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Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

It seems backward that the government, instead of fixing government policy and laws that disadvantage independent workers, wants to force independent workers to become employees so that the government doesn't have to fix anything. It is abdication of responsibility for social outcomes.

Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees, as there are many disadvantages to doing so. In these cases, the only people that benefit are the politicians that can go on ignoring the real problems.

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Under the law as it is written, the labor secretary is basically correct. It's not the labor secretary's job to rewrite the law. What congress should have done several years ago is to address the emergence of the gig economy with a new designation that is distinct from both independent contractors and employees.

Lots of issues in modern US business arise from laziness / stupidity / corruption / uselessness of Congress.

I believe that there should be reform and that we should be working towards a better legal environment for informal workers and companies that want to use them at scale facilitated by technology. You can believe that and still recognize that the law as written would not support a definition of these workers as independent contractors (because they are not and it really is not a gray area due to the way that they are managed/directed).

It's also an issue for the US that we can go many years under an enforcement regime that assumes that we basically have this new category of worker that we are, for reasons of convenience, defining as independent contractors, but that the law clearly states do not meet the definition of independent contractors. Then we get a new administration that decides it will enforce the law as it's written instead of tacitly recognizing the fake pseudo reform of non enforcement that we had from earlier administrations. That isn't good government.

>Lots of issues in modern US business arise from laziness / stupidity / corruption / uselessness of Congress.

And by extension lots of issues in Congress arise from laziness / stupidity / corruption / uselesssness of the electorate that put them there. Invest heavily in education and revisit in a few generations.

What kind of education?

The kind that doesn't result in an intellectual race to the bottom as we're witnessing today, where people eat tide pods, purposefully hasten pandemic spread, and bottles of Windex have to have legal disclaimers like "do not spray directly into eyes".

Easier said than done I suspect.

> Invest heavily in education and revisit in a few generations

It is a persistent myth that the US does not invest in education. Not only is the dollars per student spent in the US competitive, it exceeds the majority of European nations spending per student by a large margin.

"In 2015, the United States spent approximately $12,800 per student on elementary and secondary education. That is over 35% more than the OECD country average of $9,500. At the post-secondary level, the United States spent approximately $30,000 per student, which was 93% higher than the average of OECD countries ($16,100)."

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/020915/what-country...

The question is what part of those dollars really buy quality and what part just ends in pockets of well-connected interest groups.

I see this question only rarely asked. Too many people seem to think that shoveling extra money on X will get you better results almost automatically. No, it won't, corruption and special interests can capture that extra value unless the investor is careful.

Now it is true that underfinancing will get you worse results, but the opposite just does not hold.

Invest, not spend. You'll see plenty of school districts which receive tons of money but at the classroom level teachers are barely paid and kids have no supplies.

Money is going somewhere but most of it isn't into the actual education.

I think the bigger problem is the lack of citizen representation. Individual legislators are servicing an absolutely huge number of constituents, which means that their elections cover absolutely massive amounts of people, necessitating massive amounts of money for campaigns. Which means that the influence comes from donors, as they are the ones who enable reelection.

It also means that outside money can lead to successful primaries of otherwise popular legislators, if the legislator doesn't toe the line required. There used to be many Republicans that not only publicly agreed that climate change is a real, human-caused, phenomenon and that also proposed action to solve the problem. After a few legislators got primaried out of their seats, this position is no longer allowed at all in public statements by Republicans, because most legislators are too scared to risk being primaried.

Increasing the House of Representatives by ten fold or more might help.

Getting rid of many of the procedures that prevent votes from happening would probably help too.

And of course, overturning Citizens United...

"Increasing the House of Representatives by ten fold or more might help."

While you would end up with much more representatives - and in theory more representation - each individual rep would become much less influential. I think expanding the house to be thousands of members large would also make deliberations much more difficult and shallow as a result. I have no idea how parliamentary procedure would work with thousands of interested parties. But I do acknowledge that it is do-able.

That being said, I am in favor of increasing the size of the house, but only by about 100 seats or so. I'd also want term limits in order to facilitate more turnover for district seats. But that's a separate debate.

The House of Reps has been frozen since 1929 with the Reapportionment Act, we were originally suppose to add new electors/reps with every census and sometimes sooner if population change is fast enough. It is also the reason why some small states have slightly more power in the House of Reps, the lack of new Reps has made their fair share of Reps drop below the minimum number of Reps. With more Reps overall, their share rises and surpasses the minimum number, fixing that particular problem.

It's not the labor secretary's job to rewrite the law

This.

Sometimes I feel like the entire nation needs to go back and revisit our civics books. The job of the Labor Secretary is to make certain that federal labor laws are followed. If you want changes to federal labor law, it does you no good to demand them of the Labor Secretary. Call your congressperson and your senator. Even better, vote for more qualified congresspeople and senators.

This is a republic. Which means that ultimately, the labor laws are far more our fault than the fault of the Labor Secretary.

>Which means that ultimately, the labor laws are far more our fault than the fault of the Labor Secretary.

It also doesn't really matter what the Federal law is or Labor Secretary does/says, worker agreements are governed by State law, and their are 50 States with similar, but not identical legal standards defining employees vs independent contractors. In some cases you may be defined as an employee at the State level but Independent Contractor for purposes of the Federal level (say the IRS Code/Federal Taxes). Even within a single State one agency say unemployment office was classify you as employee and another such as workers comp classifies you as independent contractor.

> Even better, vote for more qualified congresspeople and senators

The problem with this comment (and others like it) is the presupposition that the problem is that people are not voting "correctly", because if only they did, all the problems would be solved.

But that glosses over a very large number of problems, some of which are deeply systematic, at which point questions like "whose job is it really to fix these issues anyways" may in fact deserve answers that are more out-of-the-box than "the republican democratic system works as intended, so the problem must be elsewhere".

>But that glosses over a very large number of problems, some of which are deeply systematic, at which point questions like "whose job is it really to fix these issues anyways" may in fact deserve answers that are more out-of-the-box than "the republican democratic system works as intended, so the problem must be elsewhere".

This glosses over the fact that enough of the population disagrees with your assessment of the problem and proposed solutions that there is no consensus and that is why your problems are not being solved in the way that you want. In fact, that is almost always the case.

People feel that the thresholds of consensus required in republican processes get in the way of their plans only when they fail to persuade others. Then they start looking for more authoritarian solutions, such as having party-bureaucrats make laws by fiat.

> enough of the population disagrees with your assessment of the problem and proposed solutions that there is no consensus and that is why your problems are not being solved in the way that you want.

Yes, this is part of it, but it goes even deeper than that. For example, California government passed AB-5, and then later popular ballot passed prop 22, which essentially goes contrary to AB-5. Does that suggest that leadership is out of touch with the electorate? Maybe. The fact that numerous pages of exceptions had to be carved out in AB-5 in the first place (and it's still criticized even after that) also indicates that the legislation wasn't very well thought out to begin with.

If you think in terms of a software engineering organization, it would seem crazy to take bug reports and just blindly do whatever the tickets with largest number of CAPS LOCK words says. But governments often do exactly that: they take some top-of-mind idea and just go with it, without paying heed to any sort of expert research, leaving implementation details to be determined by others "lesser" offices of government, and without care for the repercussions of rolling out such policies. It's the equivalent of pushing the "release" button in your enterprise software, cross your fingers and hope for the best, without any observability infrastructure and without a rollback plan if everything breaks.

> People feel that the thresholds of consensus required in republican processes get in the way of their plans only when they fail to persuade others. Then they start looking for more authoritarian solutions

This is also true, and it's definitely a touchy subject. On one hand, global consensus seems "fairest", but is it really the fairest if the vast majority of people are not affected by a decision (or they are affected to different degrees depending on various factors)? What of their expertise in the subject matter? Many problems do have solutions that align with common sense, but many others require solutions that are counterintuitive, but that can only be proven to be more effective with hard research. It's a difficult line to thread, and I feel that the status quo favors popularity more than science when it comes to decision making.

> For example, California government passed AB-5, and then later popular ballot passed prop 22, which essentially goes contrary to AB-5. Does that suggest that leadership is out of touch with the electorate?

The idea of representative government is you outsource decision making to people, not that you hire people to always do what the majority wants. That is the justification for a ballot initiative override. Not necessarily saying that ballot overrides of legislative actions are good structure -- there are pros and cons. But in the case of AB-5, that was clearly an out-of-touch legislative body taking some very extreme measures that were more radical than the state population wanted. That is a common thing when you have one-party states like CA, so in the current CA landscape ballot initiatives are a good safety check on what is a one party legislature controlled by party insiders.

> If you think in terms of a software engineering organization, it would seem crazy to take bug reports and just blindly do whatever the tickets with largest number of CAPS LOCK words says. But governments often do exactly that

In my experience in the corporate world, working from everything from non-profits to start ups to DJIA member companies, I find corporate decision making to be equally random and opaque. They are just random in different ways. In the corporate world, if you can find an executive sponsor and frame something the right way, you can convince them to follow a road of sheer madness. In government, if you can convince a politician that something is trendy or a cheap way of getting votes, they will commit huge blunders. If you can convince them that something is a moral imperative, they will commit unspeakable atrocities.

> This is also true, and it's definitely a touchy subject. On one hand, global consensus seems "fairest", but is it really the fairest if the vast majority of people are not affected by a decision (or they are affected to different degrees depending on various factors)?

Indeed a tough subject. The way I think about is this. If you are in the business world and you are leading a team of 5 engineers, who are trying to make a decision. Let's say 3 strongly believe in A. 2 Strongly believe in B and are strongly opposed to A. Do you say "majority rules"? Unlikely. You will try to find consensus. Consensus could be something like 60%A and 40%B. This consensus gathering process is why businesses often do crazy things, but they don't know a better way as pissing off 40% of your team is something you need to avoid. The 2 people can quit -- they can transfer to another team. So ultimately you do need to gather consensus rather than search for 50% +1 in making decisions within a team.

But a society is like that team. It requires more than 50% +1, otherwise you will find groups seceeding. One way of addressing this is to put in various roadblocks to require more than 50%. Say you need 2/3. Then people have to negotiate. If you want to do something 1/3 hates, then you can do it if you give them something in return. You bargain and you reach a consensus where everyone gets some of what they want, even if they don't like it. But then you might reach a situation where the society is split and simply can't come to a consensus because there are moral issues at stake that they are not willing to compromise on. Then your option is federalism. You break the society up into two groups and let each one make rules for themselves. Within each federalist group you have the super majority requirement again, but because they have shared values, they can reach that super majority.

All of this stuff was debated long ago in 18th-19th C France and England, and many very smart people looked at all these issues, which is why we have this weird federalist form of government in the US where you have both a senate and a house and it's really hard to get anything passed into law unless you have both a geographic and population supermajority on your side. But as the nation splits into two camps that view each other as basically evil, unreedemable, hopelessly foolish people, you are finding more and more gridlock and more and more appeals to Federalism. California wants to run their own climate policy? Fine, let them. Oklahoma wants fracking and free gasoline to everyone? Fine, let them. If you don't, the days of the republic are numbered.

> I find corporate decision making to be equally random and opaque

That's fair, but it's still madness :)

> ultimately you do need to gather consensus

I think consensus is just one form of conflict resolution. Compromise is another, for example. When we have a scenario of 5 people, 3 pro-X and 2 pro-Y, one could argue that are actually three choices: X, Y and the status quo, where an impasse between X and Y is functionally equivalent to everyone being pro-status-quo. Rephrasing in terms of status quo vs something else might help in understanding where X and Y overlap and where they differ and might lead to more productive open-ended discussions than a discussion that is solely adversarial between X and Y.

I don't believe it's necessarily possible to reach consensus in all cases. For example, the issue of abortion doesn't seem like one where either side is willing to let go. But I do believe that it's possible to reach a compromise in many cases (for example, pro-life proponents might be willing to concede that a anencephalic fetus posing life threatening risk to the mother is an acceptable case, while still believing that normal unplanned pregnancies should be taken responsibility for).

There's also always a possibility of a fourth choice Z, for example a policy from a different country (e.g. Portugal's handling of drug abuse being seen as a medical problem, rather than limiting the discussion to one solely about the spectrum of criminal severity). And there's yet other ways to handle conflicts, such as the iron fist approach that China uses (which some might argue was effective at handling covid, for example, questionable as it may be in other areas such as freedom of speech).

My take away is mostly that even if things are as they are because of something that was settled by scholars centuries ago, it still behooves us to revisit different ideas, ideologies and approaches to tackle today's problems, rather than ignoring or not understanding the weaknesses of the status quo processes.

I'm not OP but compromise is only a choice if both sides see that as being better than the status quo. You are right that Status Quo is the third choice but it seems both sides of lots of issues prefer that than compromise because for a lot of these moral issues "compromise" is a step in a worse direction. I'd guess largely because of "slippery slope" type of fears.

For issues that can't be compromised, federalism is the solution. However this falls apart for issues where there are real (or perceived) externalities. If you are anti-abortion because of your moral framework, its unlikely you see allowing another community to do it as acceptable. The same as if you are worried about climate change, you don't want fracking in places you don't live.

Excellent points

Well, yes and no. If you mean the labor sec shouldn't arbitrarily decide not to enforce certain laws based on ideology, I agree completely.

But if you think the labor sec should merely concern themself with robotically enforcing the most literal meaning of the labor code, I think that's dubious as well. They should be thinking more big picture than that, like about whether the laws, when enforced, achieve their ostensible purpose. In this case, I would think it means saying, "well, if we want to do right by workers, I recommend we refactor the labor system like so...". That is, pass that on to Congress and the administration.

That, I think, should be a higher priority than fighting ever harder to be technically correct on an increasingly arcane distinction.

"well, if we want to do right by workers, I recommend we refactor the labor system like so...". That is, pass that on to Congress

At which point congress is free to ignore the secretary. Ultimate authority always lies with congress. We can change that, assuming we want to change the Constitution. But today, congress is in charge of making laws. It is not in the remit of the Secretary to short circuit the Constitutional order. The best the secretary can do is, effectively, to send an email to congresspeople and senators. Which email would be a whole lot more effective coming from the voters instead of the secretary.

The Labor Secretary is empowered by laws passed by Congress to interpret the law in order to implement it. Congress passes laws delegating certain authority to Executive Branch departments.

If the Labor Secretary is not acting in accord with Federal Statutes passed by Congress and legal precedents established by the Federal Courts, the Secretary can be sued and injunctive relief sought. Of course the Secretary can be sued even if they are following the law.

You're putting a lot of weight on the word basically in your first sentence - the reality is that gig workers have characteristics that clearly fall under the classification of employees and others that clearly fall under the classification of contractors.

The problem with your argument is that because the law is ambiguous with regard to this situation, the labor secretary is effectively making law by choosing a particular interpretation of the law.

Though to be clear, I agree with you 100% that this is because Congress is just perpetually failing America through corruption, selfishness, etc., and that failure puts the labor secretary in an unenviable position of having to enforce laws that don't really work for the situation.

> The problem with your argument is that because the law is ambiguous with regard to this situation, the labor secretary is effectively making law by choosing a particular interpretation of the law.

As a member of the Executive branch, that seems to be his job, yes.

[IANAL]

My understanding is that if a worker has any characteristic of an employee, they are an employee. Any of several criteria are sufficient and only one of them is necessary.

In the bigger picture, Congress passes laws and delegates authority to a branch of government to establish rules and regulations using a process complying with other statutes that dictate how rules and regulations become binding.

Essentially, in the US at all levels -- Federal, State, and Local -- there are two types of legal requirements. Statutes and rules/regulations. The statute is the what. Rules and regulations are the implementation details...ok, there's actually a third parallel part which is legal precedent established by the courts.

Anyway, Congress delegates authority to executive agencies so that it can focus on other things and not have to micro-mange each tiny detail of everything under the sun.

I am also not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the system is not clear in the way that you are describing it.

As to "Anyway, Congress delegates authority to executive agencies so that it can focus on other things and not have to micro-mange each tiny detail of everything under the sun." - each tiny detail? This is a case of classifying millions of workers. We're not talking about a tiny detail, we're talking about something that is immensely important both to all the people affected by it as well as all the companies that have to operate under these labor laws. This isn't Congress delegating away the details, it's them failing for an extended period of time to address an absolute enormous and critical issue in the labor market.

So are you saying the Labor Secretary should classify them as independent contractors?

In terms of scale the Department of Labor classifies all workers. Should Congress classify each worker individually?

Were previous Labor Secretaries out of line for classifying the workers as contractors?

If you accept that the law is ambiguous and that the current Secretary of Labor is effectively making law by choosing an interpretation, you must also accept that the existing regulatory structure also derives from a choice made by a previous Secretary of Labor who effectively made law by so doing so.

Your argument does not provide any basis for preferring one interpretation over another.

That's because it's not an argument about which interpretation is preferable. The parent comment said it is not the secretary's job to rewrite the law (which implies that the secretary is not making law), and my argument is that that the secretary is indeed writing law.

In terms of preference, mine is not for one labor secretary's policy over another (I mean, I have a preference there, but it's beside the point here). My argument is that the labor secretary is making law here, and that is a bad thing because it is the job of Congress to make laws, which they are utterly failing to do.

It is the Secretary's job to (have their department) write regulations. Regulations are the implementation of the specification laid out in law. When the law is ambiguous, regulators have to choose an interpretation.

Congressional paralysis is definitely a problem, but until we have a major change in either Senate rules or political paradigm, we not see any improvement on that front.

In the UK apparently there are 3 types. The Economist wrote on the Uber case in UK:

“Employees” gain access to the full gamut of employment-law protections; “workers” get some protections but can be dismissed at will; the self-employed are taxed more lightly but receive few legal rights.

The Surpreme court ruled that Uber drivers are workers and not self-employed.

In most states in the U.S. all employees can be terminated at will. It is generally called "right to work" (yes... it is a questionable name). So essentially that first category does not exist in the U.S. (outside of a union where it gets tricky). So the Labor Secretary's decision amounts to the same decision.

And self-employed here generally are not taxed less, rather about the same (details vary), but have to do the taxation themselves.

I should note that you still can be fired illegally, for example surrounding harassment or protected status (gender, race, etc...).

I disagree. There are jobs that are reasonable under the construct of "independent contractor". The issue is that the classification has been grossly abused to the point where the majority of people who employers attempt to classify that way really shouldn't be eligible.

I have real independent contractors in my family, they might work 2 hours each for 50 different customers in a year. They do their job exactly how they want to. It's not like it makes sense for any one of their customers to provide benefits of any kind. This is the kind of stuff this classification was meant for.

Isn't the solution here to turn contractor vs employee issue into a question of choice and benefit for the employee vs the employer? If retirement, time off and health benefits are also equally available to contractors then people can make the choice for the type of work they want without being disadvantaged.

What does "time off" mean for someone who is unambiguously a contractor (such as a one-person plumber, handyman, maid, babysitter, landscaper, CPA, lawyer, etc)?

They already have as much time off as they choose to have. It's all (obviously) unpaid as "who would pay them?"

Yea time off is a bit iffy here. Some of the gig companies currently (due to covid) provides some level of "paid" sick days. But yea as a contractor it's probably less relevant than retirement and healthcare.

Time off is one of the greatest scams in the modern economy. Unless you work a position where the time increment of your work is less than the amount of time you take off, ultimately you end up being pushed to do the same amount of work in less time. You might as well have skipped your vacation or planned your PTO during a less busy time.

Really all PTO is for most salary exempt positions anymore is ability to delay work without getting fired. Now if you work in a position where you churn out things on a daily basis or less and someone will fill in for you while you're gone, PTO is actually PTO.

An agreement to be able to delay work without getting fired doesn't seem entirely like a scam.

It is when you call it vacation or paid time off. Call it "work delay credits" or something of that nature.

There's an implication from PTO of a different era where you weren't required to makeup work you missed while on PTO. Much of that has disappeared. That's fine for most salary exempt positions assuming you aren't fed a constant queue of work to keep you pushing 50+ hour weeks regularly and it's OK to do 20 hour work weeks and some 50 hour work weeks.

Maybe I'm just old and people don't care that they do more for less TC than they did in years past.

If it's a scenario where it even remotely makes sense to do something like that, they probably should be employees.

There's a lot of jobs where work simply is not with a regular customer -- i.e. tradesmen, independent consultants, musicians, etc.

If a person mows lawns for 25 different customers in a given week, who gives them their vacation/retirement/health benefits?

If you make it a choice, it effectively becomes no choice because employers will never agree to classify a worker as an employee because it would increase their costs and they have the ability to seek out another worker who would agree to the independent contractor status against their own interest because they need the job to keep a rood over their head and food on the table. It would give employers the ability to make it a race to the bottom for employees, like what would happen if minimum wage laws were removed.

> against their own interest

And how exactly would you reach this conclusion? How would you know what's better for someone, better than they do? At least in CA, the decision was clear that it wasn't against people's interest.

In CA, the voters were duped by a massive marketing campaign underwritten by employers with interests in the outcome, with perhaps a small amount of "gosh I don't want Uber to cost more" personal interest.

Sometimes employer's interest coincides with the public, but I guess even voting isn't enough to convince some people of that.

> At least in CA, the decision was clear that it wasn't against people's interest.

This must be why Uber incessantly spammed their workers with Prop 22 propaganda via push notifications[1] on their phones and tablets.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/15/21517316/uber-spamming-u...

There is all kinds of marketing for every prop on the ballot. I just want people to have more options on the table. I don't assume people are helpless making these decisions on their own, which is patronizing IMHO. I'd rather give people more choices, then take them away.

Uber workers didn't make this decision, the people of California did. I can't think of anything more patronizing than a company like Uber telling their workers that everyone else gets to decide the terms of their labor relations, or telling millions of Californians how to vote, or spamming their workers with propaganda. Surely Uber workers can make their own decisions without Big Brother/Uber spamming their phones to tell them what's best for them.

Prop 22 actually removes options from the table, making it almost impossible to modify, repeal or replace the proposition. Surely if you and Uber cared about giving people options, then you'd recognize that labor law needs to adapt with the needs of workers, instead of being cemented in time in a manner that benefits some employers over everyone else.

If you are defined as an employee (under the current standard) it has do to with a number of factors, so if you are giving up all those factors to the employer but not receiving the employee benefits it by definition is against everyone's interest.

Basically imagine you have Job A all things being equal you can have the Job A and all the benefits of being an employee or you can have Job A and none of the benefits of being an employee. How is it possible it is in anyone's interest to take Job A and not receive the benefits they are legally entitled to?

Why would employers pay or reward two exact positions differently? Obviously if you don't get benefits, you are more on the outside of the company, and get to leave whenever you want without a problem. Full time employees can't just walk away like temp positions or gig workers, at least not without hurting reputation. The responsibilities of full-timers with all the benefits are way more than their temp counter-parts. At the end of the day it's just another type of exchange... a simple one where there is less commitment, and a complicated one with more commitments and responsibilities. Why force companies to only have one of those options, pretending people are so dumb they don't see what the exchange is? Most people understand, if they want benefits, you need to go through long process of hiring, and you become part of the company in a formal sense, and to many that is not appealing.

According to an Uber survey in October, 20%, of uber drivers are unsatisfied working for the company [1]. If you want to work for Uber, and you can work any time you'd like, why would you be dissatisfied with working there? The reason people work for Uber is that it's available as an opportunity, with a fairly low bar of entry, in a way that a lot of other employment opportunities are not.

The "gig economy" is a legal hack by corporations to pay workers less than minimum wage [2]. We can talk a lot about problems with government (there are a lot of issue there), but the fact that the government has issues does not act as a free pass to allow private institutions to pay workers less.

[1] https://mashable.com/article/uber-driver-survey-pandemic/

[2] https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-uber-driver-w...

So if the other 80% are satisfied working there because they get to pick their hours, it is best to change that because the 20% would be more satisfied with a full-time job and benefits?

I don't even get your initial point. Have you never worked a job you didn't like? Many jobs suck, but people have to earn money. They will hopefully, eventually move on to more satisfying jobs.

When Uber gives drivers the ability to set their prices, I'll believe they're independent contractors. As it stands, Uber doesn't even let their drivers know what the value of a given ride is going to be until they've already started it.

I apologize for not being more clear about my point, I stated it implicitly for brevity. The job satisfaction quote was a rebuttal of what the parent said, which was

> Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees

I’ll be more clear, I have two points, point 1 is that “workers do not choose gig economy jobs because they offer flexibility, they choose them because they have low barriers to entry”. This means that employee classification is irrelevant to workers, they do not explicitly want to be contractors. The 20% job dissatisfaction statistic is sufficient to prove my point because if there were alternatives, those 1/5 of workers would not be working for Uber.

Point 2 is “the gig economy benefits employers more than traditional employment and disadvantages workers more than traditional employment” I support this claim with the statement that Uber drivers have been paid less than minimum wage.

> According to an Uber survey in October, 20%, of uber drivers are unsatisfied working for the company [1]. If you want to work for Uber, and you can work any time you'd like, why would you be dissatisfied with working there?

20% is good for job dissatisfaction. Why would you be dissatisfied working there? Because you'd rather be doing something else. That's why they pay you.

It's not a legal hack. If the government is not doing its job, these companies provide ways for people to make ends meet instead of going out to the streets to beg.

It makes sense if you realize that everyone wants everyone else to have a minimum quality of life, but everyone is also trying to pay/sacrifice the least to achieve it.

We want employers to provide benefits, as opposed to the government because that means higher taxes. Then you put a million exclusions and tax deductions and other loopholes, so no one knows what they're really getting, but we can say we did something and that benefits do exist to serve as arguments against broadly, easily accessible benefits to serve as a floor on quality of life.

"It makes sense if you realize that everyone wants everyone else to have a good quality of life, but everyone is also trying to pay/sacrifice the least to achieve it."

And what defines a good quality of life depends on who you ask.

What about people that can not handle a normal job?

I have a chronic condition and for a year the only reason family didn’t end up on street is because of gig jobs. Most days 12-16 hours a day in bed essentially blind in horrific pain. But sometimes totally fine. Disability straight up laughed at me.

This. so much policy is designed around the idea that people should work a 9-5 at a corporation, without any consideration for the fact that this simply doesn’t support a lot of people’s needs. We need more flexibility not less.

Ironically this completely flies in the face of any motion or ‘diversity and inclusion’.

Are you claiming that gig/piece work isn't a "job" for an "employee"?

If you are an employee, the employer has the right to dictate your schedule and put significant more restrictions on how and when you work, which they do because it's more economically efficient for them to do so (think: time and transition costs). When your a contractor, not so much.

What you described is called "sick leave" in Europe and you are entitled to sick pay by law.

In Europe, any time he wanted to get this sick leave, he would need to go to a doctor every single time. That means multiple visits at a doctor every week. After a few weeks or months of being only available randomly, he would get fired from most jobs anyway (which happens regularly in Europe too, there is just a few more hoops to jump through).

While I agree with the thrust of your statement, he'd probably only need to go once a week at most.

On average I was going to three doctors a week. Mostly trying to find out what the heck was going on with me. Each outing would eat up all of my energy for a couple of days. I have nothing left for work family or generally life.

At a certain point I had to stop going to the doctor so I would be able to get enough hours in keep keep the house.

Apologies - I meant in order to stay on sick leave in Europe, not for diagnosis purposes.

There are certain things that aren't in question about this. Enough income to afford decent housing and food, healthcare, etc. It's not so mysterious.

I know multiple people who have never worked a day in their lives. They get food stamps, free health care and live in a $300/month apartment subsidized by the state (aka free).

They basically make money buying and selling items occasionally, when they see a deal. That's enough for them to buy all the "luxuries" they want ($5k car, $2k laptop) every couple years.

I think there's a big difference between peoples desires/definition of acceptable and what they put in to obtain them.

Buying and selling items is in fact considered work!

Again though, define "decent". It will vary depending on who you ask.

There is enough space to move around in the dwelling. It is not falling apart. It is not infested with rats. There is clean running water. Come on. Stop pretending this is a hard question.

It is bad faith or sheer ignorance to think this isn't a hard question. Consider that even people spending their own money on their own housing often can't define their own parameters, which is why touring houses is a thing. Now scale this out to the population of a country and creating a single bar of "decent housing" is incredibly hard.

And then that's just talking about the structure. What about the location - if a person's entire support system is in one location but the available free housing is 75 miles away and they don't have a car, that isn't decent. This comes up all the time re the affordability of the Bay Area where locals get priced out, someone says "just move to stockton" and the resident feels it's not fair (or "decent") to have to leave where they were born and raised.

You could link location to workplace I suppose but then that would create massive downward pressure on wages since people would be willing to sacrifice pay in order to live where they prefer. This sounds like a net negative.

This question is only hard if you haven't thought about it for more than like 2 seconds.

> even people spending their own money on their own housing often can't define their own parameters

I can't believe I'm spelling this out. A person picking out their ideal home has trouble figuring out exactly what they want. Ok. We all don't ever know exactly what we want. It's the human condition. But I don't want to live in grinding poverty. I don't need to look within to figure that one out.

I don't want my home to be dilapidated, overcrowded, full of pests and toxins, or to not exist.

If you're still pretending to have a hard time with the definition of "decent," consult a dictionary.

This line of argument is absurd word chopping. "Oh my, I could never in good conscience try to lock down a subtle word like 'decent' into a singular meaning, guess drivers will have to stay earning a sub-living wage forever. Sorry! Definitions are hard!"

No.

I didn't say (and nobody in this thread except for your straw man said) that the definition is too hard to create and therefore we should just throw our hands up and walk away. Literally nobody is saying that.

What I am arguing against is your baseless assertion that defining "decent housing" is easy, and that everyone who thinks it's hard is simply being obstructionist/anti-poor/whatever.

The closest thing we might have today to an across-the-board definition of "decent housing" might be HUD's FHA standards which -- to your shock and amazement, I assume -- is much more complex than "must be decent"

This is a discussion about whether gig economy workers ought to be classed as employees by the government. The reason that is a salient question is because a lot of these workers can't make ends meet under the current structure.

The current structure treats them as serfs and says what really matters is the efficiency of the overall system, or its ability to generate a profit for its shareholders, or whatever. In short, the problem is these guys work too much in exchange for too little. Whatever theories anybody might have about the market, the role of the state in the market, etc, those are the basic facts on the ground: over-exploited workers seeking dignity where they currently lack it. The idea that they are "contractors," in the way that you or I might be contractors sometimes (I assume you are a tech worker), as experts in a technical field, is a sick joke. They don't have any power to get what they need, in that market, as individuals (they aren't even allowed to set their own prices!). If they could bargain collectively, they might. That's the context here.

When somebody enters the discussion and says, "Well, yeah, but what IS dignity, anyway, when you really think about it, man???" you'll have to forgive me if I don't believe they're doing it out of a devotion to clarifying terms but because they just want to take Uber's side in the fight. Yes, it's obscurantism.

This is a weird phenomenon that I see across discussion platforms - it's like reverse sealioning, where legitimate good-faith questions are taken as evidence of supporting the other position.

In deeply complex and high-stakes systems, the details matter a lot; I haven't thought about it too deeply but my intuition says that they're the only thing that matters. Unintended consequences (like my salary depression example above) need to be carefully considered. There is inherent inequality built into a naive system like you suggest: an apartment in SF is worth multiples of an apartment in OK, are we alright with that? (don't answer, just an example). The details and their impact are important.

Still, there is an extreme range within those parameters.

What is 'decent housing' for instance? An apartment in the affordable part of town, shared with 3 room-mates? Your own condo? Your own house in the suburbs? A home in a gated community?

Is 'decent food' the minimum amount of recommended nutrition as defined by the USDA? Or eating out 3 nights a week? Or enjoying prime rib whenever you feel like it?

Is "decent healthcare" a checkup every year? Or a Cadillac insurance plan?

Any combination of these could be called an acceptable standard of living depending on who you ask. It's totally subjective, but the difference between them is tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Yeah, any of those would be acceptable. What would be unacceptable is when somebody has none of them.

"Enough income to afford decent housing and food, healthcare, etc."

And how do you define those? I've heard people on here complain that $200k isn't enough for a good life with a family. Yet I make less than half that and pay all the bills for my family. Clearly standard of living and cost of living can have a huge fluctuations on location and what one thinks they are entitled to under a decent life.

For example, a studio apartment in a bad school district might be decent for a single person with no kids. Yet that likely would not meet the definition of decent for a family of 4. Unless, that was a step up from wherever you were living before (maybe on the street). Some people might say they have to eat out or have steaks to have decent food. But others might just want a discount grocery story with freash fruits and veggies with off-brand staples to meet their criteria of decent.

It all depends on people's expectations and needs.

Decent housing where? If I want to live in a high cost area but can't afford it then should the government make up the difference?

Yes or no. Take your pick. It's not such a hard question that there's no answer. You can make a policy on this stuff. We solve harder problems all the time.

For starters, there's what many developed nations have agreed the minimum is, including: 2 or more weeks of paid time off, statutory holidays, parental leave and benefits, and –most importantly– socialised healthcare.

Some –certainly not all– have taken it a step further and offer pharmacare, daycare, a livable minimum wage, and free higher education.

Still, worldwide, there's an uneven or inequitable provision of other basics, such as disability benefits, guaranteed housing, food, and internet access. All of which I would argue is even more necessary for a good quality of life for all.

I’d say you have the first statement wrong - some will give but only not if they’re forced, some won’t give anything in any circumstance, and some would give a lot of not blocked by the other two.

I don’t want to be chained to my employer for benefits, for retirement, for healthcare. It’s stupid to put a sociopathic entity with no accountability to you in charge of your basic needs.

Similarly, many of us don't want to be chained to a comparably sociopathic and unaccountable government entity. We'd instead prefer to independently manage our own unique needs using our own individual economic agency.

Sorry you think government is sociopathic and unaccountable, it honestly seems like a rough life if that’s what you’ve experienced.

How can anyone look at the atrocities committed by every major government over the centuries of its existence and not see that large governments are orders of magnitude more sociopathic than the worst corporations? Its just a general feature of large and powerful organizations; shared by governments and corporations alike. Governments simply hold the power to commit larger atrocities.

Just look at how the city of Flint, MI poisoned their own citizens water while suppressing knowledge of their actions. [0] While in the grand scheme of government atrocities this actually appears relatively minor, this issue happened in very recent times.

One could fill pages listing government atrocities before even getting to basic incompetence and mismanagement. While inefficiencies happen in all bureaucratic organizations, governments hold singular power over their citizens in a way that no corporation could ever dream of.

This is not an argument against government. There are some services that only the government can provide. E.g., a strong military. Nor is this an argument against government playing some role in promoting general welfare.

I just personally would like the option to not be further dependent upon our government and would rather use my own economic agency to provide for my own unique needs. Many other people feel similarly and therefore reject this further intrusion of government in dictating our labor relations with employers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

Bad government is everywhere, but many governments use power broadly responsibly. Private entities are less accountable than elected officials, and they get more scrutiny from the press. That power you talk about is real, but frankly we tried having 0 labor standards in the 19th and start of the 10th century. The vaunted powerful middle class of the 50s and 60s also took place after the largest government programs in our history (the war, the interstate highway system, etc) and also along with very strong labor protections and high taxes that have been all erased since the 80s. Faith in the US government in particular took a nosedive during and after the Vietnam war.

I guess I don’t understand why this is the line in the sand, and why we must depend on private profit-motive entities to provide for basic welfare and an economic safety net when we can see it working in developed countries around the world.

A "minimum quality of life" has nothing to do with your worker qualification. People can, and should, have the freedom to choose how they work.

The obvious solutions include new hybrid classifications or mandating certain benefits based on tenure. Why is this not considered? Why take away choice from those who specifically decided not to get a full-time driving job (which have always existed)?

I choose the work minimally, maybe 2 hours a month for doordash. Can I collect my benefits still?

Almost all discussion on this topic suggests a minimum amount of work to qualify.

There are always basic limits. For example you don't get all of your healthcare coverage or benefits on the first day of your job, and certain things like vacation time are accrued as you work. It's not a complex problem to solve.

I see things like this that seem to me to imply that in order to deserve benefits, someone needs to work.

I think a more productive line of debate would be:

1. Do we, as a society, believe we should only care for those who can be productive?

2. Do we, as a society, value things other than productivity?

3. Do we, as a society, believe it is the place of a governing body to ensure a standard quality of life (whatever that standard may be)?

Putting barriers around who deserves what doesn't really serve to do much other than exclude people who don't know how to work the system, or those who are unable to work the system.

I disagree. The better framing is around choice.

In some countries these decisions are made for you and funded through taxes and fees. Other nations require you to plan your own way. The USA leans toward the individual over the state.

Certain things like healthcare should be revamped to remove the ties to employers but it's important to keep the prevailing culture in mind. People overwhelmingly still want the ability to choose here - what they lack are the options to choose from.

I strongly disagree that people want to be able to choose healthcare - Americans value the ability to choose their healthcare merely because it's being dolled out by corporations (on all sides - not just the insurers) that are trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out. When you're denied choice in American healthcare you get bottom of the barrel service so asking someone to surrender that choice generates a kneejerk response.

As an example my grandfather lost his leg to a blood clot due to being sent to an overwhelmed hospital that left him sitting undiagnosed for hours on end - it is easy to read that scenario as being forced into a lack of care, but choices wouldn't help things here. If he had a choice he would have advocated for going to his family doctor first which would have made the situation worse - in all honestly hospital overcrowding and underfunding is the only thing that led to him losing his leg.

Healthcare is a sector of the market that most people here (even me - and I work in a company that deals specifically in the US healthcare market) don't have enough knowledge to make intelligent choices in because the knowledge needed to comprehend all the random crap that can go wrong with your body is intensely deep.

I also don't think it's far to say the US favors individuals over the state - the US cares very little about individual health. And that's not precisely what you meant when you said it favors individuals over the state but I think it's important to highlight that the situation in the USA is quite detrimental to a lot of individuals.

I literally explained that healthcare should be separated from corporations and that people are missing options to choose from in the first place. Hospital overcrowding is an entirely different issue. Did you reply just to argue?

And yes, I do want to choose my healthcare. I want to select the plan that best fits my needs. If you want a larger simpler plan that covers everything then you can choose that.

Me having choice does not take away from you, it only provides more for both of us.

As someone from a country with Universal Healthcare, I don't understand what "yes, I do want to choose my healthcare. I want to select the plan that best fits my life and needs. If you want a larger simpler plan that covers everything then you can choose that." means.

And I especially don't understand how it doesn't lead to exactly the problematic outcome we are talking about which is that poor people can't afford access to quality healthcare.

You don't "choose" what level of fire department protection you need. How is healthcare different? I suppose you can always hire your own private firefighter/doctor...

So long as you give people the choice, and it's based on PERSONAL financial contributions rather than government-organized taxes, those with less means will have less access to a finite set of healthcare resources and result in systemic inequalities.

I suppose I can imagine that there is some "ultra deluxe" version of healthcare where instead of crutches you get a wheelchair, and instead of a shared recovery room you get your own, and I do support those with the means to pay extra for something like that. But the baseline HEALTHCARE access part needs to remain the same...

That's not how it works. America is a mix of several different systems. Everyone has access to care, and there are several public healthcare offerings; some specifically for seniors/low-income/single-parents/children/etc. The ACA already gives everyone an insurance option.

The issue is that better coverage requires private insurance, mostly offered through corporations. Smaller companies can't compete, some people can't leave a bad job because of losing their plan, and others are limited to public options because they don't work. This is the overwhelming problem with USA healthcare. There aren't actually many choices because of this complex and outdated connection between jobs and benefits.

I think we didn't understand each other.

I know that today America has choice. But it leads to the highest healthcare costs in the Western World (to allow for middlemen healthcare companies to be some of the largest privatecompanies in the country), with the worst quality for the poorest people.

So the question is, how do you solve the problem of universal access while giving people the "choice".

> The issue is that better coverage requires private insurance, mostly offered through corporations

Not in the rest of the western world. We just simply don't have these companies. They don't need to exist. They are a form of corporate socialism transferring wealth from taxpayers to mediate something that can be handled directly.

Health insurance companies is a moral failure. I'm going to double down on my metaphor. Fire engines don't check your insurance to decide if they should put your fire out. That used to be how things worked 100 years ago.

No, like I just said, America already has access and healthcare insurance options for everyone. Nobody is denied.

The choice for better healthcare is limited and locked behind employment. That's the problem, instead of letting everyone have access to all plans, and the solutions are too complicated to discuss here. However insurance is not a moral failure, it's a financial and risk management concept. Just because your government manages somethings for you with your taxes doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

What you call "better" healthcare is considered basic healthcare in the rest of the world.

I understand that when you're a fish it's hard to understand what water is, but the fact that employment plays any part into this whatsoever is a problem. Nobody in Canada or the UK or Luxembourg (some countries i have some experience with) would ever factor in healthcare in a decision to start or leave a job. It is absolutely not a variable.

> "the fact that employment plays any part into this whatsoever is a problem"

Yes, I've said exactly this about half a dozen times now. It seems you're arguing based on myths and preconceived notions against the USA rather than actually responding to anything I've said. Let's end it here.

I misread your last comment, apologies for that.

I just don't understand you acknowledging that healthcare choice being locked behind employment and insurance companies middlemen being a problem yet still wanting "healthcare choice." What does that mean to you if you don't have the others any longer?

> "I strongly disagree that people want to be able to choose healthcare "

I absolutely want to choose my healthcare.

Love the downvotes from people that not only don't want to choose their doctor, but want to impose that restriction on others. Seems a bit authoritarian.

Just to clarify - I'm up in Canada now and we're free to choose our Doctors - there's a bit of an undersupply so there is some restriction in switching doctors once you've got one, but you're free to continue seeing the same doctor through job and other life changes.

The choice being discussed here is specifically around health plan particulars like stronger vs. weaker drug covers - surprising you by not covering any oncological drugs - or having a different balance between deductible and cost.

I'm still trying to grip why people care about choice though since most of those become non-issues with national insurance - most of those choices are about how you're going to balance paying for care with limited resources, while in nationalized systems the question of cost is mostly or fully removed - it's just the auxiliary costs that still can bite you (i.e. parking costs at a hospital, costs for a private room for recovery, etc...)

If you mean people don't want to choose their insurance plan, you should say that, not people don't want to choose the healthcare, because you just said that you do!

People have preferences for different doctors. Choosing different doctors is part of choosing your healthcare. Personally, I order my own tests and come to doctors with recommendations and ideas to discuss. Not all of them are open to this collaborative approach.

In terms of choosing insurance... It's a little silly to talk about what people want. What many people want is to go to whatever doctor or hospital whenever they want and have someone else pay for it. They often foolishly choose to limit out of pocket costs at point of service, while paying for coverage they don't need. Different people have different concerns. My preference is for my insurance to be for when I need it, and "first dollar coverage" is insuring me for an expense I can already afford, making it a bad deal.

FWIW under current Medicare as it exists, you can choose between different private Medicare Advantage providers, or buy a private "supplement" that fills in where Medicare lacks. The same big insurance companies provide these plans, but have to actually conform to Medicare guidelines of not screwing people.

To me the "prevailing culture" is more about the vibrancy of walking into a vendor and directly paying for services that you would like, rather than needing to appeal to some bureaucracy (whether "public" or "private") to convince it to agree that you "need" something. The medical system is currently so far from this, that I don't think it has much bearing on the practical reforms being discussed. Although I would love to see reforms in this direction as well - eg published price lists uniform for any payer, and a prohibition on arbitrary post-facto billing.

> The same big insurance companies provide these plans, but have to actually conform to Medicare guidelines of not screwing people

It's more like the providers have to conform to the Medicare pricing, instead of screwing the payers. This is why we need single pricer. Simply put into Medicare pricing agreements that the provider cannot charge anyone more than they charge Medicare or Medicaid. Not only does it avoid the price gouging of the uninsured and privately insured, it also ends the whole concept of out of network. Very few providers can survive without Medicare funds.

Well it's both, although the aspect you point out is more important. That would solve a good deal of the most egregious problems. It still wouldn't fix the unexpected $5k hospital bill, but would prevent it from being a $15k fuck-you bill. And with a transparent cost structure, plans would actually be comparable financially, rather than having to guess at their "negotiated" rates or worrying whether they support your current doctors etc.

Politically I wonder what's holding this back, as it seems like it would be more palatable than Medicare for all. Silent hospital lobby? Big insurers that don't actually want to make their market more efficient as they're effectively cost-plus entities?

A negative production value society member needs to be carefully balanced against a positive production value society member.

Not balancing this means society will go into decline one way or the other.

Offering basic levels to society members is health if the society can afford it and allows the society to grow quickie because risk is removed.

> A negative production value society member needs to be carefully balanced against a positive production value society member.

This is overly simplistic. Someone providing child or elder care is providing social value in a way which should not be measured against economic measures of production. Life is not an economic zero-sum game.

Yes, you should. Everyone should get a home, medical benefits, education, all of it. Period. If you work on top of that, great. If not, OK.

In your opinion, what “benefits” should someone have when working 2h a month?

The same as everyone else.

You might "work" 2h a month, because you spend the rest of it caring for family members, or maybe you're trying to get that first draft/beta version out the door.

Or you might just not want to work.

We need to stop assigning so much worth to work. We know automation is coming, and we know that not everyone is going to be able to find work in the future.

Not the parent poster, but I'll repeat the question: what benefits do you have in mind?

I mean it as a serious question, as it's not clear to me what the difference between benefits and salary is (not being from US).

I understand that the health insurance is one of them (and, to be clear, I do believe you should have that whether you work 0 or 100 hours a month).

But what are others? Pension contribution is just a part of your salary that you are required by law to put aside. Guaranteed minimum time off comes to mind, but that obviously makes less sense if you are already not working too much. What else?

> Why take away choice from those who specifically decided not to get a full-time driving job (which have always existed)?

There are millions of employees in the US who work part-time and choose their own schedules.

Part-time schedules are still preset schedules.

They do not allow you the same flexibility to work for the next 30 minutes, take a few hours off, then work another hour this evening without doing anything more than just starting or stopping the app whenever you feel like.

How would you replicate that with part-time hours?

> We want employers to provide benefits, as opposed to the government because that means higher taxes

This is a silly argument. You pay for your healthcare no matter what, it's just a question of who administers it.

> Then you put a million exclusions and tax deductions and other loopholes, so no one knows what they're really getting

This is precisely the current state of employer-sponsored healthcare, and also the wildly complicated medicare/medicaid system.

Universal coverage combined with higher taxes (ideally on people who already have lots of money and therefore place very little value on marginal income) is arguably better and easier to reason about than a mandate for employer-provided coverage and its associated opaque and complicated effects on labor markets, including higher fixed costs of hiring people and decreased ability for people to move between regions, industries, and even jobs within the same industry/career.

> This is precisely the current state of employer-sponsored healthcare, and also the wildly complicated medicare/medicaid system.

I'm happy to talk about manufacturer drug rebates which is an amazingly crazy portion of the healthcare market that would be illegal in almost any other market due to the perverse market incentives it creates. But yea, the short version is that the private healthcare market is incredibly inefficient.

> This is a silly argument. You pay for your healthcare no matter what, it's just a question of who administers it.

But who administers it has a lot to do with how much you pay for it. For example, a high deductible plan will save you a lot of money as long as you aren't in the 99th percentile of healthcare needs, and (unless the deductible is really high) still not bankrupt you if it turns out you are.

Any kind of government plan that doesn't give you that choice because it's paid from taxes rather than premiums is plausibly going to cost you more money. And that's true even on average, because high deductible plans make people more price sensitive, which exerts downward pressure on costs. (The fact that US healthcare regulations disfavor high deductible plans is one of the reasons costs remain high.)

The US system is also uniquely screwed because the rest of the world piggybacks on US medical R&D while in practice regulating prices even for products under patent. The result is that the US market is paying a disproportionate share of the R&D cost. Cost comparisons to single payer systems that pretend that single payer systems are inherently less expensive are ignoring the lower contribution of those systems to worldwide medical R&D. Moreover, the recipient companies are disproportionately in the US and have lobbyists and large numbers of voter-employees, so implementing a single payer system here would be unlikely to remove those costs. Then you're left with the resulting increase in price insensitivity and the US system becomes even more unaffordable.

It's actually a hard problem. The solution probably has to involve the other countries paying more of the R&D.

I don't want government or employers to provide benefits. I want people to keep their money and decide what is best for themselves. I don't believe the government or my employer has my best interest at heart, nor are they equipped to cater to my unique family needs..

Sadly, you do not live in a vacuum. The system needs to serve everyone and make sense.

Everyone choosing what is exactly right for them implies those choices are all possible and the complexity, risk and cost profile also makes sense.

Those things are not true, and the outcome is rapidly escalating cost and risk exposure.

This has been addressed in many ways, and one of the easier ways is to have government fund those bennies to provide a respectable floor. People who need more can choose to do that and the market for such things would make much more sense and be lower cost and risk for everyone.

An example seen worldwide is supplemental plans that operate in addition to primary plans, which are actually illegal in many parts of the world due to the inherent conflict between profit motive and health care.

You wanting to keep your money and make choices is very different from wanting other people to keep their money, which is an overreach frankly.

Further, in the current scenario, you really can't be sure medical people have your best interests in mind because the priority is making money not making sure we have healthy people.

When medical people are free to actually make healthy people a priority, the discussion about best interests becomes a much easier one.

I don’t want to argue with you or change your mind. I just don’t want to live in the same country with you.

Again, sadly, unless you find new land to settle, ideally with some very committed peers to help against risk, you will be living with people, many who will express the same sentiments, pretty much anywhere you go in this world.

Rough state of affairs, I would imagine.

I don't need to find new land to not be in the same country as you.

True!

However, I am far from unique.

For what it's worth, I know we have some common ground in markets. We do disagree on where they should be applied and why, but I don't mind sharing a country with you at all.

And that really is a priority discussion.

Universal healthcare, say Medicare for All style, does not have to mean higher taxes. And it would make a big difference to gig workers and the ones working for the likes of Walmart.

A very high percentage of Walmart employees need government assistance due to their income not actually being enough to pay the laborer what their labor costs them to deliver.

At a minimum, labor needs to exist reasonably and show up for work. Healthcare is a part of that, right along with the basics.

All of us are subsidizing labor for a few of us to put profit, or more peak profit in the bank.

The priority discussion boils down to what makes the most sense for the nation.

Do we cut back on the military industrial complex?

Maybe we decide subsidizing labor makes sense. That would also mean not shaming and blaming people who seek and obtain help from the government. Doing that is baked in right now, in that no matter what those people do, a large percentage of them will need help.

Or, we simply change nothing and yes, taxes are higher, but the national spend is lower overall. Many of us will benefit.

We could prioritize it so employers are more on the hook in various ways. Some of them will not be viable. Even if they all are, we may not have enough jobs. Government could be an employer to make sure everyone has a work opportunity that pays enough to exist and show up for work.

There are many options. Not all mean higher taxes, but all that discussion means a national priority talk also has to happen.

If we do nothing, our priority is not having people make it, exist reasonably and show up for work.

Predictably, lots of people are not making it, may do crime, are homeless, may not have health care, maybe will show up for work, if they can get it.

If our priority becomes about people existing reasonably and showing up for work, we will see that, but will have higher taxes, or back off some other things we currently make a priority.

> Universal healthcare, say Medicare for All style, does not have to mean higher taxes.

How would that be? It seems like it certainly would to me. Maybe by less than employees plus employers currently pay in aggregate healthcare costs, but I can't imagine a way where the government pays for Medicare-for-all and taxes don't go up.

Do you have a specific idea in mind that I'm missing?

I suspect that was a misstatement - I haven't seen a proposal that avoids higher taxes without a large debt being written against something else (i.e. redirecting funding from the military). It is, however, accurate to say that personal out-of-pocket expenses wouldn't increase for most individuals. The cost per patient for government funded healthcare is expected to significantly undercut private costs per patient due to some efficiencies of scale and removal of some pretty big market friction points - so less money would end up being extracted from the economy to pay for an equivalent level of care.

In short - you can buy a banana for a dime or give the government a nickle and get a "free" banana.

Medicare just forces providers to take less money than insurance companies, it's efficient in some sense, but it's not operational efficiency.

I'm super glad my mom has Medicare! But she isn't benefitting from it being efficient, she's benefitting from it setting the rate it pays and requiring providers to accept it.

To clarify a bit these market insights don't just come from comparisons to medicare but by comparing patient care costs to similarly developed nations and trying to account for factors like the obesity epidemic - the US just pays a lot more for a patient to get treatment than similar countries.

You would be able to cut out an entire for profit insurance industry, I would also think people would be more inclined to go to see a doctor before a minor issue turns into a major one than they are now.

Well, if you and or your employer are not paying premiums, and the overall spend is less (this is a well supported CBO finding), most of us will be better off.

Totally agreed. Saying that most of us will be better off even though our taxes will go up is significantly more accurate.

What is a premium but a private tax?

One is an optional payment to a private company to purchase a specific service.

The other is a compulsory payment to a government entity as a result of earning income.

Lol, optional?

The rest of the developed world would very strongly disagree.

The penalty for not making that payment can be death, is likely financial ruin.

For many people, that optional payment is enough to buy a home.

Ask around about "optional"

Then we can set that aside and recognize net, liquid income will go up for most everyone.

> Do you have a specific idea in mind that I'm missing?

All in the US more or less pays roughly 2x or more what some other countries pay for equivalent healthcare, so there is nominally room to extend coverage while keeping costs flat in theory. In practice, it's complicated. Also 'roughly' and 'more or less' have some wiggle room for systemic differences, but it's about right.

>Do we cut back on the military industrial complex?

The US spends $676 billion on defense, almost the exact same amount on Medicare, $1 trillion on Social Security, and $409 billion on Medicaid. Social welfare spending is a much, much larger portion of the US budget than military spending. Here are the numbers straight from the Congressional Budget Office https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-04/56324-CBO-2019-budg...

Yes, and so?

Did that Trillion not come from people contributing? You know it did.

And still, we can and should totally question our current spend.

To answer the second sentence, no, I don't know that. Boomers are taking out 5 times as many benefits as they paid in, it is absolutely not paid for (many Boomers believe otherwise!)

Let's say for a moment that is true. ( and we can ignore under payment of benefits, like the social security tax cap being at a hundred some thousand dollars.)

How does that impact the discussion? Do we think we need another problem by not actually paying those benefits?

Secondly, back to the first question, so?

What's our priority?

Right now that priority is not healthy people, able to show up for work, existing reasonably.

Does that make the best sense? I don't think so.

I don't really understand what you're trying to say here. I am personally pro-a larger welfare state- I wanted to specifically engage with one wrong thing you said, that the US somehow spends more on the military than social welfare. In fact, this is a common misconception- the United States spends several multiples more on social welfare than its military. In fact, the US spends about as much just on healthcare for the elderly as it does its entire military budget. This is simply a statement of fact, not meant to be an anti-social welfare political statement from me

I didn't actually say that. What I did say is we should have a priority discussion ahead of us, and that maybe we should cut back on the military industrial complex, as one aspect of that discussion.

The other thing I did was walkthrough a little bit about what those priorities might look like. There's several ways to solve this problem.

And we do have a problem when roughly half the labor force makes roughly 30k a year.

Are there any numbers on how much of the non-defense discretionary spending of 661 billion is actually related to the military spending? It lists "veteran's benefits" under that for example. Same for "Other", which lists "military retirement" and again "some veteran's benefits" for example. That sounds like defense spending to me.

We want employers to provide benefits

"We" don't necessarily think benefits should be provided by the whims of private businesses.

as opposed to the government because that means higher taxes.

The assumption here being that benefits from the government are paid with higher taxes, and benefits from employers being paid from the kindness of the CEO's heart and not from wages that would have otherwise been paid you.

>We want

>"We" don't

I want the money that my employer pays into health insurance to be paid to me into an HSA like tax sheltering of healthcare funds, and then I want no health insurance middleman. Poof---there goes all the corrupt incentives and ridiculous administrative overhead.

> I want no health insurance middleman

That is literally impossible. Even if insurance companies are made illegal tomorrow, that role of market maker between providers (doctors and hospitals, drug companies) and customers (patients, employers) will always exist. This is because such a role is needed.

Patients do not have the capacity nor the knowledge to find the best doctor, the best hospital, or the best drug maker for them.

...do not have the capacity nor the knowledge...

Health insurance was invented in the late 1930s as a political ploy to forestall government health programs. Did patients all get stupid at that time, or was it the case that they were all going to the wrong doctors and hospitals before then?

Please give human beings a little credit. We make decisions every day, some of which are a lot more substantial than which state-licensed physician to hire.

ps. you don't know what "market maker" means...

> That is literally impossible.

Okay, but I didn't mean literally outlaw insurance middlemen.

I mean fix the incentive structure such that I have the option to forego insurance middlemen.

> Patients do not have the capacity nor the knowledge

I completely disagree, and what business of yours or anyone's is it to say I'm `lacking in capacity and knowledge` to such a degree I shouldn't be allowed to make my own healthcare decisions!?

Worse still, right now the US government puts a cap on the percentage of profit an insurance company can take from premiums which coupled with the current near monopolistic healthcare insurance system incentivizes paying as much as possible for treatment to justify higher premiums.

Backwards as it may be it's far easier to change a regulatory interpretation or judicial test than to make a fundamental change to government services, like healthcare.

>Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees, as there are many disadvantages to doing so

Then companies that want to attract gig workers can give them the freedoms that are set by statute, regulatory bodies, and precedent. Like setting their own rates and picking which contracts to fulfill.

One solution to that is to allow employees to opt out of being employees.

The government policy would prevent companies from misclassifying employees as independent contractors, and any individuals who did not want to be employees could opt out of that classification, but that's up to the individual, not the company.

How long before Uber starts assigning mandatory job hours (as inconveniently as necessary to suit their needs) for drivers who have not opted out of employee status? I'd guess a maximum of two sprints.

Many employees will be assigned inconvenient hours regardless. That is a key difference between employees and gig workers.

When there are more people who prefer convenient hours than shifts available, some will only have the option to take inconvenient ones. As hourly employees, Uber can't use dynamic pay to manage supply and demand imbalances.

I dealt this as a teenager working at McDonald's. Most of us didn't want closing shift, and occasionally at 25 cent/hour incentive would be added. But more often than not, the demand for any hours was sufficient. Labor supply simply exceeded demand.

Still think Uber and likes should be regulated away until we have true self driving cars. That may take a decade or more.

They can. It'll work where the labor supply exceeds demand and won't work where it doesn't. It also won't be as effective as ride sharing becomes more of a commodity.

> It seems backward that the government, instead of fixing government policy and laws that disadvantage independent workers, wants to force independent workers to become employees so that the government doesn't have to fix anything. It is abdication of responsibility for social outcomes.

Quite the contrary: the government acts to prevent a ruthless race to the bottom as someone who skips e.g. on health insurance or on worker protection laws (e.g. daily work time maximums) can outcompete someone who sticks to the rules.

Especially with health insurance, the government has to pay the tab of those who skip it and then can't pay for the hospital.

> Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees, as there are many disadvantages to doing so.

The only reason I see why people want to voluntarily go gig worker is schedule flexibility - they don't want a regular full time or part time schedule because of children, elder care or whatever. And for what it's worth employment regulations should be made more flexible in that regard, but it must be prevented that employers go and abuse it to exploit their workers (e.g. by arbitrarily cutting their hours).

It seems to go without saying Employee protection laws are for the benefit and protection of the Employee. The law specifically prohibits employers from improperly reclassifying employees as independent contracts by simply titling a worker agreement/contract as an Independent Contractor Agreement in lieu of an Employment Agreement.

If these drivers want to be independent contractors and not employees, great, if these laws were fully enforced from the beginning it would be the drivers that organized and owned the ride sharing business and UBER would have never been able to compete with them (UBER's own S-1 admits this risk, and acknowledges if drivers were Employees it would be an existential threat to their business). Its also no surprise this legal inevitability comes after their public offering.

Sure many gig workers may not want to be employees, but they were, they just were not being provided the benefits and protections. I don't think the politicians are the only ones who benefited clearly the UBER investors and private shareholders pre-IPO were the single largest beneficiary.

Is there any reason on the merits you disagree with the current legal standards distinguishing employee vs independent contractor? I mean the drivers desires is not part of the standard, and in fairness, I don't think you are able to collectively speak on behalf of all drivers and say that's what they wanted, clearly based on the number of lawsuits and employment claims many of them did want the employee status and benefits that come with it.

What do you imagine " fixing government policy and laws that disadvantage independent workers" would be?

I'm thinking: Free health care, paid time off, a robust safety net, better protections for workplace safety, etc. Level the playing field.

If they are "independent contractors" then who exactly is paying for this time off, etc?

I'm not sure how it would work for vacations, since it's kind of your job as the contractor to earn enough to set aside your own vacation time. Parental leave should be administered as a public insurance pool that ICs pay into through self-employment taxes.

So what is the difference then?

Generally what you're describing is a full time employee... that's kinda the thing you didn't seem to like.

I think they want the government to provide those, rather than employers. If society decides that this is the bare minimum someone should have, then society should provide it.

There is a logical fallacy here, but I'm not sure if there is a name for it. In essence, the above argument is assuming "the government" is one actor who is able to choose between various options at the same time. In practice, "the government" is a collection of actors, with many competing interests, with different mechanisms of influence available at different times.

Aside: for anyone that thinks technology is hard, I would suggest running for office -- even a 'minor' role like being a school board member. This might shed some light on the difficulties of leading in a broader context. There is a reason it is called 'public service'.

"Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees."

I think most know the worker routine. If they don't look a certain way, the right age, the right resume, they won't get the job.

And the fact once they are an employee, they lose any bit of autonomy they think they have by being a independant?

It's too bad that we have a huge line of people:

1. Buying a vechicle specific four door vechicle Uber approves of before even applying to use the app. That is a huge upfront expence. Uber makes it sound like we all have a late model four door sedan collecting dust in the four car garage?

People are going bankrupt at best, but usually ruining credit, buying this huge asset in order to drive at the whims of Uber. There's no guarantes whatsoever. Want a deal on a four door sedan? Look at Craigslist used vechicle sales. Look for the last year Uber allows independents to drive. Actually I have noticed guys get another newer vechicle a couple of years before their vechicle ages out of Ubers strict year requirements. Some keep the useless four door sedan to drive a few more years under Lyft, or that's what I heard.

2. The guys whom are making a livible wage are usually driving to a big city. (A guy I know drives from santa Rosa to SF 7 days a week to make it work financially, and he is barely making it. He's working 80 hrs week.)

3. No health, they pay for gas, and insurance.

4. Yes--I'm picking on Uber.

My point is before Uber Bought the proposition, many drivers wanted better working conditions, and most seemed excited Uber might have to give them a vechicle, and working conditions would be better.

Then reality/fear set in? They will probally be fired next, or never hired me in the first place?

Maybe I'll just stick with this chitty job? America has become the king of chitty jobs.

And we have a lot of desperate people who will take these lousy jobs.

> 1. Buying a vechicle specific four door vechicle Uber approves of before even applying to use the app. That is a huge upfront expence. Uber makes it sound like we all have a late model four door sedan collecting dust in the four car garage?

I'm not seeing it anymore, but I recall seeing an Uber related lease program, and now I'm seeing Uber related rental car programs. In the Seattle area, it looks like I could rent a car from two different companies for about $220 per week that's intended to be used for unlicensed taxi services.

If I were going to drive for Uber, and they didn't like my current vehicle, I'd drive a rental for a few weeks at least, to make sure it met my needs before dumping a bunch of money into a car.

What, specifically, are those disadvantages? And are they actually related to employee classification, or are merely privileges not usually granted to employees?

For my wife, she can get more hours and higher pay as an independent contractor. Part of this is because we get insurance through my job. They also give her more autonomy than an employee would have.

Off-topic, but do you think its a problem that gig workers have no upward mobility? A worker with 10 years of experience will be paid exactly the same as a worker with 1 month.

That depends on the type of gig. There are some gigs where experience and skill command a substantial premium.

The largest gig employers (Uber, Lyft, Doordash, etc.) do not seem to provide a substantial premium for experience.

In 5-10 years, what will be the current driver's expectations for pay?

Beyond a month or two of experience, what would more experience benefit in that role?

Plenty of employees have no upward mobility either. Though with 10 years of positive ratings, I would think The Algorithm would reward them with more frequent/better gigs?

I'm an employee. I have 9 years experience and a masters. I had one promotion. I've been stuck at the intermediate developer level and do not see any promotions in my future

The Algorithm could decide their car is older and they could get less gigs :-/.

She has upward mobility. They let her choose the rate she charges the customer and then they take their cut. The more hours she wants, she can have. If she's good at her job and the customers love her, she can give herself a raise by increasing prices (it's already like $50-120/hr depending on the class). She even has the authority to hire someone to work under her.

Why wouldn't her employer let her opt out of insurance?

Are you comparing full-time hourly employees to part-time contracting?

> They also give her

When you say it like that, you are describing an employee not an independent contractor.

But your layer comment, about setting her own rates, makes me think that she is working as an actual freelancer, not as a gig employee.

> Why wouldn't her employer let her opt out of insurance?

Is this... a thing? I've never had that option in any of my jobs. Sure, I can choose not to take the employee sponsored health insurance, but then I'm just opting out of my share of the monthly premiums the company would deduct. But in general, a company pays more than that. I've never been able to opt out of company insurance and recover their share of the premiums! I assumed that wasn't legal for them to offer.

Oh, and to be explicit about the connection: that's why an independent contractor would be paid more. If an employee's wage is $x, a company generally pays something like $(2x), and so an independent contractor would expect to be paid something closer to 2x than x. (Usually because they* then have to pay certain taxes, and worry about their own benefits, etc.)

Most employers aren't going to pay you more for opting out of insurance. Many employers would try to keep your hours low so they don't have to offer you insurance.

"When you say it like that, you are describing an employee not an independent contractor."

This doesn't make sense to me. She has more autonomy than an employee would. They give her that level of autonomy by not making her an employee. She does not get a W2.

"But your layer comment, about setting her own rates, makes me think that she is working as an actual freelancer, not as a gig employee."

There's a lot of overlap between those terms, except replace employee with worker. I would say she's a freelance gig worker. Freelance tends to mean that you are just independent. You can work on an individual project for a company and move on, but it's usually larger pieces of work. As a gig worker, I see it as being more of a repetitive task for various customers. You can be a freelance driver and work for both uber and Lyft, or even uber and a taxi company. The gig part is that they are always individual tasks you get paid for - each ride. This is very similar to what she is doing.

So I see gig workers as freelancers, but not all freelancers are gig workers.

If I drove for Uber/Lyft for moonlight income, I would prefer to paid purely in cash instead of being forced to be paid in health insurance, pto, etc. since all of that would be provided by my primary employer.

Employers are only forced to extend healthcare etc benefits to employees, there's no law stating the employee has to accept them.

Will employers pay a higher wage if the employee chooses not to accept them?

In my experience, most benefits are use-it-or-lose it.

My last employer did. You could only opt in/out once a year or during major life events, but it gave enough flexibility that I could have higher pay or more benefits when it suited me.

generally among low-wage jobs, if you accept employer-provided healthcare you must pay for the plan from your wages. so kinda

No law? Technically correct.

Practical barriers in terms of the maximum limit of complexity legal and HR are willing/able to take on and remain effective while dealing with? Absolutely. Everyone thinks "It shouldn't be that hard!"

In reality, it kinda is. HR abstracts away the complexities of jurisdiction specific hiring requirements from the rest of the org, and legal does much the same. If you ask for extraordinary accomodation, I'm not saying it won't work, but I can guarantee you will experience friction while HR/Legal figures it out.

On the plus side, if it works, new employment template. If it doesn't, you don't get offered the job.

I've ended up the awkward giraffe in a couple places. You being flexible, and the HR/Management recognizing your unique capability to create value helps. However, when talking Gig work, they will invariably go for the template approach. There's also the fact that Gig work really conflates the distinction between "contractor" and "employee" in the sense that contractor carries with it an assumption you are providing for your own affairs. The compensation you quote them should have parity with their total outlay for an employee to do the job, because you should be arranging the same things for yourself; thereby obviating your need for the employer to do it. The thing you get out of by the contract route is all that paperwork and process overhead. You do a one-time disbursement of funds, and donezo.

The problem is, no one ever tells you (the contractor) that, and Uber et al does not let you quote price or have input on the cost calculation. So you accept super under-bid compensation, because you don't know the difference between a market rate and a hole in the wall, or an appreciation for the total footprint of the business model.

Uber, and services like it, make their money by predating. on this ignorance. This is not to say that stuff like "licensing" gig workers to vouch for the fact they really know what they are doing is really a good idea... I'm kind of curious though what kind of effect that sort of thing would have on the worker pool. Like a short course that make sure they understand the accounting. Wonder if an experiment could be run with that sort of thing somewhere and how it would effect the market.

That being said, it kinda kills the value prop of people just needing a few bucks here and there, but I question the seductive simplicity underneath that pitch, because everytime I've run into something that's pitched that way there's a big ole ugly iceberg beneath it.

Why not go one step higher up the abstraction, which is one step better, and provide healthcare irrelevant of jobs - it doesn't matter if you have 1 or 2 or none. You still have healthcare!

You aren't paid in healthcare at an hourly job. There is an employer healthcare plan you can buy into if you want. If you have insurance through your parents, spouse, another job, you just don't opt in.

At lower paying hourly jobs typically the employer doesn't cover any of the cost. For many these are prohibitively expensive, even if you work full time. Typically for higher paid work, most salary positions, the employer covers most of the cost.

When and for how long I work is a pretty big one. Most employees don't get to just decide their hours on a whim.

When an employer dictates that a worker must work certain hours, it is evidence that they are an employee. But, the opposite is not true -- employers are not obligated to dictate the hours of their employees.

The fact that most employers do dictate hours is a function of those job expectations, not their legal employment classification.

It is pretty common for mid or senior level white-collar salaried jobs to have a decent amount of freedom in working hours within what is functionally reasonable for their role.

> It is pretty common for mid or senior level white-collar salaried jobs to have a decent amount of freedom in working hours within what is functionally reasonable for their role.

That is so disconnected from reality for the majority of American workers that you might have broken me. But lets start with salaried workers have a job .. Their employers don't care what time you work as long as you get that job done. How exactly would that work for Uber? quotas? avg 2-3 rides and hour or ur fired?

Of course -- the majority of Americans are not employed in mid or senior level white-collar salaried jobs. Uber drivers are definitely not in this classification.

I am saying, classification as an employee does not require Uber to change anything about their expectations of their workers' work frequency, duration, or schedule. It can remain voluntary just as it is now.

There are currently voluntary hourly jobs that exist, but people here are probably less familiar with that concept as compared to salaried jobs.

What if far more drivers want to work 10:00-16:00 than are needed? In the current situation, the spot price drops and some drivers leave while more riders enter.

As employees, Uber cannot dynamically vary the pay/minute rate, especially if it falls below minimum wage combined with vehicle/gas reimbursement.

Employers can vary the wages of their employees. They just can't pay wages that are so low that they violate minimum wage law. I don't see an issue.

That doesn't address drivers signing on when they know they won't get any rides then just sitting in their drive way.

Uber can tell them that no work is available. This kind of work arrangement exists today, it’s called “casual employment”

Nothing is forcing Uber to fix employee hours.

Most Uber drivers I know would find that to be a huge negative. but then again thats probably just a difference between big urban centers and the rest of the country.

No one is proposing that so it doesn't matter.

But it will happen tho because if Uber drivers are all considered employees they will get minimum wage, which is fine. Only issue why exactly wouldn't I go "on duty" only when I know there isn't any rides to rank in free cash. While I play games on my phone.

If you are a contractor, you are paid for every hour you work. If you work overtime, you are paid for it. If you work holidays, you are paid for it.

If you are a salaried employee the sad state of the system is a lot of companies tend to take advantage of you and overwork you and don't pay you overtime.

The flip side of it is contractors don't usually get paid vacation, so it's both an advantage and a disadvantage.

Hourly employees, which get paid by the hour and for overtime, exist. This is the most common employee classification. Hourly full-time employees exist. You can have full-time benefits and be paid by the amount of hours worked -- and this is the second-most-common method of working.

> instead of fixing government policy and laws that disadvantage independent workers,

You're mistaken. It is not independent workers that are disadvantaged, but employees who as a result of those laws are less attractive to hire.

The solution here is to remove those arbitrary restrictions, not to expand them.

> It seems backward that the government, instead of fixing government policy and laws that disadvantage independent workers

There are all manner of things we seem to lean on business to provide that government does not. Health insurance is the obvious one.

But we also seem to have a large part of our electorate that like it that way — that don't want government involved in our welfare.

If you want to tip the table toward government taking more responsibility and corporate America less, that is a tougher battle.

> wants to force independent workers to become employees

Sounds exactly like a gig industry talking point, a classic conflation of making something a right with forcing it onto people. At the moment, being categorized as an employee is not even an option for gig workers. How's that for choice?

There's a lot of jobs as a driver where you are categorized as an employee. I work for Lyft so I'm familiar with most of the talking points and I'll reserve my opinion on which ones are bullshit or which ones are not. That being said, that _most_ drivers don't want to be employees is undeniable, and even on polls that unions conduct the outcome is something like half and half.

You can say that they can't decide for themselves because they are being oppressed, etc, etc... and while I agree with the sentiment I don't think "oppression" here is that bad as to force people to vote what gig economy companies want them to vote on an independent poll.

The one thing i find absent from most of these conversations is the perspective of the workforce in question. Probably because neither side locked in this debate actually care what they think.

You can (and actually must) work in both directions simultaneously. We can't do nothing in the hopes of sweeping changes. You have to work within the system that is in place even if you are also working to replace that system (and many are).

> Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees, as there are many disadvantages to doing so. In these cases, the only people that benefit are the politicians that can go on ignoring the real problems.

I agree with the ethos of your response, but not the rationale.

Many people don't understand the costs associated with being gig workers.

Many people don't understand the value of benefits given to them by employers.

This is a big reason why democracies exist - many people simply can't make decisions for themselves.

I always love the, "People are too stupid to make decisions for themselves" argument. People are more than adequate in making important decisions that directly touch their lives.

I always love the various countries[0] who implement direct democracies because "people are more than adequate in making important decisions that directly touch their lives."

[0] - There's only one for the record and it's Switzerland.

You must have no understanding of the word "directly" then. Do you think the military, trade deals, etc directly touch people's lives? Of course the average person isn't going to waste time educating themselves on these topics, they are going to pick someone who represents them to. I think most people might know a little something about their own jobs.

> I think most people might know a little something about their own jobs.

So then why do articles like this exist? If people know all of the things that directly affect them, why do they make so many mistakes?

https://blog.stridehealth.com/post/1099-tax-mistakes

https://www.taxslayer.com/blog/rideshare-drivers-avoid-these...

https://www.ayroyal.com/uber-tax-form-mistakes-avoid/

https://www.ridesharingdriver.com/top-5-uber-lyft-tax-mistak...

> Many gig workers explicitly do not want to become employees, as there are many disadvantages to doing so.

On what basis do you say this? Have you found good unbiased survey research?

No, the government gets stuck picking up the slack when employers evade the law.

Gig workers should be able to organize and effectively negotiate reasonable contracts instead of getting the shaft. My brothers union contract for musical performance crates a more free market environment than the whims of companies like Doordash.

In normal countries, the government provides you healthcare, no matter what your job is, or if you have a job at all.

In America, we already gave up on that fight. Instead, we made it your employer's responsibility to provide you healthcare. And now the government is yelling at Uber for not giving you healthcare.

Fascinating.

There are many successful independent workers in the US, from your local plumber to Paul Graham. And they have plenty of support in government policy.

The people who are not successful are independent workers who are dependent on an employer. The government cannot fix a logical contradiction.

That would be fine but these self employed people aren't exactly saving money for retirement or healthcare.

Gig worker falls off a ladder and ends up a paraplegic. Guess who will be footing the bill?

Not to mention that the people forced into the "gig" economy are often ADOS, black and/or latino. It helps to cement their bottom caste statuses in this country. The white/asian people on HN cling to their classist agenda and aren't willing to talk about race because of how privileged they are and how segregated their workplaces are. They just don't know the experience and make abstract claims about what is fair based on class.

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