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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

For those who maybe clicked through to the comments before reading or didn't make it several paragraphs into the article, this is a direct result of Prop 22 which was passed on the backs of a nearly $200m campaign by Uber, Lyft, and other rideshare companies. This is one of the exact results predicted by opponents of Prop 22. Also there is basically no way for Prop 22 to be amended or repealed through the state legislature. These companies effectively bought a law and are already repeating the benefits at the expense of the workers of California. Expect other industries to follow this path in coming elections.

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Wait... how come before AB 5, companies didn't do this, why wait till AB 5 was passed then repealed by Prop 22 before doing this (are they clairvoyant)?

In other words, had AB 5 not passed, this would likely have happened anyway as a progression towards off-loading "non-core" competencies to third parties as has continued to happen across industries (an iconic example is janitorial services which used to be handled in-house but were off-loaded starting in earnest in the early 90s?)

Companies are unwilling to upend their business based on laws that are highly controversial and the likely subject of future changes. Prop 22 provides the stability that these companies need to drop their full time employees and commit to outsourcing this work to rideshare drivers.

How on earth can you say prop22 has provided any stability, when we are literally discussing an article bashing it, and with there being multiple ways of it being still repealed? Explain yourself.

Prop 22 is much more stable than AB5 because the requirements to change it are much more difficult to reach.

We are not talking about stability of AB5, but rather the situation before it. It was trivial for most other industries to get excemptions to AB5 (there are tens, if not close to 100 excemptions now). So what really changed with prop22 comapared to before AB5?

Prop22 requires a 7/8 majority in the house to overturn (practically impossible).

You should research this more. Having even a possibility for voting to amend a law is not the normal. Usually proposition can't be overturned at all.

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

Answered here[1]

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25641580

Let's suppose AB 5 provided cloudy outlook... before AB 5 that was not the case. There was no such law... did they somehow secretly know what was happening 5 years down the road and said, uhh, let's wait this out.

No, they could have done this before AB 5. They did not. This seems to say that this move would have happened if conditions allowed it and the situation was right for business.

What that means is sure AB 5 would have nixed this option. However, the trend before AB 5 was to off-load "non-core" competencies. Prop 22 re-instated the previous status, it did not introduce an altogether new status.

Prop 22 indicated the people preferred the original status to the new status introduced by AB 5, so we're back to where we started before AB 5.

The rideshare industry likely couldn't have supported this 5 years ago and it was clear that something like AB5 was going to happen for years. Prop 22 provides unprecedented clarity on how ridesharing will be legislated in California for the foreseeable future.

Let's suppose you're right, Uber and Lyft and DD all knew this and despite this knowledge thought, you know what, yeah it's uncertain but let's set CA as our HQ and concentrate our efforts there anyway...

Vons and Pavilions are not the same as Uber, Lyft, etc. I think they did it because they thought it was time to change their delivery logistics and were not waiting for concretization of the law around this.

Put another way, Vons' business model isn't centered around this law. It's incidental.

You are establishing weird timelines on these decisions. Uber, Lyft, etc set themselves up in California because they consider themselves tech companies. The state of California likely couldn't have cared less about the special class of workers they employed until the group reached a critical mass which obviously didn't happen before these companies were founded. I don't know specifically when they reached critical mass, but it was likely within the last 5 years. At that point it became clear that the state needed to do something. AB5 was one of those attempts.

Companies like Albertsons who could benefit from these businesses weren't willing to commit to embracing them until there was stability in the industry. For all the faults of Prop 22, it provides stability through its incredibly high requirements for repeal or amendments. Companies like Albertsons now have the stability they desired and will embrace these rideshare companies to save a few bucks by shifting a greater financial burden onto individual drivers.

Albertson's doesn't need it. They would use a third party AB 5 or not. It may cost more if AB 5 were in effect, but it's still less than having your logistics in-house.

Having someone else do your deliveries and such has been a thing for a long time. Companies have gone back and forth depending on who's doing the bean counting and what they think is crucial to business. Sometimes they would split it. Some in-house some hired out.

We are just going in circles now with the conversation and clearly I'm not going to change your mind.

Grocery delivery has grown by a massive amount since AB 5 was passed.

Untrue. 1) This has always been allowed, but AB5 made it illegal. Then a shitton of industries got granted exceptions to it, and ride-hailing + food-delivery did the same.

2) Prop22 can be be amended only by a seven-eighths vote of the Legislature or a new ballot measure — AND state labor laws can be superseded by federal laws and regulations for enterprises that affect interstate commerce.

Please stop spreading false information.

I answer point one here[1].

Point two is why I threw a "basically" in that sentence. Yes, you are technically correct that the state can change it with a 7/8ths majority. However requiring a supermajority that high is a nearly unprecedented requirement for the legislature and it is one that is going to be nearly impossible to achieve.

I honestly don't know what you consider "false information" here beyond me saying "basically no way" for something to happen when it is realistically unfeasible.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25641377

You realize many laws don't allow any legislative input at all right? By default, a law enacted by ballot measure can only be changed by another law enacted by ballot measure.

You can go learn something about it from here: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/initia...

The will of the people will not be superceded. Why would we allow legislature to overpower a ballot measure? We voted. The only thing people can be upset about is their lack of educating themselves on what they were voting for in the ballot measure. People cannot be coddled when it comes to their vote. Any undue influence would rot the inside and then why have a democracy?

It’s not practical for most voters to educate themselves on the typically dozen or so ballot measures. It’s too much homework, and you don’t get paid for it.

I do my due diligence, but it’s not easy to get a full understanding of how I want to vote. It’s a significant amount of work, and a lot of people will not spend the time.

>"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."[1]

It is relatively standard for propositions to include some ways for the legislature to amend the law. It isn't a full legal requirement, but it is common. The a 7/8 majority is nearly impossible to reach on anything but the most milquetoast bills. That requirement was seemingly included so they supporters of the bill could feign that it was flexible while not really conceding any possibility of it being changed. If Prop 22 is going to be amended or repealed, it basically has to be done through the popular vote.

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

From the same article:

>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.

>If Prop 22 is going to be amended or repealed, it basically has to be done through the popular vote.

And how exactly is this a bad thing?

Because the 7/8 majority is nothing but lip service to being flexible. It is designed to be used the exact way you are doing now in debates like this. A majority that high is not feasible to actually be implemented.

??? Are you just ignoring everything we previously discussed?

Having a way to directly amend the law via some majority is completely optional. There is no need to ever include that in the ballot proposition. Why are you choosing to completely ignore this clear fact?

I'm not ignoring anything. I am simply pointing out the 7/8 majority is so impractical that it is a worthless addition that only serves the appearance of making the law appear amendable but in practice it can only truly be amended by the popular vote.

Yes, and amending by popular vote is the norm. What exactly is the issue here again?

As I said several comments ago:

>It is relatively standard for propositions to include some ways for the legislature to amend the law. It isn't a full legal requirement, but it is common.

I'm really questioning if GPT3 would come up with better responses than @slg. They seemed to talk themselves into circles, and repeat themselves quite often, not taking into account new information. It's almost like they have a litany of responses that they fall back onto.

but why is that a problem?

>Prop 22 which was passed on the backs of a nearly $200m campaign

You mean, passed on the backs of nearly 10 million voters.

I always find it strange to tout the line of how much money was spent in an election, as if to say that the voters have no agency or culpability. Clinton spent nearly 2 times what Trump did and still lost. Money does not equal votes if the people don't support an issue.

Money buys votes at the margin. Everyone agrees on this including the people who supported Prop 22 otherwise they wouldn't have spent some $175m more than their opponents.

That doesn't mean the voters were brainwashed into supporting something they otherwise wouldn't have.

Why do you think these companies spent roughly $175m more than their opponents if they didn't think it would help them win?

Many were practically blackmailed.

Uber/Lyft/DoorDash etc. threatened to summarily shut down in the middle of a pandemic if Prop 22 didn't get passed.

Uber and Lyft actually did this in Austin, but since it wasn't in the middle of a pandemic people had other options and could make adjustments. And then Uber and Lyft went crying to the state government to override Austin because Austin started generating alternatives and we found out that Uber/Lyft don't really have an unassailable position but they have LOTS of VC cash to spend on lobbying and advertising.

Unfortunately, making the kind of adjustments that people in Austin did borders on impossible right now, so this kind of threat was quite effective.

> Clinton spent nearly 2 times what Trump did and still lost.

That election is a bad example since:

- Trump was already a TV and Twitter celebrity brand.

- Hillary Clinton was an unlikeable candidate who was ill, financially corrupt (received large Saudi contributions to her foundation) and avoided reporters for 2 months during the campaign (similar to Biden in 2020)

I've seen estimates that Trump added $2 billion in value to Twitter, so Trump also got some advantage out of that relationship.

What's interesting is that SV ad companies denied knowing that Trump was underspending until their end of quarter, then blamed their poor results on that saying, "Who knew?"

In fact, anybody who read a newspaper knew, so it was odd hearing that nonsense from people paid millions to know that.

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