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No matter how simple and straight-forward it is, someone is going to fuck it up. And they're going to do so in a way that isn't immediately detectable, but screws the rest of the company because now they have to support something using the screwed up implementation.

You're a fool if you believe that $0 is the actual cost.

"That ahem sort of racist snark would make a lot more sense if we weren't having this discussion in the context of a system that appears to be providing wildly cheaper service."

Cheaper to Americans. Not cheaper to it's own people. Most of it's own people are still priced out of that market.

Except in the current scenario, the company already has disproportionately more power. A company can get by shorthanded for a while. A person not having a job, however, is far, far more devastating, especially if that person has a family to support.

"That "no" means they have to be willing to replace a substantial amount of their employees"

Not if many of them are afraid of being fired by speaking up. You know, the very people who need a union.

"Unions are an incredible tool, and I'm in favor of them. That doesn't mean I'm in favor of laws enshrining them into disproportionately more power than they already wield."

But without those laws, they have no power. So you've just admitted you are not in favor of unions.

So using the firing of someone to intimidate everyone else is fine by you?

"Ability to set rates does not define the employer-employee relationship."

By itself, no, but it is one of the larger pieces of it.

"In that sense they don't differ much from lead generators for other businesses (plumbers, roofers, landmowers)."

Except lead generators for those other businesses don't have any say in how much you charge.

"A voluntary union could still collectively bargain."

And as someone else said, the company can fire the person who brought the demands to them and tell the rest of them to fuck off and get back to work, or they're next.

"Collective bargaining can absolutely be a component of a voluntary union, if everyone agrees to it."

That "everyone" has to include the leadership of the company. All they have to do is say "no", and the whole thing goes up in smoke.

"If people agree with the union, they'll go along with it"

Unless they're afraid of getting fired.

No. Just no.

Any argument you make will always come back to, "The company will threaten and fire people who don't go along with what they want."

"they should still have that choice as they cannot choose what happens with their union dues"

This isn't true.

"far too many unions spend inordinate amounts of money on political activities instead of their own membership"

If you believe that, then start getting involved in your union's leadership and change it.

" then top it off with all the bureaucratic bloat and high paid leadership"

As opposed to the leanness and crappily paid leadership of the company?

No, it's that they don't care about people not being able to get care, whereas we at least try to care about it.

"If you are a working, middle class person, the free market health care works extremely well."

And if you're not?

Nobody has ever said that US healthcare was cheaper. Not one.

It absolutely is dishonest, and quite possibly fraud. There is absolutely no reason why we should allow this to happen, either.

Worry all you want, but people have never been rational, even when governments didn't do anything about anything. And nothing will change that. Taking away the government regulations will only result in parasitic companies preying on others.

Because it's naively childish, and absolves the companies from any wrongdoing because "the market".

The masses shouldn't matter. The companies shouldn't be making this crap in the first place, no matter how much the "market" wants it. Hence, market failure.

No, it doesn't. Not when it comes to the question of whether someone is an employee or contractor.

"Where is the evidence of that? I've ridden with plenty of Uber drivers who only drive a few hours a week."

If you turn down fares or only drive during certain peak times, you get pushed lower and lower into the queue when the robot decides who to send out on fares.

>This is far from being a dominant factor in employment status. If I offer a job for a fixed rate on Upwork and hire a contractor to do it, the fact that we didn't negotiate the rate doesn't make them an employee.

Except that the person on Upwork has the ability to negotiate, and choose not to take the gig. A driver for Uber does not get the chance to negotiate a fare with a customer and turn it down.

Except they very much are. Uber drivers get punished if they refuse too many fares, which means they do not get to choose what they work on, and they do not get to negotiate their own prices.

Then if they want that, they should be hiring employees.

I honestly fail to see why what Uber wants is in any way relevant here.

Not really. An eBay seller negotiates their own price with the buyer, independent of eBay. Uber/Lyft set a price, and the driver has no say in it.

Drivers get punished if they don't work certain hours, and they don't get to set their own rates. Sounds like an employment relationship to me.

Why on earth would a state do this? It makes absolutely no sense.

Problem being that you're now relying on the willingness of people to learn your new language, which creates a friction point, like someone here was talking about.

StackOverflow careers should have a filter for "Doesn't make you go through a stupid process to submit resume/cover letter".

Except, at least for Android, it's not easy to override the language settings just for an app.

Honestly, at least when it comes to Android development, it's far, far easier to "intuit" (use the phone's default language) than it is to let you choose on a per app basis. The system will automatically select the proper resources, meaning I don't have to write special code to load a Spanish string instead of the English one.

Doesn't matter. That's how most people are going to react. And as I said, the major reason is that I don't want to create yet another account with credit card info that I have to worry about, and that I'm not really going to use for anything.