber more would pay more.

Yes, and people who ride UberX aren't billionaires. They're white collar workers, families, even other Uber drivers. And it isn't just Uber rides, it's also UberEats. Food delivery isn't just used by the uber-rich. If you're in the middle tax bracket in America and don't own a car, odds are that you've used ridesharing at least once. If you're in that same cohort, odds are you've ordered food or groceries on one of these platforms, especially during the pandemic.

Yet people call for socialized healthcare. How is the taxpayer affected anymore in this case comparatively? Too much double standards.

As is the case with many of these issues, the underlying cause is never examined, but only attempt to patch the symptom.

I find this use of the term subsidy entirely unconvincing. That's simply not what the word means in ordinary usage and so using it this way feels nakedly obfuscatory.

Technology and globalization has displaced a lot of low-middle income jobs. Regardless of whether Uber has to provide "fair" wages and benefits, the taxpayer has to foot the bill of these underemployed or unemployed people. Right now, the money is flowing from the investors' pockets to Uber drivers, which is a good thing.

I voted for this arrangement specifically because I think the state _should_ be paying, ideally fully, for maternity, paternity, healthcare, and social security.

Having a functional social safety net basically moots the issue of classifying employees.

> I voted for this arrangement specifically because I think the state _should_ be paying, ideally fully, for maternity, paternity, healthcare, and social security.

I don't know why you would want to change the law now to a state that would be better in this area if you had a law you would like, but which doesn't exist and for which there is very little public or institutional support.

It would seem to make more sense to change this law as part of implementing that other law, if and when support for that could be built.

Otherwise, its kind of like abolishing a hypothetical law mandating certain minimum decency standards for owners treating slaves on the basis that slavery shouldn't exist in the first place without actually abolishing slavery.

Treating slaves decently law doesn't hinder you in post slave world.

Employment classifications are a hindrance whether the state is footing the safety net bill or not.

> I don't know why you would want to change the law now

The law change was when app drivers were ruled to have to be employees. That is the status quo that was change.

Prop 22 merely reverts the situation back to the previous status quo, that the drivers preferred. (the majority of drivers supported prop 22)

If you buy someone something because you want them to have that thing, that's in no way a subsidy of a different entity you tried and failed to force to buy it.

I’m not at all convinced this is what drivers want, and I haven’t seen any trustworthy sources indicating that it’s true. Furthermore, as a passenger, I’d rather pay a higher cost and know that the driver who I’m entrusting with my life hasn’t been working 24 hours straight just to feed their children—I’d rather not get friendly with a tree just to save five bucks.

I think you hit on something interesting. No one is enforcing quality or safety really, not any of them, including taxis.

I don't buy that drivers would prefer to not have benefits, vacation time, over time pay, or any of the other things that come with being employees.

Yep, some drivers and labor groups wanted to unionize drivers. That was the end goal.

Why do you find hard to believe that there are people valuing their freedom and independence more than those benefits? Not everybody likes being an employee and I think that is great. Choice is a great thing to have.

> there are people valuing their freedom and independence more than those benefits? Not everybody likes being an employee and I think that is great

Free to be forced to work off medical debt because they didn't have health insurance, yeah?

In which case the state should cover their health benefits, make a vote for that, not for a private employer.

Sure. In the absence of governmental provided health insurance, this vote will mean that Uber/Lyft drivers won't get benefits.

But we do have government provided health insurance for qualified individuals.

In addition, Prop 22 also gave drivers health benefits from the employer

Yes! Absolutely! Free to make our own mistakes and learn from them instead of living protected by the Big Brother and never learn anything.

Free to make our own choices and support the consequences like adults, not children.

This FREEDOM is what America was built on and what keeps it enduring.

> This FREEDOM is what America was built on and what keeps it enduring.

Does the existence of minimum wage laws abrogate your "FREEDOM"?

Yes. My very first job, who gave me my start in life and taught me to Work when I knew only to consume, would not exist today.

Yeah, there are plenty of companies willing to hire people as employees for minimum wage. Can't see what's so bad about having another option for those who don't like traditional employment.

Ah, the myth of American freedom: with no health insurance, no maternity leave to speak of, no safety nets, no guarantees in the form of liveable minimum wages...

Fix the underlying problem then instead of going after private companies.

How do you imagine fixing, for example, minimum wage without "going after private companies"?

They will be providing more than minimum wage as per prop22. The real issue is that the state should provide health insurance.

There are significantly more issues than health insurance. Let me quote myself:

> with no health insurance, no maternity leave to speak of, no safety nets, no guarantees in the form of liveable minimum wages...

Many of those are "going after private companies".

That "myth" is what America was built on and what made it great. Yes, it's called FREEDOM, comes with no guarantees and includes your freedom to disagree with it.

If you desire safety above freedom, you deserve neither - (loosely) said somebody much smarter than me.

I've lived without that freedom and it was horrifying. I would never go back. I understand not everybody prefers it so that's why I am happy you have the choice to be an employee, but please do not deny me the choice to not be.

> That "myth" is what America was built on and what made it great.

Ah yes. How can one forget about the great freedom of slavery, exploitation of the Chinese, back breaking labor of miners etc. etc.

> If you desire safety above freedom, you deserve neither - (loosely) said somebody much smarter than me.

That quote was in no shape, way or form about healthcare or maternity leave

> I've lived without that freedom and it was horrifying.

You've lived... without which freedom exactly?

Are you really comparing America of 1800s to the Western European states of today?!

I lived without ANY freedoms. Taken away by the (communist) government in exchange for the promise of safety, wages and lots and lots of benefits. Of course, we got neither.

> Are you really comparing America of 1800s to the Western European states of today?!

I am really replying to the statement that you made: "That "myth" is what America was built on and what made it great. "

> I lived without ANY freedoms. Taken away by the (communist) government

Ah yes, because there are exactly two possible modes of living in this world: communism and corporate cronyism called FREEDOM in the US.

Meanwhile there are charity orgnizations that used to go to the poorest regions in Africa to provide free healthcare. And then they stopped doing that and started doing that in the US. Because FREEDOM.

And still people actually living in Africa don’t know how to escape faster to Europe or, yes, even USA. Because, you know, freedom. Maybe you should tell them how awful it really is and how much better they had it before.

Many places in the world being worse than the US doesn't mean that the US is the FREEDOM heaven.

Riddle me this: why would the wealthiest nation in the world needs charity orgs to provide healthcare for its citizens? Something that no other developed nation in the world does. How is that FREEDOM?

Apparently some drivers did not want this.

“Drivers and labor groups opposed Prop 22, saying it would allow companies to sidestep their obligations to provide benefits and standard minimum wages to their workers even as they make billions.” From https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/04/california-e...

"Drivers and labor groups" = Drivers who were hoping to unionize, so not very surprising. I think the whole goal of 22 was to expand the ranks of unions. Very glad it failed.

> I think the whole goal of 22 was to expand the ranks of unions. Very glad it failed.

You seem ill-informed on the issue. Prop 22 succeeded.

The prop requires 7/8 to repeal it though, which is ridiculous.

We should be able to vote on props in chunks, not as an entire atomic unit. We should be able to say yes to the prop but no to 7/8.

It not only creates “rules for me but not for thee”, but it sure as hell looks like big tech companies can just buy laws in CA when they don’t like what the legislature does.

Yes, that is what happens when direct democracy is allowed, anyone who can influence public opinion (rightly or wrongly) can make whatever laws they want, and it's a big reason that many people are opposed to ballot initiatives as a matter of principle.

No matter how you feel about AB5, allowing an industry to write laws and then coerce its workers into acting as campaign volunteers whether they agree with the law or not is a horrible precedent. This is not how our laws should be made, and we will come to regret this.

This did not set that precedent. Anyone has been free to write California ballot propositions for quite some time. It's hard to see a way to prevent that eventuality given the Citizens United ruling and the conservative bent of the federal supreme court.

They are also responsible for the law being written in the first place. It's not unusual for industries to lobby for legislation

they weren't coerced into anything. independent research and internal research at lyft showed drivers preferred being labeled as contractors due to the flexibility that offered. the drivers got what they wanted here.

What evidence do you have of this "coercion"? To me it just seems like there's a much simpler Occam's razor explanation. These companies business models rely on part time workers rather than full time workers (mainly due to very spiky demand). The workers prefer doing this job to their other options (otherwise the millions of them in CA wouldn't be doing it to begin with). Therefore it's in both the company and majority of drivers' best interests not to let AB5 stand.

It also seems a bit disingenuous to say this is allowing an industry to write its own laws. It's just an ad-hominem - who cares who wrote the law? It's the content of the law that is important, and the process that it goes through to pass. In this case if it is voted on and approved by the public, that seems like a perfectly legitimate example of direct democracy.

(Whether you think direct democracy is a good idea for nuanced policy decisions, or whether what amounts to a constitutional amendment that can't be changed by the legislature is a good process for regulating a fast-changing new industry, are separate questions. Those are very valid concerns IMO. But that has nothing to do with the arguments you brought up).

Edit: and thinking about a precedent that this sets, I see that differently as well. AB5 was pretty clearly a bad law, and the legislators behind it completely shut off all negotiations with rideshare companies and were intent on playing hardball instead of coming up with a compromise. It was clearly all about retaliating against these companies that these legislators didn't like, with no thought given to how it would actually work or what would be best for constituents (as evidenced by just how many other industries, from journalists to musicians, were caught in the crossfire and had to be exempted one by one).

Given that, I think this sets a precedent to legislators that they actually need to do their jobs. They need to do the hard work of designing practical laws that will actually work for all of their constituents. Their job is not just to make bold symbolic gestures to fire up the most extreme members of their base, and if they do and they insist on doubling down on bad policies that work against a large number of their constituents best interests, it can backfire like it did with prop 22.

Here's your evidence:

> Earlier this month, before California users of the app could call for a ride, they had to “confirm” they’d seen a message that described how wait times and prices would rise if Prop 22 wasn’t passed

> Last week, Uber users complained on social media about in-app notifications stating that “Prop 22 will save lives,” in an apparent violation of Apple’s app developer agreement

> “Almost every time we log on, we are fed more one-sided information to pressure us into supporting Prop 22,” Ben Valdez, a driver for Uber and one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement. That includes in-app videos of drivers speaking about why “Prop 22 would make a difference,” reinforcing Uber’s stance that the measure should pass.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/22/21529082/uber-drivers-la...

Coerce: persuade (an unwilling person) to do something by using force or threats.

Maybe we could disagree on whether this was a misinformation campaign, but it's still certainly not coercion. Still doesn't even seem like misinformation to me, the reality was that every driver who did not want to work full-time on the company's schedule would lose the ability to work if AB5 stands. (And if the companies shut down operations altogether in CA or demand took a big hit due to higher prices, then some or all of the rest of the drivers would lose their jobs too). I don't see how advertising that to drivers is dishonest.

Drivers were forced to watch political ads before they could start working. They were forced to read pro-prop-22 messages before they could start working. Some of these messages warned (some might say threatened) that the drivers would lose their jobs if Prop 22 passed.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_it_looks_like_a_duck,_swim...

Forced to watch an ad != forced to vote a certain way.

And again, a threat implies it is done maliciously. You think it would be better if the companies just stayed quiet, and then just out of blue one day said "sorry we're shutting down operations, you're all out of jobs"?

The original commenter said they were coerced into working as campaign volunteers, not coerced to vote.

Forcing drivers to watch the ad was a means of persuading them to support Prop 22. Hence, they were coerced to support Prop 22.

Persuasion via force is exactly in line with the definition that you gave.

They get coerced to watch ads, not coerced to vote a certain way or have a certain opinion. The reason they started supporting prop 22 after watching the ad is that prop 22 gave them minimum wage and healthcare without being employees, which is exactly what most drivers wants.

I voted against Prop 22 but you have to respect that it got 58% of the vote according to currently posted results. That is a pretty good majority. The result (a) undermines the argument that workers were widely coerced and (b) demonstrates there's a widespread reaction to AB5.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the California Assembly brought this situation on the citizens by writing a bad law.

I mean it seems equally as bad as targeting laws specifically against companies as a result of lobby efforts.

The CA law was created directly to change Uber, Lyft, etc and was backed by lobbying groups with lots of funding. So this exemption being funded by Uber is just as bad.

I’d rather laws be created based on actual first principles with goals to help the people. I think this ping pong game of lobby/counter lobby is not good for society.

I don’t think that having your paid contractors freely agree to do a job you instruct them to do counts as coercion.

They were free to not participate in any of that, just as anyone else.

If you take on a job from a customer and it has certain terms to be paid, and you agree to those terms, that isn’t coercion: it’s work.

It’s possible that you view the very nature of the societal work-for-money as coercive, which has its own argument, as people need food and shelter to survive. If that’s the argument, make that one. In that’s not the argument for this being “coercive”, however, then I can’t really see it, as they could have simply not done the thing you claimed they were being coerced into doing.

They’re independent, remember: they can just not sign in to the app if it demands they do things with which they are uncomfortable.

Prop 22 gives gig drivers a minimum wage and forces uber to pay for their healthcare if they drive enough hours. That is the reason it passed, if it didn't add protections to gig workers people wouldn't have voted yes to it.

Then why did people need so much money to make it pass if it is a good law most people like? Because there is so much misinformation going around about prop 22! Even in this thread most people still think that prop 22 means drivers wont have healthcare or minimum wage, meaning the Californian union lobbying got to most of you. They don't need money to spread misinformation, they just go to their journalist friends and gets biased articles written for free. How many articles were written which mentioned all the benefits prop 22 gave drivers? Not many, most just said it was so Uber could continue to oppress workers.

This ... is insane. I thought everyone agreed AB5 was written to basically target these companies.

Now it’s just disruptively regulating the labor market in random ways while also having a list of exceptions so long no one can keep track of it?

Why not just repeal this law?

That would require the legislature to admit they fucked up.

Repealing laws is much harder than passing new ones (both politically and procedurally). Depending on the law and location, you often need more votes to repeal than to pass.

What? Bills are patches. A patch and its inverse are both patches.

Specifically for California, some ballot measures are harder to change/repeal than to pass in the first place[1].

I don't think Congress can write bills that are harder to repeal, but I know some states can. There are also states that abuse their own constitutions to accomplish the same thing, for example if a supermajority is required to amend the constitution.

1. https://calmatters.org/politics/post-it/2020/10/california-a...

I agree with that, but still:

- Bill can undo bill

- Ballot measure can undo ballot measure

- Constitutional amendment can undo Constitutional amendment

so we still have proper inverses.

I think you can have a favorable opinion about the intent of AB5 but also realize that it was a sloppy law that had caused lot of collateral damage when it was passed. Its sponsor even had a dispute on Twitter with a journalist affected where she said, basically, hey, we had to get it done and we didn't have time to get the details right.

I suspect this is not the end of this fight but hopefully if it comes up again, the legislature will be more thoughtful about crafting a bill.

Prop 22 is written such that it can only be modified by 7/8 vote of the legislature in the future. Its funders made sure to protect their "investment" from the normal political process of push/pull/debate/change.

In the words of one political science professor:

> “I’ve looked at a lot of ballot measures over the years,” said Moylan, adding that a two-thirds majority is common.

> But a seven-eighths “super, super, super-duper majority,” she said, “is new as far as I’m aware.”

https://calmatters.org/politics/post-it/2020/10/california-a...

Your article states Prop 22 gives the legislature more power than normal.

> By default, a law enacted by ballot measure can only be changed by another law enacted by ballot measure. The exception to that rule: If crafters of the initiative explicitly say otherwise. No surprise, many ballot measures do not say otherwise. Compared to that default, Prop. 22’s high bar for amendments actually gives the Legislature more influence than the norm.

Yeah the 7/8s is a good thing - allows fix-ups when there's near unanimous agreement a change should be made.

Obviously had to be more than simple majority since its purpose is to directly override AB5 and the state legislature.

Most Propositions in CA can't be modified by the legislature at all.

So, while 7/8th is a very high threshold, it still means that it is theoretically possible for the legislature to draft new labor laws that override Prop 22.

Uber and Lyft are betting that 7/8 threshold will never be hit organically, but they can buy a 7/8 share of the legislature ensuring that this measure can only develop in one direction.

Prop 22 may or may not be good, but its passage means that AB5 was bad.

The state Assembly screwed up. When you pass a law that affects so many ordinary people, you better be sure that's what they want. Instead of a practical solution, AB5 came across as just meddling.

> When you pass a law that affects so many ordinary people, you better be sure that's what they want

The reason we have a representative democracy is because sometimes legislators can make decisions that might be different from the typical voter who has not spent extensive time thinking about the issue.

And the counter-argument would be that the reason for possibilities of direct democracy is for situations like this where unions have achieved regulatory capture, such that a small number of people wield disproportionate influence and drive the legislature against what the people want

I have a hard time believing that claim when Uber and Lyft were massively abusing their own platforms and public reach to run bullshit campaigns on behalf of Prop 22. California's proposition system also doesn't have a great track record of enacting legislation that's actually a good thing in hindsight.

I think it's hard to seriously claim that there is regulatory capture of the legislature by unions in America, but okay.

> such that a small number of people wield disproportionate influence and drive the legislature against what the people want

Much better to have Uber wield its disproportionate influence to display push notifications telling me to vote for Prop 22 every day leading up to the election.

Are you sure the Assembly knows best?

Drivers can't be on-the-clock for two employers at the same time. So drivers who use both Uber and Lyft would have to choose. That means the customers outside of major urban centers would be less likely to find a driver nearby, because they may be looking in Uber and the driver is on-the-clock with Lyft. It seems like the effect would end up being monopolistic because the network effects would be even stronger than they are now.

That would be compounded by the lack of drivers. Market stickiness of the employment relationship would drive the equilibrium of drivers down, wait times up, prices up, and riders down.

We also have special interest groups that do their research and endorse or oppose these propositions.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving endorsed Prop 22. If the state Assembly didn't see that one coming, they really screwed up.

Good point. I’d forgotten about how rideshare had removed a lot of drunks from the roads.

Those same reps changed their minds and carved out tons of “whoops that’s not what we meant” exemptions, which is presumably what that comment is referring to with “you better be sure that’s what they want.”

> you better be sure that's what they want.

This logic makes no sense at all. For example, everyone wants a bunch of free money - should the Assembly pass a ton of bills that write blank checks with no budget changes to back them up? Everyone loves artificially low property taxes for existing residents, and that's been an unmitigated disaster for the state. The Assembly's job is to pass bills that positively benefit California as a state and as a society long-term. Sometimes that means certain groups will not be happy with the bills. It is extremely dubious to claim that Prop 22 is definitely a good thing for California and a strong society.

>The Assembly's job is to pass bills that positively benefit California as a state and as a society long-term.

While also ensuring that what they're passing is what members of their state want. If they're not sure, you should not pass that thing. If the state needs the benefits of that thing (and that need is backed by research), then they should go about finding another way to acquire the benefits that has public approval. That's the entire point of a democracy

I think you missed most of my point. Which "members" are you talking about? States have multiple interest groups on every issue.

Reducto ad absurdum is unconvincing in this context.

It's simple. A lot of people like app-based driving, both customers and drivers. Some people don't, like professional full-time drivers who are trying to use it for their primary income. The Assembly failed to communicate why AB5 was a good balance between those needs, and as far as I can tell, it was not a good balance.

As someone who regularly uses Uber & Lyft in California and made it a point to talk to every single one my my drivers this past year about it, I happily (and confidently) voted for prop 22 and am happy to see it pass.

Thank you!

Unless you are an Uber driver (and even then, there is debate among drivers), AB5 would only cause you to face higher prices and reduced availability.

Voting for this would be an altruistic act that would come out of people's wallets. No surprise that this passed easily.

Unless you are a slave, abolishing slavery would only cause you to face higher prices ...

No one is forcing them to do this work. They opt-in to being a driver. Slavery is coerced labor, how can you even make the comparison?

Because our society depends on economic precarity to compel an underclass of people to work in whatever shitty jobs are offered in order to meet their basic needs.

I don't think that's true. Creating more jobs for people to opt-in to only helps them. When people no longer work these jobs, then companies come up with other solutions to get the job done. This is what happened in Japan and why automation is so big there.

> Creating more jobs for people to opt-in to only helps them.

Except if the only jobs available are awful and don't actually pay enough to have a decent standard of living. You seem to be assuming that more available jobs of any kind = better for workers over time, but a quick review of the US labor market over the last 30 years shows this isn't really the case at all. I'm also not sure why you're bringing Japan into this discussion - its economic, demographic, and societal conditions are so different from the US that it doesn't make much sense to use it as a comparison.

If these jobs didn't exist, wouldn't they be even worse off? The default state of humanity (or any other species) is not one of abundance.

> Slavery is coerced labor, how can you even make the comparison?

There are different levels of coercion. After all, even a literal slave doesn't have to work -- they can just allow themselves to be beaten to death. But given the choice between being beaten to death and working, most people choose working.

But the fact is that even people who aren't slaves still have to have a place to live and something to eat. In the 1800's, lots of white people in the North weren't legal slaves; but they were "wage slaves" in factories -- they worked 11 hours a day, 7 days a week, for just enough to have a roof over their head and food in their stomachs; and if they got sick or injured they were just out of luck.

The idea that all of those people were "opting in" to that kind of life is preposterous. They were being coerced to work by their physical needs; and the Market, recognizing this, offered them the smallest amount better than "homeless and starving" that they could.

Obviously things are better now than they were in the 1800s, but only because we have laws against "opting in" to bad jobs. As soon as those laws are taken away, the Market will ensure things go back to the way they were.

Uber and Lyft have done many things differently than traditional taxi companies; but one of the things they've done is make an end-run round the labor laws that stop the Market from coercing people into dead-end jobs.

The only other way to prevent that kind of coersion is Universal Basic Income. If employees can walk away from a job that's dangerous and pays poorly, then the Market will make sure employers offer more reasonable conditions.

I follow your logic and see your point...but it still seems like a stretch to label this as coercion. Where do you draw the line?

You can always try to argue that the lowest income earners deserve more. Who is to judge their life is too deep in "survival mode?" Uber has literally been a way out for many of them (earn that extra income on their own schedule).

PS: I also think UBI is a fantastic idea and a great way to avoid all these expensive discussions and campaigns about what to do. UBI would enable the elimination of so much costly regulation while solving this underlying discussion of people in "survival mode."

> I follow your logic and see your point...but it still seems like a stretch to label this as coercion. Where do you draw the line?

Do you mean for Uber and Lyft, or for 19th-century factory workers?

I absolutely think the 19th century factory workers had it better than the 19th century plantation slaves. Exactly where we draw the line for "coercion" matters less to me than the recognition that such a lifestyle still wasn't "voluntary": they were forced into doing something nobody should be forced to do.

I don't really know whether Uber or Lyft reach the level of coercion at the moment; but unless there's something to prevent it, the same thing will happen eventually.

> You can always try to argue that the lowest income earners deserve more. Who is to judge their life is too deep in "survival mode?"

I like John Rawl's "Veil of Ignorance": https://fs.blog/2017/10/veil-ignorance/

> I absolutely think the 19th century factory workers had it better than the 19th century plantation slaves.

The step below "19th century factory work" is subsistence farming. Slavery is still categorically different.

Coercion is definitely a continuum. In some sense, my biology "coerces" me to continue breathing. To say that coercion is bad but then to fail to specify the degree of coercion that would be bad is equivocation. To a capitalist, the type of coercion that comes from needing to eat and therefore needing to either gather food or gather resources to trade for food is on the OK side of that line. To a hardcore progressive, it might not be. But all that labeling a practice like this coercion does is reveal where you stand on that matter of degrees. It doesn't create a qualitative distinction here, because none actually exists.

I fail to see how someone who can afford a car is a wage slave. Cars aren't exactly a cost-less enterprise. They're expensive. So clearly these people are making enough money to help fund that car payment.

These people aren't slaves to the system. They willingly are seeking their own self interests on their own time. They can quit tomorrow if they wanted to. The simple fact that they need money is irrelevant. They aren't some serf subservient to these Gig businesses. The simple fact that they have a car and a tank of gas alone goes to show they can literally go anywhere and get a better/stable job instead.

Wage slavery is when people essentially become serfs. Nobody in the US is even close to a serf. Even if they go homeless, there are plenty of homeless people that still get by every day and have the capability to move elsewhere for work. They aren't forced to work at mcdonalds until "master says so."

I think there is an important point that people miss too often about how systems can still be coercive even if there is an illusion of choice. E.g. prisoner's dilemma type situations.

But this is also the same sort of logic that leads to conclusions like "taxation is theft": same thing, you either pay your taxes or you get punished, so it's not a real choice.

(As an aside I do have hopes that UBI can be a big reduction in this power imbalance.)

Given the legality of unionizing, I certainly don't see wages going up in the near future. It sounds like a lot of these employees weren't educated about their (lack of) rights.

Many people I talked to were completely misinformed on what this measure entailed. All 5 people I talked to about this proposition thought a yes on 22 would guarantee minimum-wage and health-care for gig workers. Tiny sample size, and perhaps lots of other people were similarly corrected by other friends before voting, but I found that rather odd.

It does guarantee minimum wage.

Not in any meaningful way.

If you are a worker, AB5 would lower the probability of you being classifier as an employee with benefits instead of a contractor.

Uber can now legally hire people without paying them benefits, there are lots of employers looking to do the same.

This is a huge win for all, including drivers. If a driver decides they don't like how they're paid or the benefits they get, they have complete control to not do the job and work elsewhere.

Everyone have complete control to change job and improve their quality of life whenever they want without taking any risk.

prop 22 prevents drivers from organizing together to negotiate with these companies. Having the freedom to say no to a corporation individually is not at all the same as the ability to create a union and negotiate terms collectively.

These jobs didn't exist a decade ago. Drivers chose to work them in a fair economic transaction (I will trade my time for $X). They can choose to no longer work these jobs the same way that they didn't work them when they didn't exist. When they do this, and they eventually will, supply for these jobs will dry up and wages will naturally rise.

> Drivers chose to work them in a fair economic transaction (I will trade my time for $X).

Just because it is a voluntary transaction does not mean it is fair or should never be changed. Same reason why I think a $7.25/hr federal minimum wage is permissible, even though it might proscribe some voluntary transactions.

If that were true then there wouldn't be an issue with collective bargaining.

Uber and Lyft only pay for the time a passenger is in the car, what is called engaged time, not for time with the app open waiting for customers or for driving to pick them up.

Given how many drivers they have, studies in california estimate that up to a 1/3 of time drivers are not engaged, and thus not earning, just driving around clogging the streets or parked, and make as little as $5.64 an hour.

Maybe you don't care about paying people poverty wages so they can never do better, but even if you are a sociopath who lives only for yourself, whose tax dollars do you think subsidize folks who can't afford rent, food, health insurance etc?

https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/the-effects-of-proposition-...

> This is a huge win for all, including drivers. If a driver decides they don't like how they're paid or the benefits they get, they have complete control to not do the job and work elsewhere.

In theory, yes. In reality, no.

It's important to maintain entry-level jobs that don't require advanced English skills, credentials, E-verify, or that allow self-scheduling.

The US is the land of opportunity. Let's keep it that way, especially for people who want to work.

Really huge win for those without health insurance in the US. In any other country having a job with no benefits is not an issue, except here, where getting sick and going bankrupt are fine with everyone. Of course with such low unemployment, all the driver who have no desire to work in this job can just start as programmers and make huge salaries. Maybe they can take your job since you can just drive an Uber and be carefree.

This was a proper roast. I really needed a good laugh this morning.

So fix the underlying issue instead of going after private companies.

exactly

the underlying issue is the private companies

The underlying issue is society relying on private companies to pay for opaque benefits that make it difficult to figure out if one job pays better than another.

One big underlying issue is that here is no health insurance. Let's CA provide that instead of acting lazy.

Most drivers supported Prop 22. So I think I am going to listen to their opinion on the matter.

Classifying these drivers as employees is a bad idea. Why. Because many of them drive for more than one of these companies at the same time. And I don’t mean they work sometimes for one and sometimes for another, I mean they’ll have two or more apps open at the same time.

This is vastly different than say working 20 hours a week at Walmart and another 20 at Costco.

Think about this: if drivers were “employees” who then logically could only work for one (at a time) how would a competitor enter the marketplace if driving for the new guy prohibited you from also working for Uber? If the new player has insufficient ride volume it’s a huge barrier to entry.

The fact that drivers themselves seemed to reject this just shows what a bad idea this is.

I mean what’s next? Overtime? Making it hard to “fire” drivers?

And as for a notion of a minimum wage for drivers, if they for 3 different companies in an hour who pays that?

Don’t follow NYC’s example of steadily recreating the taxi medallions system (eg driver quotas and tax measures to drive the cost up; Uber is essentially twice the cost it was 5 years ago).

Well maybe they should find some alternate structure where the different rideshare companies will chip in for benefits like health care.

Otherwise it's just a huge externality being leveraged on the rest of us.

> Well maybe they should find some alternate structure where the different rideshare companies will chip in for benefits like health care.

You mean like prop 22?

Or maybe we should stop tying healthcare to employment.

Or just have the state pay health insurance and solve the issue at the root. But that's too much work for CA apparently.

I’m disappointed that Prop 22 passed.

I also think it will not end up mattering much because the unit economics of the rideshare companies are so bad.

If they had gone along with AB5, they would’ve had cover to say to their investors “we need to make some expensive changes but it’s not our fault.”

As it stands, they’re still going to be hemorrhaging money, but now the question will be “you literally wrote your own law and you STILL can’t turn a profit?”

Most of all, it sets a very bad precedent in terms of signaling to other rich companies that amending Calif law to suit your needs is relatively easy and affordable.

Must be the only law that has more exceptions than applications by now

Who even is covered under AB5 now?

Maybe people just really like ubers?

You mean cheap Ubers of course.

I also don't think direct democracy lost here. Most people don't want Uber prices to go up. Democracy always sucks for the minority / people who don't have voting rights.

Well I certainly like cheap ubers!

I'm a brit so luckily for me, a lot of the issues in california don't really apply here (drivers have healthcare because everyone here has healthcare etc). It's unfortunate that we have no direct democracy, but do have good safety nets (at least comparatively). Meanwhile Cali has no such nets but does allow majority rule in this way.

I actually also like the Uber model because its honest (between the participants at least) . I hardly ever used taxis before, not just because of the price but also because of the service. "Your car is 10 minutes away" actually meant "your car has to complete 3 other 20min journeys before coming to you". "about £10" meant "£26 after a weird journey and no we don't take credit cards or give change". I imagine the same applied for drivers: people would misbehave in your car because there was no penalty for doing so. Dispatchers favoured other drivers because you were new.

The whole thing was a race to the bottom for everyone. Uber with a rating system and an algorithm that minimises waits has fixed that issue. That's their "killer feature" to me.

But I can see how people have issues with their model.

Uber rides are either going to get really cheap, or they are going to go out of business. Waymo doesn't have the labor overhead and will eat their lunch.

It is almost cute that we are trying to pass or block protections for a workforce that won't exist in 5 years.

In the long run Uber goes out of business, since it can only be profitable if the drivers are actual slaves and earn nothing. Until of course people perfect AI taxis, then all Uber drivers can get unemployment, oh, wait.

Obligatory note that self driving cars don't actually exist at present.

Are ghosts driving the Waymo fleet in AZ?

They exist. They are just not scaled up yet. Scaling is not tricial though, as hardware and real world is involved.

That's extremely optimistic regarding the state of self-driving cars in 5 years.

I will take your bet. No way full self-driving is coming and no way Waymo will deliver a self-driving taxi in 5 years that will compete with a driver based taxi. I can see Waymo or the like picking gimmicky routes like Las Vegas airport to select hotels/stops or another easy route in an area without rain.

I don't mean the self-driving meaning that keeps getting reinvented every couple years to kick the can down the road. I mean the car is driving itself without a driver or remote driver in the majority of circumstances such as a rainstorm.

Waymo has a ride hailing service in Chandler:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2020/10/08/waymo-re...

Pretty sure they chose the area because of sunny skies and lack of rain, so if that’s what you consider a gimmicky route that’s fair.

They specifically choose states close to the West Coast because the climates do not have serious weather or rain. Nevada, California, Arizona etc. SF is a weird city compared to other places with hills and odd obstructions so a lot of them moved to Phoenix for testing. From an outsider, the regulatory environment in Arizona appears to be easier for companies that want to do this type of testing as opposed to highly regulated California.

You're moving the goal posts. The Chandler Waymo service is entirely driverless and not on a fixed route, with expanded service coming next year and additional cities opening up in 2022-2023. I encourage you to read up on Waymo's progress - it's quite a bit farther along than most people think.

Some people really like Lyft. I drive for both. Some riders just hate Uber.

I meant all of the exempted services, I wasn't trying to pick favourites :)

With the original exemptions on AB5 and AB2257, and now this, who is still covered by AB5?

I supported Prop 22 because the law being countered already had a list of exceptions a mile long, I suppose put there by the labor interests that wrote the bill. I didn't see why some of these contractors aren't equally exploited and subject to the whim of big evil corporations. What does it matter then, to carve out one more exception for Lyft/Uber drivers to join this list?

A commercial fisherman is less worthy of being protected than a Lyft or Uber driver? You've got to be kidding me.

---------------

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

Exempted fields:

Professional services that include:

(A) Marketing,

(B) Administrator of human resources

(D) Graphic design.

(E) Grant writer.

(F) (i) Fine artist.

(G) Services provided by an enrolled agent

(H) Payment processing agent through an independent sales organization.

(i) Still photographer, photojournalist, videographer, or photo editor

(ii) Digital content aggregator

(J) Freelance writer, translator, editor, copy editor, illustrator, or newspaper cartoonist

(K) Content contributor, advisor, producer, narrator, or cartographer

(L) Licensed esthetician, licensed electrologist, licensed manicurist, licensed barber, or licensed cosmetologist

(N) Appraiser

(O) Registered professional foresters

(1) A real estate licensee

(2) A home inspector

(3) A repossession agency

(A) Recording artists

(B) Songwriters, lyricists, composers, and proofers.

(D) Record producers and directors.

(E) Musical engineers and mixers engaged in the creation of sound recordings.

(F) Musicians engaged in the creation of sound recordings, subject to the below.

(G) Vocalists

(H) Photographers working on recording photo shoots, album covers, and other press and publicity purposes.

(I) Independent radio promoters.

(J) Any other individual engaged to render any creative, production, marketing, or independent music publicist services related primarily to the creation, marketing, promotion, or distribution of sound recordings or musical compositions.

(A) Film and television unit production crew

(B) Publicists who are not independent music publicists.

(a) A person or organization who is licensed by the Department of Insurance

(b) A physician and surgeon, dentist, podiatrist, psychologist, or veterinarian

(d) A securities broker-dealer or investment adviser

(e) A direct sales salesperson

(f) A manufactured housing salesperson

(g) A commercial fisher working on an American vessel.

(h) A newspaper distributor

(i) An... international exchange visitor

(j) A competition judge

Scale.

Your argument is intellectually dishonest.

It's like saying that FAAMG aren't important to the S&P500 because they are only 1% of companies in the index, totally ignoring capitalization.

Because most workers in these jobs switch employers regularly, that's why they are contractors. The drivers have about 3 choices to get gigs from. They have zero leverage, there is no market.

I don't live and california and if you guys want to kill the tiny amount of labor laws you havez do whatever. But for some reason people in my country still think the US is not totally bonkers and these changes influence other countries.

People died for these workers rights, worker abuse was a fact, repealing labor laws is just ignorance.

Uber, Lyft, Postmates, DoorDash, Instacart. And as a driver, the switching cost is roughly zero. The companies absolutely do have to to compete for workers, which is why they spend so much on attracting them.

It already had too many exceptions so you thought the best path forward was to add more exceptions?

Lovely, now how about software contractors? My livelihood on the line, but I hear no talk about it, even here.

I am in major disagreement that Employers should pay for health insurance. An employee works for an employer, employer pays them for their work. That should be the only contract. The health insurance market should be the same no matter who you work for. In fact living in Australia, the user experience I want is to pay a bit extra in tax and receive the same level of affordable healthcare.

I just find it so hard that many Americans don't see the logic in this. This is NOT a new idea. It's being done for over a 100 years in many modern nations. Employee healthcare is only an American thing AFAIK. It's a shitty deal for both employers and employees.

Very telling geographic distribution for Prop 22 in San Francisco, at least: https://electionmapsf.com/#

Not being from San Francisco what conclusion am I meant to draw from this?

In the city, rich tech workers (predominant population in Marina and Fidi areas) voted for it and pretty much every other population voted against.

"Rich tech workers" live everywhere in the city, and all the most expensive neighborhoods (Pac Heights, Presidio, Russian Hill, Nob Hill, Ashbury) actually all voted no.

My takeaway is that neighborhoods without access to public transit and where people still need to commute to work voted yes.

Maybe we're looking at a different map. I see Pac Heights and Presidio mostly voting yes, along with Marina, Sea Cliff, plus SOMA (very tech heavy too).

Those are neighborhoods with some of the highest concentration of affluent tech workers, even if there are other expensive neighborhoods.

Many other areas of the city without public transit voted no.

Californians seem determined to ensure that the mass of people in their state are underpaid, unhealthy and an inch from being homeless.

No, they're just indifferent.

Evidently not, they just voted after all...

Uber. Lyft, etc are already operating on shitty business models with bad margins and totally exposed to economic shifts. I can't imagine that type business model being sustainable with anything different that contract (gig) work.

I'm not defending the gig economy, but I'm sure that if these companies were forced to employ all their workers as FT employees, they would be inviable.

>I'm not defending the gig economy, but I'm sure that if these companies were forced to employ all their workers as FT employees, they would be inviable.

Then they should be inviable. Why would you allow a few dozen people to make billions off the backs of gig workers?

Those gig workers want to do it and the customers want to pay.

If the state wants to provide a social safety net, it should provide one.

It shouldn’t pass a law that fucks Lyft’s business model into unviability, say “if you don’t want to comply with California’s laws you can stop operating in California” and then go surprised pikachu face when Lyft stops operating in California, as almost happened a few months ago.

I will never drive in a taxi again, given that I have been deliberately screwed or defrauded every single time. I think you might be forgetting just how bad life was before Lyft. Lyft has saved me from the atrocious business model of taxis, which is based on screwing customers who have few or no choices.

Again, we should just have a social safety net, like every other first world country. Don’t pretend rejecting stupid band aid fixes that the supposed beneficiaries don’t want is an attack on drivers.

>Those gig workers want to do it and the customers want to pay.

Do a poll of Drivers and ask if they would rather "set their own hours and be their own boss" or have the standard benefits of a FTE.

>Lyft has saved me from the atrocious business model of taxis, which is based on screwing customers who have few or no choices.

This says something about the Taxi industry not the goodness of Uber and Lyft.

>Again, we should just have a social safety net, like every other first world country. Don’t pretend rejecting stupid band aid fixes that the supposed beneficiaries don’t want is an attack on drivers.

I don't think you understand your own argument. This is nothing but a slap in the face for drivers, a giveaway to Uber and Lyft Stockholders and a burden for Taxpayers.

Everyone keep in mind this is a short term win for the drivers. Ultimately when self driving taxis take off, all of these workers will be unemployed. So we’re back to the drawing board on what for them?

I'm honestly most disappointed with the courts. It would have been much better to have a second vote after seeing what AB5 would actually do!

Maybe the California voters should re-elect the hacks they have in their state congress.

Great! These services are already expensive.

Modern day slavery.

Regulatory Capture at it's finest.

I'm getting a vibe that this may be the end of California dominance.

That’s what $200 billion in fake news buys you these days.

I think you mean $200 million. But I'd be curious to hear what you think is fake news

I have always felt that more direct democracy such as propositions is a more advanced way to operate.

But this decision has made me complete reconsider it.

I almost want there to be some kind of test to see how informed people are that somehow weights their votes. It could just be a short multiple quiz with questions submitted by each side or made by a third party and approved by each side. Just to verify that people actually know what they are voting on and are not just making some default decision based on whichever ad they saw or whatever.

> But this decision has made me complete reconsider it.

Please don't. This was not an example of direct democracy. Direct democracy is more than simply casting your vote once in a while.

A good start could be to address this issue:

> The companies, along with Postmates Inc. and Instacart Inc., collectively contributed around $200 million to support Proposition 22

edit: Also, I find this approach to direct democracy quite interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_assembly

Direct democracy sounds great but I doubt large enough fractions of the voters can be informed well enough (in a reasonable amount of time, not in general) to be actually aware of the consequences of their decisions on most topics.

If you want to read about a textbook example of under-informed voters getting more than they bargained for, look no further than [0] (or well, the "Brexit"). A national-conservative party wanted to limit immigration to Switzerland and put that up for decision. The Swiss voted in support of it but the issue is ... immigration is part of a treaty with the EU that is protected against such "cherry-picking" by a so-called "guillotine clause" [1]. Cancelling or failing to renew any part of the treaty voids it as a whole[2]. The government eventually implemented a very toned down version to avoid running afoul of the treaty because among other things that would have affected the other agreements on air traffic, road traffic, agriculture and science and more (see "Implementation" in [0] again).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Swiss_immigration_initiat...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine_clause

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_U...

>> I almost want there to be some kind of test to see how informed people are that somehow weights their votes

Given the history of the US in voter suppression, you not seeing the irony, is just fascinating.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com