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Comment by gmisra | Hacker News Reader

Do you know what would really be magical? An on-demand service that provided a guarantee that all of the humans involved were beneficiaries of living wages, unemployment and workers comp protection, health insurance etc. I really enjoy the convenience these services provide, but ultimately that's all it is - convenience. To me, no convenience is worth watching an entire class of people get 1099-ed into poverty, at the expense of the social safety net that so many people struggled to establish.

When I discuss these issues with my peers (I live in the SF Bay Area), I find that many of them share my concerns, to varying degrees. Does anybody know if such a service exists?

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I think this sentiment comes from the notion that employers should be the basis of the social safety net, which I find odd. Employers will never fully serve this role. It's relying on organizations (corporations usually) to make the trade off between profit and employee well being, two things that are almost always at odds.

It seems to me that it shouldn't matter where your income comes from, the social safety net should be there regardless. The ACA was a step in that direction by requiring people self insure if the did not get that benefit from their employer. I think we need to go even further and separate safety net benefits from employers. Then people would be able to choose whether they want the job security of a W-2 position or if they prefer the flexibility of a 1099 position without having to sacrifice the safety net.

(Side note: I'm a 1099 contractor who self insures. I have a lot of difficulty imagining going back to a W-2 job.)

Right on. If we as a society want to help those whose skills don't command a high monetary value in the market, we should pay for that help as a society (through taxes)!

Any such service would immediately be outcompeted by one which doesn't provide all that - it's trivial to clone an on-demand service, and if you have lower costs you can be cheaper.

If you want all that, you should move to a country where all that is required by law, or lobby towards these laws being implemented in your country. However, you must realise that all that has very real costs; and businesses that are only marginally profitable with current setups will not exist, causing the people working there to lose their (low, but positive) income.

If you just want to help, it might be better to use whatever service exists, and spend a bigger amount on charity.

> Any such service would immediately be outcompeted by one which doesn't provide all that - it's trivial to clone an on-demand service, and if you have lower costs you can be cheaper.

In other words, it's the classic 'race to the bottom' problem, which is exactly what the OP is talking about. It's not helpful at a societal level to out-compete each other into the ground.

I don't agree that companies should become safety nets, but there absolutely should be a liveable minimum wage, that companies are expected to adhere to.

It is good to compete until prices drops super low.... technology drives efficiency and offers better stuff at greater quality tities for lower prices. It's not actually helpful to overpay for things just to ensure a living wage. This living wage is at a lower standard of living. You don't build a building with a thousand men with shovels because someone else will build one nearby using bulldozers. Consumers would rather preserve their own hard earned money than overpay in order to grant someone else a higher than necessary wage.

That's all well and good from the consumers point of view. It doesn't help people who are spending their working hours at a place that cannot support them. It's not about doing things less efficiently, so your 'building with shovels' example is facile. The point is that companies alone cannot be entrusted with the welfare of their employees - this is why minimum wage and works rights / entitlements exist in the first place. The concern is that these companies are using loopholes to skirt the laws, to the detriment of citizens.

I'm sure you'd agree that citizens rights should trump those of consumers who want cheap stuff.

Sure. But asking for a company that doesn't race to the bottom doesn't actually help here; you need to prevent the race from occuring in the first place, rather than ask for companies to stop trying to race.

What you want is a universal basic income from the government (X thousands per year just for being a human wanting to live with dignity) coupled with the platform I'm building, JoatU.org where the people create 'currency' out of the value they bring to society. We're building the welfare state from the neighborhood level upwards.

It seems you feel very strongly about this.

Are you also against open source? It allows companies to rely on unpaid labor (with no benefits) and directly competes with software that does pay benefits and could potentially put them out of business.

idk man I just want to be able to order sushi

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