Statists, take notice of how improvements in work conditions come from competition and not from regulation. They're better off now than through the monopoly of taxi medallions.
Even in a competitive market for autos, the capital dependence of the industry -- and potentially geographical separation between plants -- means that if the workers in Alan's factory are upset with their working conditions, they very likely can't just walk over to Bob's factory en-masse and sign up to work there. The ability to do that with certain services that are 1:1 and where the middleman is just providing matchmaking gives the individual service providers more power to set working conditions with the middleman in a market where there are competing middlemen then would be the case in many industries.
"provided entirely by one worker" : this is like admitting that the problem comes from injecting hierarchy into the system, which in a free market can only happen voluntarily if both parties benefit from it, but in a statist society is imposed or restricted by the economy planners through regulation.
"essentially a matchmaking service where there is very low [switching] friction" : every market is a matchmaking service between the seller and the buyer, and the way to sustain low friction is to have as little regulation as possible (you will see the Uber/Lyft_fuelled prosperity (e.g. happy workers) disappear if the government steps in, and it will decrease wages to the point that it will be equal to the taxi market which is heavily regulated)
"which is not true in many other industries" : how can we know? "many other industries" are mostly regulated, and heavily so.You're saying deregulation doesn't work in other industries because they're already regulated.
The problem of workers and factories, as far as I know, is solved by unions. However, historically governments have regulated unions as well. Cf. Bangladeshi garment workers, their poor working conditions and their torturing of labor organizers.
No, markets are not matchmaking services. Markets are places where people make matches, matchmaking services are a service that is sold in the market. Notably, its the core of the service Uber and Lyft provide, and its low friction to switch, as a user or supplier, between them. This is a special characteristic of the kind of service Uber and Lyft are selling.
> "which is not true in many other industries" : how can we know?
Because we can readily observe that what many other industries are selling is not matchmaking services between single-worker-provided services and purchasers of those services with low switching friction for workers because local competition exists which can readily absorb additional workers because there is little capital dependency for the service being provided that isn't carried with the worker and there is low friction for consumers to switch between service providers.
> You're saying deregulation doesn't work in other industries because they're already regulated.
No, I'm not saying either that deregulation doesn't work in other industries, or that to the extent it doesn't its because they're already regulated. I'm saying the specific features of the market in which Uber and Lyft are operating which provide significant leverage to their drivers to improve their labor conditions by leveraging competition among potential employers does not exist in most other markets, and so is not simply generalizable into "improvement in working conditions come through competition not regulation" (and that, additionally, history provides plenty of examples of improvement in working conditions that came through regulation.)
It certainly illustrates how workers can, in certain market conditions, leverage competition between services through which their labor is marketed to improve labor conditions, and its certainly worth understanding for that value.
There were also missteps with insurance that companies like Uber and Airbnb made, which were corrected, but, I suspect, wouldn't have been addressed as quickly without a legal/regulatory framework for liability. They're essentially hidden risks/costs to the consumer and employees.
So aspects of this market need more than a simplistic "Yay competition, boo regulation..." And, I think in general we need to move public & political discussion beyond that point an get a better understanding of where competitive markets work, and where they fail.
The philosophical connection between the hacker culture/ethics and anarchism was much clearer to me and many others maybe a decade ago, but now I see this losing ground.
There's a fear in people when someone calls for decentralization of power. Most other types of decentralization are obviously good in the eyes of programmers, but not this one anymore.
It is not even that so much in this case as the language used.
The HN community works hard to encourage polite conversation. Even a commonly agreed upon opinion will be down voted if not stated in a polite and clear fashion.
If you had instead stated "This is an excellent example of free market competition allowing more freedom for workers than are exhibited in a government regulated market" then your comment would likely have been better received. :)
This particular case seems to realize said friction (and consequently, the surplus/benefit for the drivers) precisely because the service itself being offered by Lyft/Uber is market like, and the end-consumer product is in fact offered by the drivers themselves. It is not clear to me (or the others disagreeing with you here evidently) that regulation has any bearing on this conversation -- in a world where both Lyft and Uber's respective operations are regulated by the state, the power is still in the drivers' hands because Lyft and Uber are competing to offer the drivers' services.
This is not exactly the common formula for most employee-employer relationships, although it may become more common as this business model takes off. What dragonwriter seems to be saying IMO is that there are certainly cases that don't fit this mold that are good arguments for state intervention; among them are cases where there is greater friction for the employees themselves due to the nature of the business; lack of information about compensation, working hours, or other metrics to evaluate the given positions; or, as dragonwriter said, physical proximity to the workplace itself.
If you would be so kind, please elucidate how you feel this particular seemingly unique scenario is generalizable to regulation in general.
PS: Apologies if this is wordy and difficult to follow, I have a hard time writing coherently into this tiny box.
I'll try to clarify my point: before Uber/Lyft, we had taxis. Just taxis. Then, the argument went: "Well yes, for taxis we need state intervention because if the government doesn't regulate cabs then anyone can charge fare and conditions will deteriorate and it will be inherently less safe and..."
Then Uber/Lyft comes around and all of a sudden the taxi market is "relatively frictionless" and has other "unique characteristics" that make it so beneficial to employees.
I'm trying to point out that there is nothing special about taxis. It is not a special market. I can't deny that one to one business relationships allow for faster change in the market, as the employee can simply up and leave at any point.
The taxi market was the furthest thing from frictionless until competition started. The power will always be in the employees' hands so long as anyone is free to start competition. We see this with this selfsame example - before Uber, taxi drivers were basically employees to medallion owners (and taxis were supposed to be a regulated system for the free enterprise of starting a one-man cab company, not for the rich to buy all medallions and rent them). This is an example of failed regulation that allowed the current exploitation of taxi drivers. Competition is now allowing better conditions for those same drivers, even though there's no pretense that Lyft drivers own their business. It's an above-board operation and more moral than before, and not surprising that it works better for both parties engaged in this.
So what I'm arguing is that whenever we say "but it doesn't apply to roads/this/that", it's usually because of the blind spots we have from looking at the system the way it is and being unable to imagine how else it could be. The roads example is a classic one.