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Comment by pipo234 | Hacker News Reader

I suppose this comes down to semantics. It's more grey than black and white. For instance, Russia doesn't send conscripts to fight in Ukraine. But it's hard to argue that soldiers fighting and dying in the front lines made a fair choice, while they weren't forced to sign a contract.

Similarly, there are Uber and Lyft drivers that don't have the economic freedom or level of education to work anywhere else.

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> Similarly, there are Uber and Lyft drivers that don't have the economic freedom or level of education to work anywhere else.

I doubt this is true. There are much, much worse jobs. This is just their best option, and it's easier to band together and demand more and more even if it kills the host.

There is little president for healthy industry being killed by bands of unionized workers. Charitably, one might think of rust belt car industry or Britain's mines and railways. Though of course, there was no way those industries could have realistically competed with foreign economies even if all labour was given away for free.

But consider this: if collectively all drivers would go on strike indefinitely (or at least, stop using platforms and instead hustled their rides old school). Would that mean the end for Uber and Lyft? Off course not. They'd take a few punches financially, but they'd be able to pivot, build something else. They have great engineers and money, and no one is forcing them to take such a huge cut.

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