I have yet to see a convincing argument, here on HN or elsewhere, about how these companies are taking advantage of workers.
Most of us are old enough to have seen these companies spring into existence, so here are the steps:
1) 100% of people are employed or unemployed. Uber (for example) doesn't exist
2) uber starts existing, some previously unemployed people and some previously employed people start working for uber
3) those people that willingly took those jobs are being taken advantage of
What is the principal that justifies 3? People are not agents of free will, and any sub-utopic framework they have to participate in is immoral? Even if that's the case, I'd like to see the argument that those people who chose and choose to work at uber have worse outcomes than they otherwise would.
The grandparent deserves a good rebuttal, and I don't think this is very good. This comment is effectively saying that the gig worker is in fact not a free agent by using analogies like slavery and indentured servitude, but these analogies don't map well to the gig worker's economic position.
I'm going to second the GP's request for a convincing argument, as I've also yet to see one.
I didn’t read this as a rebuttal, it’s pointing out the logical fallacies in the structure of the GP’s argument, so criticising it for not offering a rebuttal is slightly missing the point. They certainly aren’t saying that Uber drivers are in an identical situation to slaves.
It's asserting there are logical fallacies, by calling the arguments "shallow", "straw man", and bemoaning how talk like this is dragging down HN quality.
But I didn't see any pointing out of logical fallacies among the condescension.
But there aren't any fallacies in the GP's argument. And it is quite directly making an absurd and unsupportable statement regarding indentured servitude for a job opportunity that is undeniably no strings attached.
The indentured servitude statement is apt: the GP implies that willful entrance into a contract of employment is by virtue of this willfulness incapable of being exploitative. But indentured servitude is entered into in the same manner, and few would deny the exploitative nature of indentured servitude.
Do you mean gig workers enter into no contract, or indentured servants entered into no contract, or something else?
Indentured Servitude: ‘Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered voluntarily for eventual compensation or debt repayment, or it may be imposed as a judicial punishment.’
Obviously I mean there's no contract demanding ongoing work performance from Uber drivers. Drivers can stop at any time. The only terms stipulate how they can work and under what terms, should they choose to do so.
It is the polar opposite of an arrangement which demands continuing performance. It's even less restrictive than a typical employer-employee relationship.
> It's even less restrictive than a typical employer-employee relationship.
Do you know why I still use taxi's over uber?
Because when I hop in a taxi and tell the driver I'll be inside for a few minutes but I'd like a ride back and they can just keep the meter running, they give me a thumbs up and do exactly that.
When I do this for an uber driver they tell me they're not _ALLOWED_ to do that and if I need a ride back I must call another uber and wait.
And then I hear these companies talk about how these uber drivers really and truly have freedom to do what they want and they're totally not taking advantage of the tax code and pushing all the risk onto the uber driver (wear and tear on the vehicle, insurance, increased risk of car wrecks, etc)!
Yeah, I call bullshit. They're starting to go after these companies because they take advantage of people who are taking long term risk for short term gain (money now vs repairs on the vehicle later). You know how Taxi companies do it? If you drive your own vehicle they get a small % of the fare for the dispatch service. If you don't want to drive your vehicle you can drive theirs and they take a larger % of the fare, but you aren't risking your own vehicle.
Now tell me again how uber is somehow better for their workers?
I refuse to use uber because Taxi drivers are human, uber drivers are an extension of ubers body.
GGP: How is it exploitative if the worker willfully enters into the contract?
GP: But indentured servants enter willfully into their contracts, and indentured servitude is exploitative. So how is the willful nature of gig work relevant to the question of whether it is exploitative?
You: GP has equated gig work with indentured servitude, and they are in no way comparable, because gig workers can quit whenever they choose.
Me: GP did not equate indentured servitude and gig work, they used indentured servitude as a tool to show the flawed reasoning of GGP.
You: Gig work is nothing like indentured servitude, because gig workers can quit whenever they want, and indentured servants can’t.
I see that you're making the same error, equating all contracts in ways that aren't reasonable.
When I buy a stick of gum I'm also entering into a contract (of sale). It would be disingenuous and dishonest of me to claim that the 7-11 clerk is exploiting me in ways similar to indentured servitude (or I, him) simply because both scenarios involve a contract.
The relevant aspect is whether the contract binds someone such that they cannot escape. Uber does not do this, period. To suggest otherwise is absurd.
What you're missing is that there's a limit to what contracts can legally do.
I can certainly enter into a legal contract that requires someone to eat my feces for breakfast, but I bet you if I tried to enforce such a contract I'd be told the law won't do it.
This here is why the idea of being able to walk away from a contract doesn't make the contract valid or legal, nor does it prevent the contract from being exploitative.
Find another reason why it's not exploitative, because them being able to legally walk away from it isn't enough. Not even the LAW uses such a lax definition.
There is a very small chance that the reason it’s difficult to understand is that you’re suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, a stroke, or some other medical issue, so to the extent that you can easily eliminate those as possibilities, you should.
> People are not agents of free will, and any sub-utopic framework they have to participate in is immoral?
This is so fallacious that it almost doesn't parse as English (largely imo because it's been fluffed up to hide the utterly commonplace "so you're saying everything is wrong unless it's perfect?" strawman.)
It's intended to be a steelman and is a rephrasing of an argument said to me in the past; you could dig it up in my comment history from a previous uber discussion should you be so inclined.
Regardless, feel free to ignore my strawman and tell me the real argument.
The real argument is that gig employers have found a way to skirt regulations protecting “real” employees. And that the people who suffer from this are primarily in an economic position such that they don’t have much of a choice but to accept those conditions.
That doesn’t mean “any sub-utopic framework they have to participate in is immoral”, it just means this particular one is.
The only change is that Uber grew the market and popularized hiring cars, and the state of California decided to start attacking its own tech industry.
There's a lot of hypocrisy here. If the state truly had worker's interests at heart it would be looking at the farming industry, not ridesharing.
I think maybe you've misunderstood steelmanning. It's not about taking an argument to the absolute extreme, it's about constructing the most convincing and effective form of the argument.
Gig work normalizes the loss of the overall labor protections / amenities that were wrought so hard during the 19th and 20th century.
Here in The Netherlands flexible labor and temporary rental contracts were introduced last decade, they were meant to increase the fluidity of both markets and take up a small amount of overall contracts, but have started to dominate both of them. Being on either basically erodes any certainty you could have had as a foundation to build your life on.
Gig work is even worse than flexible contracts. Not only can you be ditched at any moment, in many ways you are considered self-employed which strips you of so many protections normally afforded to you. And whereas self-employed software developers (read: freelancers) are in an extremely powerful economic position, the usual gig worker has almost zero leverage. ‘Nuff said.
I don't think the GP does deserve a good rebuttal tbh, it's a pretty weak argument that I have a hard time believing someone could really think. The argument is, because these people "willingly" took the job, they cannot be being taken advantage of? I don't understand why people think "free will" means you cannot be taken advantage of. People can have both free will, and real economic / physical / legal constraints in my life that people could take advantage of if they are in a position to do so. It happens every single day all over the world.
I'll take a stab at a strong argument for gig workers being taken advantage of. I don't think it describes _every single_ gig worker, but I'm sure there are some for whom it's true.
There are individuals in precarious economic positions. They need income to survive, they are living one week to the next (meaning they pay rent weekly, and have no excess money at the end of the week). They need to provide for their families, maybe send money home to their families in another country because they are immigrants. Stuff like that. You can talk to them yourself, ride a cab in New York and ask the driver about his life, these stories are pretty common.
Let's say they have limited skills. But they have a body. They can move around, drive a car, or maybe just ride an e-Bike. They could maybe drive a cab, but driving a cab costs you a a flat fee per month to rent the medallion, no matter what you make. I believe you need some upfront capital to get started. So they sign up for Uber Eats / DoorDash / Grubhub / pick your delivery app.
The pay on DoorDash is very low, because consumers won't pay that much for food delivery. Out of that, the restaurant has to get paid, DoorDash has to get paid, and the gig worker has to get paid. Who has the least amount of bargaining power in this situation? The restaurant has other sources of income, so they can leave if they aren't happy with the cut. The platform obviously sets the terms, and there's a lot of people in precarious economic positions who need money. So the gig worker has the least amount of bargaining power. So he gets a pretty low pay. He lives in a one-room apartment with like, 8 other gig workers who all do delivery for Doordash, Grubhub, Uber Eats etc. (I'm not making this up, it's pretty common) and works 7 days a week. No time for learning some new skill, and since the wages are subsistence level, no ability to save and eventually move on to better work.
So essentially, they need money to survive, the money they get from delivery apps gives them that, but no more. They would certainly prefer to do something else, but have no other skills. So these apps run on the labor of people in precarious economic positions with no better options. Of course he has "free will", but I'm curios what economic alternatives you think are on offer that make that free will a meaningful, and not simply philosophical, concept.
Perhaps the phrase "taken advantage of" triggers some people. But it doesn't seem that controversial to me. The business works because there are people who need to work a job for very low pay. I don't think they love riding around picking up bags of food for $3-$5 each.
Here's a thread on the DoorDash Reddit, I found it by scrolling down the front page, it's not old.
> I couldn’t agree more. The only reason I’m doing doordash currently is out of desperation. Plus, it allows me some much needed flexibility which is crucial given some difficulties in my personal life.
I dunno what you consider that. But it's not like, an arrangement in which the worker seems to opting into this because they think it's a good deal out of their plethora of options. They do it because they are, in their words, desperate.
Edit: I'm not saying gig companies are evil or something, or even predatory. It's unclear to me if they have sound unit economics, but that doesn't make them evil. The business just doesn't work without low delivery wages.
> There are individuals in precarious economic positions.
This is true across all income classes, because the classes are a distribution. While I agree that those in "precarious" positions may be concentrated in the gig economy for the reasons you suggested, this argument is an insufficient rebuttal.
> The pay on DoorDash is very low, because consumers won't pay that much for food delivery.
OK, so costs go up, consumers don't participate in the market, and the gig economy collapses. Are we in a better or worse position now?
> Here's a thread on the DoorDash Reddit
Do these individuals think the picture would be more rosey if they didn't even have this work for income?
> This is true across all income classes, because the classes are a distribution. While I agree that those in "precarious" positions may be concentrated in the gig economy for the reasons you suggested, this argument is an insufficient rebuttal.
That wasn't the entire rebuttal. But people in other income classes don't have anything to do with DoorDash. People in other income classes can be taken advantage of too (I believe there's a thread about SBF buying crypto companies on the cheap as they are on the brink of collapse). Another example might be loan sharking.
> OK, so costs go up, consumers don't participate in the market, and the gig economy collapses. Are we in a better or worse position now?
I believe this is what's called a false dichotomy. But I agree with you it's better to work on DoorDash than have no work and no money at all, if that's what you're offering up as an alternative. The fact that you acknowledge that is the only other alternative is actually a point in favor of it being "taking advantage".
> Do these individuals think the picture would be more rosey if they didn't even have this work for income?
> I believe this is what's called a false dichotomy.
i'm interested in how this is false. if the person could have worked for higher wages before the gig economy, then surely they would not need to rely on the this economy to exist. but those who are unemployed or underemployed clearly see the flexibility as an acceptable compromise for either lack of better skills (and time/money needed to acquire them) or no work at all.
i think the people who can be taken advantage of are those who cannot improve their situation (health issues, mentally or physically impaired, undocumented immigrants, elderly who cannot easily learn new skills or commute to a farther work location), but this is not gig workers as a whole.
people have a habit of complaining that the skills they refuse to advance dont pay much (fast food workers, coal miners). it's always the employer not paying enough, not the fact that someone treats a cashier position as a career rather than a temp job. my parents delivered pizza when we moved to the US in 1991 with $500 to their name. needless to say, they didnt deliver pizza for long despite living in a motel with two kids to raise and nearly non-existent english.
I meant it's false in that it implies there are no other possible solutions that could alleviate this problem.
But if it's not false, and it truly is their least bad option they are choosing over destitution, I would think that's a strong argument for it being "taking advantage". I guess I don't follow the logic of, essentially, "yes I admit this is a terrible job, but your alternative is nothing / starvation, so I'm not taking advantage!"
> i'm interested in how this is false. if the person could have worked for higher wages before the gig economy, then surely they would not need to rely on the this economy to exist
Companies like Uber, Doordash etc. are price dumping because they have unlimited investor money. Their competitors cannot compete, and go out of business. As a result you have a choice of either starving to death or working for these companies.
> it's always the employer not paying enough, not the fact that someone treats a cashier position as a career
A person working as a cashier has a right to a decent living. This has nothing to do with "career".
> A person working as a cashier has a right to a decent living. This has nothing to do with "career".
i think people have a right to food, clean water, shelter, and healthcare. regardless of their employment status. no one should be homeless. but 'decent' is an odd word. should a cashier have a right to 'decently' raise/feed/house 6 kids? i'm not sure. should a cashier have a right to a decent living in the most expensive city in the world? that's a tough one; all cities need cashiers. probably they should be able to afford to rent a studio apt at least, that's not a 60min commute.
i dont know what the number should be. but when it comes to supporting dependents, i would say that we as a society do not have an obligation to make every job - no matter how trivial/approachable/unnecessary - sufficient for the task.
the flip side of this is, of course, should every job be subsidized to support any lifestyle? i'm guessing that the answer is "no". so there is in fact a line to be drawn.
shoe repair doesnt pay what it used to a century ago, but somone can definitely start a business doing it in 2022, and then discover that it's a job that cannot sustain a family of 4. so the person will need to seek greener pastures. how is the gig or unskilled labor situation any different? if it doesnt pay enough to support dependents, then you have to do something else.
i think it's reasonable to say every job should support one person, but more than this should require more than minimum effort.
some of the jobs you listed can pay pretty well (after some time), actually. but bagging groceries at a supermarket is not one of them.
> should every job be subsidized to support any lifestyle
What do you mean by subsidize? You don't "subsidize jobs". You provide a living wage.
What do you mean by "this lifestyle"? It's not a "lifestyle" to have a decent life.
> how is the gig or unskilled labor situation any different
Because, as it was already pointed to you repeatedly, there might not be a choice of greener pastures. Besides this, why do you insist that a person working 8 hours in the hell that is fast food industry isn't worthy of having a decent life outside work? Who is worthy then? You? Why? Where do you draw the line?
I mean, you probably wouldn't last more than a few days in most "unskilled labor" jobs (which actually require quite a lot of skill). But sure, do tell me how you're better.
> i think the people who can be taken advantage of are those who cannot improve their situation
If all the large tech companies conspired to halve wages by agreeing not to hire each other’s employees, and succeeded, would you consider those workers affected to have been taken advantage of?
halving wages by itself, im not sure. if apple decided to take an 80% cut of app sales in their walled garden and made it unprofitable to develop apps there for indie developers, would they be liable for some people not being able to make a living off their platform? do we even know that tech companies are not taking advantage with current wages. apple makes $400k profit per employee, etc.
these gig economies owe their entire existence as a direct result of being mediated as walled gardens. if uber's app vanished tomorrow, so would millions of gig jobs.
but not hiring each other's workers, yes. and in general, price fixing and anti-colluding laws should be enforced to ensure a competative market.
If working for DoorDash is their best available option, I'm inclined to point the finger at every other company first. Why is it that DoorDash and the other Gig economy companies are offering the best available work option for so many? Where are the rest of the companies and the government? I've never really understood blaming the best available option for the lack of alternatives. There are also enough gig economy companies that if one of them was especially bad then workers could easily switch to the competitor.
You're correct that blaming the delivery apps is looking in the wrong place. If the government doesn't want people in precarious employment they should provide a social safety net. Then if the gig jobs were so bad, they would have no workers and would cease to exist. Otherwise, they must be ok.
> There are also enough gig economy companies that if one of them was especially bad then workers could easily switch to the competitor.
And if they're all the same since they all run the exact same business in the exact same markets?
> And if they're all the same since they all run the exact same business in the exact same markets?
The FTC says they're going to take a look to see if there is any collusion. There's a reason those laws are on the books and real harm to workers could happen if they were colluding. It seems like these gig economy companies are spending a lot of time and effort to entice workers from other gig economy companies to join them, so maybe it's actually working correctly already.
Every person “above” these people in the economic hierarchy benefit from their dire situation, and there is very little incentive to change that structure.
“I’ll do whatever I can to help you from suffering from me being on your back, except getting off your back.”
> I dunno what you consider that. But it's not like, an arrangement in which the worker seems to opting into this because they think it's a good deal out of their plethora of options. They do it because they are, in their words, desperate.
and is his situation better if he cannot do doordash?
or to rephrase it. suppose I dont like mowing my lawn, but I dont want to pay what it costs for a professional lawn care service to do it. For the sake of argument, say the lawn care service charges $200, but I would only pay $20.
A desperate guy comes by, needs $10 for a mcdonalds meal or he goes hungry, he also needs $1000 to save towards getting an apartment. and i say "give you 20 bucks to mow my lawn", he figures he kinda has no choice, he does it "out of desperation", I "take advantage of him".
now suppose everyone in town has same policy as me, and its through lawndash.
Is the desperate guy worse off? how exactly are things better if i said "well.. I would pay you $20, but well... it almost seem cruel not to pay $200, so im gonna pass on that. Good luck getting a bite to eat though!" ?
Do you not understand that if some services are too expensive they will not exist? Would you pay $1000 for a 10 min busride to/from work(each trip)? no.
delivery of food has a certain price, if it is beyond that, it simply will not be done, and the gig workers are no worse off.
seeing as how this is the case, nobody is being taken advantage of. Its a choice, it may not be much, but he can just say "no" and be 100% as well off as if proud communist unions had their way and forbade these jobs.
The question isn't whether he's worse off or not. I don't know why you're moving the goalposts. It seems obvious that if you are presented with only two choices, one between $3 an hour and one between $0 and hour, that $3 an hour is better. The post is about whether they are being taken advantage of.
> Do you not understand that if some services are too expensive they will not exist?
No please explain more to me about how the fundamentals of economics and business work.
I suspect you would not make this argument if the prospective employee were a four year old child and the service to be rendered was sweeping your chimney. But according to what principle do you distinguish the two cases?
I would also rather a 4 year old have $20 for working than starving (in some fictional scenario where those are the two options). Given such an option the only reason I would refuse the child the work would be for legal liability reasons.
IMO if a child is so desperate for food that they must work, then pretty much all other options have failed, and they should be allowed to do it.
I can tell you I have had children ask me for work before. When I was struggling to pay for my own family, I had to refuse them work. Instead they simply stole things from me when I wasn't home. That is illegal too, although stealing from people tends to get you put in jail even faster, so I can tell you there seems to be kids in America where this is a real thing it just ends up being the 'work' they do is something illegal since they're not allowed a legal channel to work.
What I would say is that collectively we decide on the rules of society— what conditions are acceptable and so on. And just as we have decided in the US that it is unacceptable to allow four year olds to sweep chimneys, so too can we decide that, in the words of Franklin Roosevelt, “no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”
Nobody, but that doesn't change anything about whether they're being taken advantage of. In order to be taken advantage of, desperation is a helpful precondition.
So, while everyone is so keen on “helping” them by reforming Uber, what are the policies you propose to not keep them homeless?
Also, what about all of the Uber drivers I meet who I talk to that do just consider this a part time hustle? I’ve met a few grandparents when I travel to Nashville for work for instance who say they love the flexibility of Uber. They said it gives them a little extra travel money.
Another point about the laws that California passed
to “protect freelancers” had other unintended consequences.
Jason Snell, the former editor of MacWorld went independent and now makes a living via podcasting, blogging and the occasional freelance writing gig for Macworld. He said AB-5 was going to make it harder for him to be a freelance writer in California.
I assure you that Jason Snell isn’t a right wing conservative by any stretch of the imagination railing against “big government”.
I didn't propose to reform Uber, and actually didn't make any policy recommendations at all. I engaged on the narrow question of whether some gig workers are being "taken advantage of", which GP claimed was essentially impossible since they have "free will", which I think is a simplistic philosophical / economic argument.
For specific policy, I would probably support something like a federal jobs guarantee, so employment is available to anyone who wants it that sets a wage floor in the labor market. Then those offering gig work will have to compete with that minimum wage floor. But it's really not my area of expertise.
>these analogies don't map well to the gig worker's economic position.
They do though. Gig workers are almost always in a very economically precarious position which Uber takes advantage of in precisely the same way that employers of indentured servitude do.
If the US had full employment and decent unemployment benefits (like it used to) jobs like these wouldnt exist.
> If the US had full employment and decent unemployment benefits (like it used to) jobs like these wouldnt exist.
We don't, though, and that has much deeper causes than the existence of gig companies. A large swath of the American voting public supports political candidates who oppose providing an adequate backstop for people balancing on a knife edge.
I think there's a legitimate market for people who want to earn cash in their spare time on their own schedule and gig companies seem like a good fit for those people, such as people who already have stable employment or cannot work regular hours for one reason or other. Very few industries/companies offer that level of flexibility to their workers.
The issue is that gig companies are also gutting already-existing labor markets by burning investor cash to undercut established competitors, so people who have stable employment find themselves forced into precarity and turn to gig work due to the lack of full time employment in the industry combined with the lack of adequate support in the American social safety net.
“ If the US had full employment and decent unemployment benefits (like it used to) jobs like these wouldn’t exist.”
I think that’s the “utopia” gp is referring to.
All this will do is force people to spend time and money forming corporations so that the uber corporation (for example) can contract directly with another corporation (most likely a one-employee s-corp) which will “employ” the driver. Same economic effect, but just with extra friction and cost for people who in general don’t have a lot of money to spare
>which will “employ” the driver. Same economic effect, but just with extra friction and cost for people who in general don’t have a lot of money to spare
...and all the rights that come with being an employee, for all that they're not so great in the US.
yes, but the “employee rights” will be between the driver and the driver’s own corporation - how does that help the driver if there isn’t enough money coming from the contracting company (eg Uber) to pay for those benefits?
This comment genuinely makes no sense to me. If you are going to leverage extremely strong analogies, like indentured servitude, then you need to justify that. It seems like you are disappointed by any conversation that doesn't mix up idealism with what's realistic, and what is going on.
A request for explanation almost by definition cannot be a strawman. Just because you disagree with the context of that question does not justify such a shallow, emotional response.
The point is that indentured servants also willingly enter their contract. So if that is the standard—- that one who willingly accepts a duty is incapable of being exploited, then neither are indentured servants. In fact, according to that standard slavery is arguably not exploitation either, so long as the slave initially consents. But most people would find this absurd: slavery is the prototypical example of exploitation.
But the original comment wasn’t asserting anything like this, it’s asking for the aspects of gig economy jobs that make it coercive or exploitative in light of the consent of its workers.
The onus is on the person connecting that to indentured servitude to explain why that connection is apt. Otherwise it’s a useless connection.
Gig companies must not be deceptive in their claims to prospective gig workers about potential earnings, and they must be transparent and truthful about costs borne by workers.
The FTC will investigate evidence of agreements between gig companies to illegally fix wages, benefits, or fees for gig workers that should be open to competition. The FTC will also investigate exclusionary or predatory conduct that could cause harm to customers or reduced compensation or poorer working conditions for gig workers.
> A request for explanation almost by definition cannot be a strawman.
It can when the request isn't really a request but an assertion taken to an absurd extreme that merely resembles a question. cf Tucker Carlson "just asking questions".
I disagree with the grandparent comment, but upvoted it as a topic of discussion. We might as well have someone say the quiet part out loud so that we can pick it apart. No doubt Uber C-levels sleep soundly telling themselves these kinds of things and their lobbyists use these kinds of arguments.
> People can quit Uber/Lyft whenever. Indentured servitude cannot be quit.
same thing really if you have no other option to earn rent and food.
And them using it as opportunity to pay low (after you include car deprecation/fuel/repairs might be even at/below minimal wage level) means you can't just do your 40 hours/week to support yourself.
> I'd like to see the argument that those people who chose and choose to work at uber have worse outcomes than they otherwise would
The reply:
> this is the same argument that was used in favor of slavery.
To which you replied
> Nope. There's a difference in creating a new choice for people and taking all choice away from them.
The commenter is not saying that gig work is the same as slavery here, they are saying that slave holders argued, often correctly, that slaves, as capital, enjoyed a higher standard of living than did wage workers, who could be worked to death and thrown away, and that this justified the institution.
Taking the choice away is mostly about preventing a race to the bottom, especially in professions where the workers don't have the bargaining power to demand respectful working conditions. This is why we have minimum wage laws, working hour limits, workplace safety laws etc.
> People can quit Uber/Lyft whenever. Indentured servitude cannot be quit.
This implies they have viable alternate choices (setting aside the obvious other option, unemployment or being houseless). It may be that Uber/Lyft are the only employers they have access to, or they may otherwise have a sufficient amount of bills / debt that they have no personal time / cash to explore employment alternatives adequately.
Conservative (and by and large its ally, libertarian) politics lean on this often obfuscated nuance to sell this idea that the poor always have the choice to simply leave exploitative employers. It is not so simple.
Society made a bunch of rules about the employee/employer relationship. Society allowed business to use contractors to fill positions that didn't fall under that relationships, for example, to fill short term needs with contractors, or to bring in specialists that companies did need and couldn't afford to have full time.
Uber decided fuck Society's contract/norms for the business/employee relationship, we are going to abuse the definition of 'contractor'.
Classes in society necessitate a qualitative differentiator. If you want to argue that it's fair that some people are rich while some people are poor, there has to be some natural inherent difference between the rich and the poor. Canonically in the western world it's usually "gumption" or "intelligence". You'll rarely find that argument made explicitly, but it's implicit in all discussions that presuppose economical classes.
Once that observation is made, it becomes clear that the argument is actually: This class of people is unfit for better work, and without our poverty wages they would die. In my opinion that's very similar to the idea that the "negro" was inferior to the white man and therefore it was by his grace that the "negro" was allowed to exist.
> there has to be some natural inherent difference between the rich and the poor
No? They can all be the same. But without individual incentives to take risks and innovate, the whole doesn’t progress. The meritocratic model works fine among equals.
> Canonically in the western world it's usually "gumption" or "intelligence".
reply
Emphasis on natural inherence. Meritocracies work if everyone is statistically identical. They even work when everyone is perfectly identical. They don't if every action is independent and identically distributed, but it's not; being lucky in the past can make one more capable in the present even in an unbiased system.
We should keep that randomness in mind to avoid being cruel. But systems that ignore this path dependence, or worse, try to stamp it out, underperform those that acknowledge it.
You're just making the same argument you tried to disagree with. If there's some quality that means luck today implies luck tomorrow and it isn't just the compounding effect of capital that's exactly the western notion I'm talking about. Instead of calling it "gumption" you've just called it "luck".
Not really. You only have to believe that there are some complex actions which, if taken on an individual level, benefit society. For example, starting a business, or skilling into a highly demanded field such as medicine. Doing these things can be highly financially rewarding, and that means that people are more likely to attempt them than they would be otherwise.
You don't have to believe the "luck begets luck", and there is certainly injustice in the way wealth lands around society, but not allowing people to become rich by taking socially-positive risks removes the marginal incentive to do so. That is, I believe, GP means by "the whole doesn't progress".
> If you want to argue that it's fair that some people are rich while some people are poor, there has to be some natural inherent difference between the rich and the poor.
I don't buy this at all. There can be no difference between me and a billionaire who inherited their wealth, but I feel under no obligation to call that unfair. They were just lucky, and that's fine.
> If you want to argue that it's fair that some people are rich while some people are poor, there has to be some natural inherent difference between the rich and the poor.
Would you consider it immoral if a thousand people of equal economic status chose to participate in a lottery where they each paid in 1% of their money, and then one person, selected at random, won all of it?
Does your answer change if it's a chess tournament instead of a lottery?
They control your ability to work there. For some people these are the only kinds of jobs they can get, they are stuck there, trying to pay off the vehicle they got a loan for purchasing that they use in the job. They are kind of prisoners. Many of those people can't get other jobs that pay much. Uber can decide you are violating the rules somehow and cut you off (working too much or too little).
"People get into these agreements on their own choice" some will say, but these are often people without other good choices.
Agreed, but is it better for these people to have fewer choices for work?
And who is in the best position to decide? The person making the choice to drive for Uber, you or I, politicians?
I go back and forth about this on a high level, but don’t necessarily support outright bans on gig work. Maybe just a bit more sensible regulation to help people understand potential earnings vs. all their costs (ex. car payment, insurance, repairs, etc.) and maybe some way to allow them to accrue sick pay based on hours worked. Just to put a slight hand on the scale to help people deciding on gig work. But we’d have the problem of who would pay for any such benefits; Uber may pass the cost along to end users. Maybe funded by taxes somehow
Maybe it's better to think on it in terms of the flexibility of Uber's services when they were a mere startup and their evolution over time (business strategy, finances, app development and deployment, etc) and the myriad of ways so-called consumers, according to the article, took advantage of them and now, more government regulation.
I knew of someone who made it his full time occupation to drive for Uber (and still does today) despite the hurdles of being involved in that structure. I also know of another who drove to supplement his existing income stream (during covid19) to make his ends meet.
Asymmetric power is the engine that turns the world.
Everyone on earth has asymmetric power in one context or another. Men and women, kings and peons alike. There is no universality, despite some of the narratives out there
Edit: seeing this comment have wide swings from upvotes and downvotes, wish the “most controversial” sorting was a thing
I’m not making a normative statement. It’s objective.
As easily as what you said, one could say (and US allies like Saudi do say) “women’s rights are mostly fine, but there are places where they go too far and a husband must step in”
I don't really know what relevance this has to the previous conversation. But I would say that laws are much more likely to get things right than to let every powered individual make their own rules.
The context is the battle between capital and labor. Its (historically) very important and this is just one tiny instance of it. Another instance was on NPR today about the proposed railroad workers strike, apparently they don't get any paid sick days which is outrageous especially considering how lauded Warren Buffet is when he yaks about paying less tax than his secretary; well she doesn't spend $10m a year on tax lawyers and maybe Buffet could spare some sick days for the BNSF workers? Tech examples could include workers in China suffering under 9-9-6, or Google-Apple wage suppression collusion, or a common topic around here, how early startup employees lose their equity comp through some kind of legal slight-of-hand.
You are right and we have allowed capital to outpace labor in power by supporting globalization and loose central bank policy since the closing of the gold window in 1971
Hard for immigrants to get those jobs. They might not in the locations where those jobs are, or can't pass a background check, or might have been arrested for dui 10 years ago, or maybe once wrote a hot check (which must happen way more for poor people). A lot of uber drivers are immigrants without much access to the working world, nothing like I have as a us citizen with a college degree and history of working as a dev. If I just immigrated from Ghana, and I also was maybe driving some times on my buddies car and id because I wasn't allowed to for some reason. This is the underclass world a lot of people are living in.
>Hard for immigrants to get those jobs. They might not in the locations where those jobs are, or can't pass a background check, or might have been arrested for dui 10 years ago, or maybe once wrote a hot check (which must happen way more for poor people).
Are you sure you're not talking about gig workers as well? For instance, uber says[1] that they need a valid drivers license and conducts background checks (which apparent check for previous driving infractions as well as criminal history).
Your wording sounds like you're posting this as a "gotcha". Would you like to elaborate further?
And as a response to your perceived "gotcha", no, they do not need to be illegal. Even a refugee with a medical degree in their home can arrive here and can fall through the cracks in our system just because they aren't able to master a second language fast enough. Not every immigrant is illegal, no matter the pearl clutching.
I'm referring to people whom are given the same legal benefits of being able to work besides me when they haven't gone through the proper channels of legalities nor sought to do so. I remember my parents immigrating to the US and not have to cross a river at night with just the clothes on their back or pay off a "coyote" to do so.
Uber doesn't 'employ' their drivers. They are contractors. AFAIK an illegal can get a TIN, which combined with their home country's identity documents would be sufficient to legally complete the paperwork to pay out the contract [note this is not legal advice.]
You'll notice this pattern lots of places. Look around in employment ads for construction gigs in lots of cities and they'll be looking for 'contract' teams which we all know likely means some illegals who setup a genuine LLC or get a TIN or whatever; there's no requirement to verify legal employment when paying out a contract AFAIK.
Both GGP and indentured servitude's defenders argue that an economic relationship is, by virtue of having been agreed to by both parties, ipso facto non-exploitative. GP was not saying that gig work and indentured servitude are the same or morally equivalent, just pointing out that both use the same argument.
The logical fallacy is that just because one option is better than the alternatives, it does not follow that the option in question is good. The villain from Saw may let you choose how you will be murdered, but your having chosen to be stabbed instead of drowned doesn't absolve the killer of their culpability in your death.
>The logical fallacy is that just because one option is better than the alternatives, it does not follow that the option in question is good. The villain from Saw may let you choose how you will be murdered, but your having chosen to be stabbed instead of drowned doesn't absolve the killer of their culpability in your death.
Except that the victims in saw were unwittingly put in those situations. What's happening with gig workers is closer to something like the squid game, where the participants gave informed consent, and even had an opportunity to bail out later.
Economic circumstances limit choices, too (though not as explicitly or as definitively as Jigsaw). Most viewers did not see people choosing to participate in the squid game as a victory for economic free choice, but instead as a commentary on how dire someone’s circumstances had become that they would choose to play and later even reaffirm that choice. Someone’s least bad option can still be pretty terrible!
Free will and choice suppose one's back isn't against a wall with respect to bills, a roof over one's head, medical or mental issues affecting either of the aforementioned.
That we went from "I have no job at all and am unemployable" to "it appears I can be exploited for my labor at a rate that doesn't allow me to escape poverty, but may allow me to at least not starve to death" is not defensible or desirable.
That you see it as acceptable or a reflection of a legitimate "choice" moreso reflects on your inexperience with or inability to adequately reason about the reality of sincere poverty, not reality.
In a discussion about Uber drivers you jump to slavery and nearly starving to death. Then follow it up with attacks on my "inexperience" and "inability to adequately reason."
You are the one whose confrontational and disrespectful manner of conversing impedes legitimate discourse. The person lowering the quality of HN discussion is you.
I think you're strongly misunderstanding the criticism. It's not "utilitarianism is wrong". It's more like "the specific claim that sub-standard working conditions are better than nothing is a very old and weak argument that has a tradition of being used to justify subjugation".
And frankly I don't see how OP's argument is particularly utilitarian. Is the counterargument of "allowing companies to do this hurts workers in aggregate" not equally utilitarian? Worrying about free will and free association is more the realm of liberalism, isn't it?
> the specific claim that sub-standard working conditions are better than nothing is a very old and weak argument that has a tradition of being used to justify subjugation
It's a weak argument when it's incorrect. slavery is clearly not better than nothing. That doesn't mean that it's a bad argument, it means that slavery isn't defensible by that argument.
Focus on the meat of the argument. A job can either be worth doing or not worth doing for a worker, based on the working conditions. We can agree on that surely. A productive discussion would focus on defining an acceptable working condition and whether or not uber meets that definition.
"Nothing" here is total lack of a job or similar, so slavery at least keeps you from starving and gives you shelter. In this myopic sense it's better than nothing. But in the big picture, it's important to have standards. The argument works in both situations and has similar failings in both situations.
> Focus on the meat of the argument. A job can either be worth doing or not worth doing for a worker, based on the working conditions. We can agree on that surely.
That's basically a tautology, so sure.
> A productive discussion would focus on defining an acceptable working condition and whether or not uber meets that definition.
Which is why it's helpful to point out that people getting something out of a job doesn't show that it's acceptable.
I think it’s not only very interesting but highly revealing that the same argument made in favor of the most iniquitous of all labor relations is reflexively used to justify gig work.
What are the lines a person may not cross for crossing is an indication that the person is lacking information or decision making competence and thus decision making power is taken from them?
Some might argue for one extreme or another, the rest of us see it at some point between total and no decision making power with the line drawn at different points in different contexts. Besides drawing the line, there is the matter of who can draw it. Why would one think that on the main the FTC is better at making the decision in this context than the person making the decision?
> Its comments like this that have caused me to really lose faith in the quality of conversation on Hacker News.
I get what you're saying but isn't it a little rash to discard all discussion on hacker news because of a splattering of naive shallow comments? I rather agree with your response, but I also understand how many people who have yet to consider the matter deeply, or maybe have never been poor, think of reality as "a group of rational equal individual actors".
I very much agree that the argument responded too here share a lot of similarity to arguments for slavery, although the veneer is certainly much more palatable, but we have to remember that even slavery was pretty popular, and hacker news will never be a progressive socialist platform.
Personally, I think accepting these types of discussions is a small price to pay for the informed and nuanced discussions i get to have and watch on hacker news.
Slave holders argued, often correctly, that slaves, as capital, enjoyed a higher standard of living than did wage workers, who could be worked to death and thrown away, and that this justified the institution.
The original comment said
> I'd like to see the argument that those people who chose and choose to work at uber have worse outcomes than they otherwise would
Just as it is no argument for slavery that slaves were better off than wage workers, so it is no argument for gig work that gig workers are better off than those with no work at all.
Yes, my original comment was a bit brash, agreed. And I do think its a good thing that this sort of is discussed, because the idea expressed is a patently wrong yet extremely popular viewpoint on this platform and the only way to address that is discussion.
But, unfortunately, I think there are two major concepts that are also at play here, that cause me to disagree with your position, or perhaps should be better elaborated in order to explain mine.
The main two components of swaying public opinion during a public debate are:
First, who actually presents the more logical argument.
The second is that both viewpoints are given stature and respectability by the mere fact that both viewpoints are included in the debate and by the fact that the community has chosen to engage and listen to the debate. The fact that both the members of the debate and the audience itself are willing to listen to both sides of the discussion and take them both seriously is oftentimes the more major persuasive social force at play. This is because it means that audience members who perhaps do not pay as as much attention to the actual merits within the debate itself, will quickly deduce that by virtue of the fact that the debate is taken seriously, both viewpoints must therefore be serious and well respected. Additionally, the fact that both viewpoints are being debated at all implies that both viewpoints must be relatively similar in liklihood of accuracy and therefore it is reasonable to believe either side of the debate. After all we no longer hold debates on whether or not gravity exists, we only hold debates on things where either side could, potentially, be true.
This second point is why the concept of the Overton window exists. This second point is why you cannot correct neo-nazism by discussing neo-nazi ideas in a public forum, and the mere act of giving neo-nazism a public forum at all is a win for the neo-nazi, even if you then win the debate (in short: neo-nazism is such a rightfully hated ideology, that merely giving it the respect of a debate is a step up for the ideology, even if they then lose the debate). Etc
This leaves us with a question. Which is more important? Which concept is more responsible for persuading audience members? The first concept or the second? Surely, different discussions in different social situations would lean more heavily towards one or the other being more important.
I think if you and I were to a host public, yet small debate in front of a class of aspiring logicians at Oxford University, the merits of the logical argument would be more important than the setting itself. I would be willing to bet that such an audience, in such a not-very-high-profile setting would be more moved by logical argument than the social stature of the event. Conversely, I would posit that the reason Fox News invites liberals on their platform regularly, and then does not give them an adequate chance to prevent their viewpoints, is because it allows the network to put them against actually indefensible and unpopular extremely right wing viewpoints, and leave the uneducated audience, who did not receive a good explanation of either viewpoint, to leave the segment assuming that both viewpoints must be equally well respected and potentially correct.
The original post I responded to is factually incorrect. Their viewpoint boils down to the idea that a labor arrangement cannot be exploitative if that labor arrangement was entered into willingly by both parties, with no nuance for what constitutes "willingly" in our economic system. That is a patently false idea, and is only tangentially related to the situation of gig workers to which the author attempts to relate it.
So the question becomes, if I give a genuine rebuttal of that memetic idea, which would be more important? Would the Hacker News crowd be moved more by well reasoned argument that goes many paragraphs deep, involving historical examples and moral assessment? Or would the majority of internet readers skip over the debate after the first few sentences or posts, and assume that by virtue of the fact that the original post is the highest voted comment on the page, that it must be a reasonable viewpoint?
Considering the fact that at the time I posted, there were numerous attempts at logical refutation, all of which were ignored. And considering the fact that the vast majority of the responses I have received so grotesquely misunderstand my post as to think that I am calling gig workers slaves, as opposed to pointing out the logical fallacies of the post. I have to think that no, the second effect here is more potent to this particular online crowd than the first.
In that scenario, nuanced reasoned rebuttal of an extreme viewpoint is not reasonable. To give respect to an unrespectable viewpoint is not a virtue if your audience lacks the intellectual depth or curiosity to critically engage with the debate.
In that scenario, the best thing you can do is to put a large warning label on the unreasonable viewpoint that says: "Beware all audience members: the above viewpoint is not considered reasonable or moral by all members of this community." That is how you address the second social concept at play here.
People who then, afterward, want to discuss in deeper logic thereafter, are free to do so.
And that's why my response was intentionally brash, and why engaging with such an unrespectable and indefensible viewpoint, in public, at the top of the post, is an irresponsible thing to do, until it has been established first to a passive audience that this is not an equal debate between respected opinions. And even then, that is often not sufficient, but it is at least something I could do here.
It isn’t indentured servitude, but it cannot be distinguished from indentured servitude by the willful nature according to which the contract is entered, because indentured servants entered willfully into their contracts as well.
I am correcting your misapprehension that the parent is equating gig work with indentured servitude. They are not. And I am reiterating the point the parent makes regarding the error both the grandparent and you make, in inferring from the willful entrance into a contract the non-exploitative nature of that contract and its execution. To repeat: indentured servants entered willfully into their contracts, yet those contracts were manifestly exploitative. Hence the willful nature of one’s entrance into a contract says nothing about whether it is exploitative in character or execution.
Comments like this make me lose faith in the actual teachings of philosophy and logic to non-academics. OP's post is not a straw man, and you have done nothing to prove it.
Your comment reads like someone who read a few books on logic and argument and started using them whenever they have an argument without understanding it.
> By your logic above, an indentured servitude would count as a "not being taken advantage of" and by implication, reasonable moral form of employment.
Many of the people here are becoming sociopathic in their desire to control the world around them through technology and have completely lost empathy for the average person who is a victim of these industries. The gig economy is clearly arbitraging labor in a manner most would consider somewhere between exploitative and unfair. And the broader economy puts pressures on them to exist in that.
As inequality mostly driven by technology grows more and more people will be required to accept less and less fair employment so the gig economy is essentially betting on a worse tomorrow. I dont like that, i dont support it, and if the ceos of these companies are your neighbors like they are mine — you see how completely nihilistic they are about this. They know it, they don’t care. But they pretend a story that this is a better world for you, the naive tech worker.
> Many of the people here are becoming sociopathic
Tons of people here are well monied professionals who struggle to put themselves into another person's shoes. They grew up privileged, got to go to school/college, and ended up on a good career path. They're people who will unironically say people should "pull themselves up by the bootstraps," and claim that we're in a meritocracy where hard work guarantees financial stability + success.
They have no idea what it's like for a person struggling to get by, and they've been sold a lifetime of "poor person = bad," or "poor person = lazy" propaganda.
There are lots of people here that struggle with basic empathy.
And lots of people use "empathy" as an excuse to forcibly extract money from productive people in order to give it away to leeches. Suckers who believe that every poor person is just a hard-working, well-intentioned person who wasn't given enough opportunities.
There are, of course, many poor people who are not lazy. But there are likely more who are lazy, dull, and sucking up resources that could better be used to improve society.
It’s comments like yours actually that make me lose faith in HN. It’s a lazy argument parroted by activist with no actual contact with people who drive for Uber.
Most Uber drivers are happy because they can select their hours and the more they work the more money they make. It’s pretty simple. They aren’t poor, stupid uneducated masses that need saving by the likes of you. Your elitist views looking down on their ability to discern what is good for them is exactly why Trump disastrously won and we all suffered. And unfortunately why the Republicans will probably win again in 2024.
I think you're putting words in people's mouths. I don't think anyone is claiming that people are too stupid to know that a particular job is exploitative. The claim is that they know full well that these kinds of jobs are exploitative, but don't have much choice in the labor market, and so take them anyway.
Just because someone sees that they have little choice, and then chooses exploitation over poverty, homelessness, or starvation, it doesn't mean that it's ok that we have jobs that exploit workers. It's the role of labor regulators to try to reduce the exploitative nature of these jobs. And if a job can't exist without exploiting workers, then it must be shut down. This isn't new or particularly controversial; it's been the goal of labor movements for centuries.
I mean this in general terms; I have heard both good and bad stories about what it's like to drive for Uber, so I'm not quite ready to raise up the pitchforks against them, but I do believe they are worthy of more scrutiny.
What a low effort rebuttal. Why are you comparing gig work to indentured servitude? Is Uber forcing people to drive cars? If your argument is people don’t have any other options, is that really uber’s fault or is that fault of the society?
> "By your logic above, an indentured servitude would count as a "not being taken advantage of" and by implication, reasonable moral form of employment."
No it wouldn't. Indentured servitude requires someone to be indentured, which is immediately in conflict with OP's correct observation that no one is being forced to work. They directly hinged their question on the premise that the workers are free to make choices.
OP's question regarding the free choices of previously unemployed workers is valid. Questioning why 1099 employment isn't "moral" as you put it is also valid.
> > People are not agents of free will, and any sub-utopic framework they have to participate in is immoral?
> This is a straw man argument to its core. No one is, or has suggested that all labor should be abolished unless it meets a utopian ideal.
Actually your response is the straw man here, because you have introduced and attacked an absolute (all labor) where one did not previously exist.
You're projecting the errors you yourself are making onto OP.
> No it wouldn't. Indentured servitude requires someone to be indentured, which is immediately in conflict with OP's correct observation that no one is being forced to work.
You're thinking of slaves. Indentured servants chose to enter into binding contracts. No one forced them to sign away years of their life; they did so of their own volition. US case law would no longer recognize such contracts as valid.
No, I'm thinking of indentured servitude. Which requires them to be indentured, via said contracts. You are agreeing with me.
Uber is the antithesis of being tied to a job. You have complete freedom to engage whenever you wish. In fact it is precisely this freedom that "they should be employees" proponents are attacking.
Wow, you really did a good job of accounting for the aggregate labor supply/demand dynamics right there. There was no Uber before Uber therefore Uber is great! You heard it here first, people!
> These positions fall apart under even the most cursory examination.
As I said, this was a new growth industry. Taxis do not have a supply/demand dynamic because (for example in SF) the industry is artificially constricted by the medallion system or other controls. There have never been unallocated taxi medallions in SF.
As I also previously pointed out, taxi drivers were already independent contractors prior to Uber -- so if non-employee work is inherently immoral then this doesn't represent a change from the status quo.
It's difficult to see how Uber's system of allowing people to work if and when they feel like it is worse than the city's system where people would have to finance up to $1 million to buy a ticket allowing them to work within the regulatory system.
> Right back atcha.
No, as I've shown you simply did not read carefully. Please be civil in your response and please take some time to consider what's already been said.
Your rebuttal is wrong. The number of drivers exploded by 100x or more after Uber showed up. Before Uber, the taxi industry had a monopoly on rides. Uber destroyed that and orders of magnitude more drivers showed up and then more customers showed up.
So the supply increased, there are less jobs there are orders of magnitude more.
You can't really rebut the idea that in our society people are forced to work to live with "that is not the scenario described"
Parent was making an observation about the mandate of working in our society, and you replied that you weren't talking about people who have to work... :/
In order for your framework to, well, work, you have to make a lot of assumptions. Things like:
* Jobs are not sticky (eg, there are 0 switching costs once you are 'stuck' at an employer)
* Employers cannot change their character or terms (eg, it was a good place to work yesterday, now it has become a bad place to work)
* Employers cannot drag an entire industry or employment segment down (eg, race to the bottom)
* Employers cannot do anti-competitive/restrictive things (eg, you must drive this kind of car, you must work these hours, you cannot work for a competitor, you cannot negotiate on the terms of your pay structure)
I'm generally (and historically; eg, younger me) very sympathetic to the idea of freedom to contract for any terms.
However, it is not a zero-sum game. A previously-unemployed person does not become employed and then be magically better for life. That would assume they would have been unemployed forever had this business not come along, and it would also assume that this business cannot become worse to work for over time or limit one's prospects.
I used to be very opposed to the concept of wage floors, however what's changed my mind has been the impact of unemployment to drag down wages. As long as there is >0 unemployment, there can and will be a race to the bottom in terms of the wages and conditions of marginal employment. This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if the employment market was a fixed pie (again, zero sum game), but that's not the way the real world works.
Excellent list. Another thing I'd add is size asymmetry. Markets and negotiations work best when deal participants are of roughly equal power. That's rare with labor; people tend to have 1, maybe 2 jobs, while companies tend to have a lot more employees. Bad-actor companies can devote a lot more attention and effort to screwing people over than workers can to figuring out the situation.
That means if we want optimal outcomes, we need things like labor regulation and unions to balance the asymmetries.
I think you brought up some interesting points. You increased the complexity of the model by adding new dimensions. But you did not explain how including these would change the conclusion. Does assuming the switching cost makes a gig work opportunity a net negative for those seeking a job? The pros and cons should be quantified somehow, but that is probably almost impossible to do. In that case I am inclined to make sure as many people as possible have the opportunity to work, since I believe that not being able to be a productive member of a society is very bad for a man.
Be very careful talking about competition or switching costs with gig work.
It is very easy to get and quit a gig job.
None that I know of restrict you via noncompetes.
> it is not a zero-sum game
> does not become employed and then be magically better for life
> would have been unemployed forever had this business not come along
That's what makes it non zero sum. The marginal worker is better off, because this new marginal employer exists. Any down-the-line employer which isn't this one will be worse by definition.
> This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if the employment market was a fixed pie
Doesn't make sense. Either error in logic or I can't parse your final point.
Uber specifically helped arrange loans to buy a car, using the money the driver would make with Uber to justify they had ability to pay. They then unilaterally reduced drivers profit by close to half, leaving those who bought a rapidly-depreciating asset facing a need to work 12-15 hour days to make payments.
The elephant in the room is that the US labor market is, as a whole, already taking advantage of lowest earners across the board. They are getting paid less than the lowest earners from any prior time historically, while cost of living is only getting higher, and working conditions have been on a steady decline too - all this while the productivity they generate is at an all time high. For many workers, there is a total absence of a 'good' choice.
This is why when one company manages to lower the bar just a bit further and find new loopholes to exploit to pay workers less, give them even worse working conditions and benefits, or give them even less power and autonomy, it sticks out more than it normally would in a healthy labor economy.
Yeah, true. I guess the un-intuitive part is that minimum wage is _supposed_ to act as a national / state labor union. It's just that, when working as intended, the effects feel wrong.
In this "minimum wage makes the government a union" metaphor, if you find a way to work for less than minimum wage, even if it's your only option, you're crossing the picket line and you're wrong. You're supposed to make a worse decision for yourself, so that everyone together avoids a race to the bottom.
So it is working as intended. But I don't like the intention, because it means, if the market can't price your labor above minimum wage, you just can't work. You have to find some other way to work for less than minimum wage, maybe working under the table, or getting qualified as disabled, or making YouTube videos.
Are we really asking poor people below that labor price floor to be on strike forever, to protect the jobs of other poor people who are barely above that price floor? It seems like a bad solution.
The alternatives are things like UBI or NIT or wage subsidies, which are not politically popular.
And maybe I'm committing the Golden Mean Fallacy, but I think if we had some combo of UBI and wage subsidies and then just let the market work itself out (and keep stuff like OSHA, of course), it would be better than setting price floors on labor.
You're assuming that raising the minimum wage will automatically result in more unemployment, but that is empirically not the case. Higher minimum wages implemented in Europe and in the US have usually translated to local economic boosts and lower unemployment, especially when the prior minimum wage was especially below indexes of productivity and total GDP.
There is probably a line where the gains of increasing minimum wage even out and start to negatively impact some industries, but the data points to us being far below that line right now. We could easily pay lowest earners more and see only positive effects from it for everyone. And since that's the case, it seems less defensible that someone can work 40 hours a week and not even come close to providing the most basic necessities for themselves.
If somebody is commanding high profit margins in a locale it seems obvious that raising minimum wages could have benefits for most people. Given the examples in the US of wage increases largely happening in high CoL, high earning cities though, is it likely to be the case that applying the same playbook to less advantaged communities will have the same effects? In particular, would you not expect that a typical rural community has businesses with low margins and thus couldn't afford wage increases without major changes somewhere?
A minimum wage IS a good idea. It says that any work that is worth less than this is not economically desired by society and should not be done.
The issue is quality of life vs all wages, as reflected in buying power and the ability to have a good life. Rather than an inflationary focus on raising the minimum (a hidden tax on the non-ownership classes, as the land / property / business owners will just raise their rates to keep up); quality of life should be raised by raising Buying Power, not by raising the minimum.
Raising Buying Power is tough though, since it requires market regulation and leadership. It means the price of food, of services, and of housing must go down to make quality better. However we'd all be better off under such a model (owners and rent/profit seekers less so, but still better other than the profits).
If you need a law to dictate what is “economically desired by society” then it’s a fib. It would be economically desirable you’re just blocking that activity arbitrarily, if it wasn’t economically desired you wouldn’t need to block it, it would just naturally not exist.
> But I don't like the intention, because it means, if the market can't price your labor above minimum wage, you just can't work. You have to find some other way to work for less than minimum wage, maybe working under the table, or getting qualified as disabled, or making YouTube videos.
The intent is that this is an empty group, except the people that actually are disabled.
Temporary unemployment will exist, of course, but the intent is that every moderately motivated, healthy, and non-disabled adult is qualified for many minimum-wage jobs and has a good shot at getting them when there are openings.
> all this while the productivity they generate is at an all time high
I see this claim repeated a lot but you didn't say where it comes from so it's a bit hard to discuss. In particular, you are making a claim about the productivity of low earners but I don't think this is something that is measured in the US? My understanding is the BLS computes industry-wide productivity measures, ie mean productivity (as opposed to say median productivity), and one would expect this distribution to be significantly right-tailed and the mean to be mostly influenced by the right tail.
I haven't seen any data that breaks down productivity growth by income, so if you have a source for your claim I'd love to update myself. When I search for "productivity growth by income" I see versions of your claim but again they are all about population _means_.
There are several sources that measure with this in mind, focusing on production and non-supervisory workers, or by breaking it down by sector. Here's one such: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
I haven't yet seen a source, whether it's a total average measure or bucketed, that doesn't at least show that productivity has always continued increasing year-over-year - not always at pace with GDP growth, but "productivity at an all-time high" still holds true. I think this tracks intuitively too, given that we continue to add infrastructure and technology to support production and services.
The key point is that lowest earner's share of income has consistently decreased at the same time. That discrepancy alone, and the fact that the discrepancy has been allowed to widen for many decades now, is what gets us to the situation we're in today.
Even if all laborers and professions have enjoyed productivity gains, if those gains favor higher-earners more, then the share of income of the lowest-earners will consistently do down... Is there something wrong with that?
> 3) those people that _willingly_ took those jobs are being taken advantage of
There is of course no threat of homelessness or starvation and those that were unemployed could have "chosen" to remain unemployed rather than taking those gig employment offers.
Also as per your example, clearly everyone that started working at Uber knew they had to take into account costs such as the replacement cost of their vehicle, higher maintenance cost due to a huge increase on average kilometers driven per month, higher insurance costs, cleaning and repair cost to seats due to higher usage, etc.
If people could choose to not work and not starve/lose their home I would somewhat agree most of those picking up employment as pauperized gig workers would do so willingly.
>There is of course no threat of homelessness or starvation and those that were unemployed could have "chosen" to remain unemployed rather than taking those gig employment offers.
This is not really the company's fault that the system is set up so people must work. Address that at the societal level. We can start with building enough housing so people can afford rent making $3 per hour.
I have a bunch of keywords watchers for a site I am building (AI). They also hit some gig worker subreddits due to data labeling. There is so much demand for click work it is insane. The sad thing about it all is that, at least for remote work, US workers are competing against cheaper overseas labor.
I could hire some labelers, pay them per label a rate that comes to ~$10 per hour, and get completely undercut by someone who clones the business model but hires people from (e.g.) Brazil. It is a tough situation but the demand for work is there.
I'd be interested in any policies that create good jobs for American workers.
> This is not really the company's fault that the system is set up so people must work. Address that at the societal level. We can start with building enough housing so people can afford rent making $3 per hour.
Housing is a good thing to work on.
But we've already started! One thing we already have toward this effort is labor laws. That's why we want to plug the gaps in those laws and enforce them.
> This is not really the company's fault that the system is set up so people must work.
The problem is companies like this take advantage of this as a feature of the system, not a bug.
> Address that at the societal level.
And how’s that working? It’s needs to be addressed at multiple levels simultaneously for any progress to be made.
>We can start with building enough housing so people can afford rent making $3 per hour.
This is a ridiculous statement. Yes, there needs to be more housing, but resources aren’t infinite so there will always be a floor that steadily increases and systems based in reality must take that into account.
The argument I’d make is that Uber game-ifies payouts, so it can be hard to actually know how much you’re making and it could take a while to realize if you’re profiting. Throw in some wishful thinking and gambling tendencies and you can quite easily take advantage of human psychology.
Separately - companies in the US take advantage of most employees. So I’d say any large employer could do with an FTC shakedown.
I think the system needs to change. You have no idea if the ride in that zone will take you 30 minutes away so you actually need to drive back unpaid to get higher fares. I think with enough transparency it can be fair to the drivers - but to the detriment of the customer experience.
We can all agree that no one is forcing anyone to work for these companies… as I see it, the main issues are; 1) how said workers are classified (1099 vs. W-2) 2) Benefits and lack thereof based on the classification 3) Hidden cost of using your own equipment. 4) Real pay once you factor in 1-3.
That said, it’s not any different than say Walmarts of the world - where most of their full time W-2 employees are in public assistance simply because of the pay.
Reality, in the capitalism anyhow, is - if you’re working for someone they’re not going to pay you more than what they can get out of you or the next sucker willing to work for less - the question is how much?! And what’s fair.
So we should also give up on minimum wages? Heath codes? Safety rules? Just let the market sort it out? Last time we tried that it did not end well. Regulation is necessary for a practical (not-highschool-textbook) economy.
We read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" in our high school economics class as an aside. Then again, I went to a high school where the government civics class started with reading the Mayflower Compact, The Social Contract, Wealth of Nations, and several excerpts from other sources which inspired the American Founding Fathers before spending the second half of the semester reading and discussing the Constitution line by line.
>I have yet to see a convincing argument, here on HN or elsewhere, about how these companies are taking advantage of workers.
I'll try :).
A right, by definition, is a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something or to act in a certain way. (Legal) Rights cannot be taken away from you.
Make sure you understand that before the next step.
Now read -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_rights and make sure you spend ample time becoming acquainted with the kind of rights that are bestowed to workers in countries like the US.
Now make a judgment on whether you think some of these companies are infringing some of these rights. If you also have trouble with that, let me know and I'll help as well!
It is downright obsecene to say Uber is breaking the law how it currently operates. By violating labor rights.
Governments may, at their discretion change the rules about how Uber might deal with its workers. California recently did this.
> Now make a judgment on whether you think some of these companies are infringing some of these rights
Maybe you could post your own analysis instead of having a sparse wikipedia page do the heavy lifting?
For legal: What law are they breaking by paying drivers as contractors?
For moral: Given that 1099 status is legal, why don't drivers have a right to be classified as such?
The law provides me the opportunity to work as a self employed contractor. I drive for Uber, Lyft, any whoever else. I end up making less than minimum wage. Who has violated my moral entitlement? Was it Uber? Did I violate my own rights? Why don't I have the right not to make minimum wage?
In my opinion, they're using the 1099 status in a way it was not meant to be used.
The history of the 1099 lends itself toward high-risk, high-reward employment. People who started their own businesses and accepted the risk of poor wages or failure in exchange for the chance to have a successful business.
The gig 1099 is a form of moderate-risk, low-reward employment. The risks are slightly lower because of piggybacking on a successful company, but the workers will never become independent of Uber, nor will they ever have a chance of "making it big". Their future is inexorably tangled with that of Uber/Lyft/whoever.
> Did I violate my own rights? Why don't I have the right not to make minimum wage?
The structure of our society mandates that people work. There are generally more people than jobs (as evidenced by a permanent unemployment rate). Allowing some classes of workers to work for below minimum wage can depress wages, because workers without other options will have to accept those below-minimum wages. Then there's a risk it spreads once normalized. Imagine big box stores and fast food switching to 1099's. A lot of those workers won't have the option to just work for someone else for minimum wage, because they lack the skills to switch to a new vertical. They either work for less than minimum wage, or they don't work.
The overarching idea is that it's better to take the right to work for less than minimum wage away to preserve a livable wage for people who won't have any other options.
We have a middle-class levy in the form of tax medallions. So they have found a way to undermine that levy in a gray area of the rules society has set up.
They exploit the worker by underpaying them and treating them badly by the standards of the old levy, the taxi medallion. They exploit society by hollowing out the middle class.
We actually need a middle class for the benefit of the masses, and even the ultra-wealthy, though only a few of them seem aware of it, like Henry Ford paying his workers enough to buy his cars. H. Ford seemed to lack any goodness of heart--he just had the brains to recognize that no one could buy his cars if they didn't make enough money to buy them.
I think we should intervene in markets to sustain a middle class, which makes society better and richer on the whole. Unchecked free markets eventually seem to end up with a power-law winner-take-all type wealth distribution. Even the ultra-wealthy suffer compared to the ideal in societies with large wealth inequality. They don't live as long. They will have less things like the iphone, which the ultra-wealthy can't really even get a better core version of; they can, perhaps, buy one encased in gold. No middle class, no iphone and things like it.
Interventions should be focused on dampening the spring action - less rich "rich people" and less poor "poor people". I think there is an argument that could be made to consider these policies from an overall "growing of the pie" perspective. IE, do these policies inhibit total growth and make everyone worse off? However, my limited understanding is this is essentially trickle down economics and the evidence this occurs (versus rich people hoarding wealth) is limited. So I'm open to the argument but it would need quite a bit of rigor.
It doesn't follow from your second point that Uber is non-exploitative. US law recognizes limits to the right to contract (e.g., one cannot agree to sell one's labor for less than minimum wage[0]), so the fact that some have chosen to work for Uber doesn't in and of itself demonstrate that Uber's employment terms are legal.
I never said anything Uber was doing was illegal. OP said that the fact that people choose to work for Uber means that Uber’s employment practices are therefore legal, because it was the employee’s free choice. I don’t think that’s a sound argument.
I suspect based on the original article that you may have the opportunity to read the legal analysis you ask for soon if the FTC determines any specific company violated labor law wrt gig work.
OP isn't saying that #2 implies non-exploitation, OP is saying that they can't see how #2 implies exploitation. Non-exploitation is the null hypothesis, we assume it to be the case until proven otherwise.
Imagine a world where all software developers are converted to contractors and have to work through a platform like Toptal, Upwork, etc. because it's easier for employers since the platforms do all of the background check and technical assessment for them. All the companies have to do is pick their technical resources and go.
As a developer, you have to compete against everyone else in the world on the platform, regardless of your COL and previous salary expectations. The only power you have as a developer is to walk away from the platform and do something else for work (like drive Uber). Your work has been completely commoditized and you have few rights since you're a contractor. You're working for yourself and thus you're expected to be responsible for your own benefits. You willingly took a job and in that scenario, you wouldn't feel taken advantage of at all?
Uber completely destroyed the taxi industry, for better or worse. Contracting engagements are on the rise and it's not that farfetched to see a future where software developers are treated this way too. Why would any of us assume that we're immune from this commoditization, and if we can all agree that we wouldn't want to be subjected to it ourselves, why do we accept it for others?
Except talented developers on those platforms make ~$120 and hour and up, the people who make smaller salaries are usually either just starting out or don't have unique skills. I wouldn't want to live in this world because I don't like remote work, however from a salary perspective I don't think it would be that bad
I think this completely glosses over the uncomfortable fact that uber is a billion dollar VC backed company that operates by:
1) Targeting a market with established taxi companies offering a legally regulated service requiring background checks, insurance, and driving/car safety standards.
2) Illegally setting up an unregulated competing taxi service which relies on the local police/elite being unable/unwilling(bribed) to enforce the existing taxi regulations in light of the size and effort uber puts into its racket. In the process it hires up anyone willing to do it, regardless of if their car is safe, they are actually a good driver or not, meet the insurance requirements of a taxi driver, and so on.
3) Pushing taxi drivers out of work because they can't compete with the obviously cheaper illegal competitor.
4) Hiring many of these now unemployed taxi drivers up as gig workers and paying them far less than they got before for doing a legal job.
This is their model and it is outright exploitative. It is literally just using money to wantonly break the law and rig a market. It is also pretty much what Airbnb and a lot of other silicon valley firms have been up to in recent years, since they obviously ran out of actual innovation to sell.
As a series of propositional arguments frozen in time, it's a little difficult. As a story it's a little easier.
Licenses to drive taxicabs, called Taxi Medallions used to limit the number of taxicab drivers below demand. Buying the license to operate was a valid investment choice, for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This ensured secure work, wages and support admin for taxis. It wasn't perfect, it just was what it was.
Gig economy apps disrupted this process heavily by soaking up the demand for extra taxi cab services and providing a plug'n'play model for contractors to drive for their taxi service. This was a good deal in the beginning as wages were favourable and lower overheads gave individual drivers a chance to compete with taxicab co's. Medallion prices cratered, meaning a 600k+ medallion had to be bought out by the gov years later a one-sixth the price.
Prices and wages dropped on Apps. Apps never stopped signing up drivers, leading to a glut of taxi drivers that exceeded demand. App surge-pricing models meant the best times to drive were the most expensive for the customer and the highest-competition for the glut of drivers. Drivers could not guarantee consistent customers and therefore wages, or growth in wages so they had varying degrees of economic pressure. Some with car rental payments and personal expenses can not break even.
Apps do not enforce normal working conditions, so if someone cannot meet financial requirements with an 8hr shift, they are incentivized to hit 12hrs driving, for an average wage. When do you get a new job when you're trapped in a 12hr shift, dead end job with no growth or exit strategy? It's lose-lose. Or maybe lose-break even.
Some companies have basically skirted many existing regulations and worker protections by using the gig worker tax classification, to avoid being on the hook for certain basics like healthcare coverage even though they are acting as the primary employer for a large amount of people.
I think the first misnomer is calling it employment, calling Uber driving a job. It is self-employment at the moment, it is running a business. People starting their own business should be doing the math ahead of time, understanding costs and income. Uber attempts to obscure information around pay where you do not always know what you are being paid, and makes it hard to tell when you are running at a loss. By controlling pricing and access Uber takes business decisions away from drivers while at the same time calling them independent.
The fallacy is the idea that people desperate for money choose gig work out of “free will”. They accept the terms dictated to them due to lack of options. True that they could choose to lose their homes and vehicles and live in a tent by the freeway.
I work or I starve. If I don't work, and I don't starve - someone else must be working.
If someones sole and only option was to work for Uber: Is Uber the one at fault here?
If Uber didn't exist and person had zero options, would this be neutral, worse, or better compared to the former scenario?
It's not a fallacy because people have different moral standards about whether you should be employed at $7.25 or unemployed at $15.
Personally I consider it my absolute right to mow lawns at $5/day if I choose to do it. If you think I'm not making enough money, you can give me more! Don't force the people alreaday paying me to pay more.
The EITC gives more benefits than any minimum wage will and more than any 1099 law reform.
There are so many easily addressable fallacies in this that I am not sure if I need to bother.
> If someones sole and only option was to work for Uber: Is Uber the one at fault here?
Nobody really cares who’s fault it is. Of course Uber is going to attempt to pay as little as they can for labor under existing laws.
> If Uber didn't exist and person had zero options, would this be neutral, worse, or better compared to the former scenario?
So, you mean if there was unfulfilled demand for transportation and a duopoly who abused labor didn’t exist?
> It's not a fallacy because people have different moral standards about whether you should be employed at $7.25 or unemployed at $15.
However, the real economy does actually exist and it is not possible to sustain any sort of lifestyle at $7.25 an hour. $15 is not even sustainable currently. So, to rephrase the question, should people working full-time be able to afford living in a house without government assistance, or should they be able to afford an apartment?
> Personally I consider it my absolute right to mow lawns at $5/day if I choose to do it.
I don’t think that grocery stores or landlords care about your beliefs. If you’re satisfied living in a tent by the interstate or outside and abandoned building, or at your parents house, or have a family or partner who can support you, that’s great. Otherwise, I suppose you can afford Steel Reserve, eat at a homeless shelter and sleep in a tent by the sidewalk at $5 an hour. However, such lifestyles incur significant expense to taxpayers.
> I work or I starve. If I don't work, and I don't starve - someone else must be working.
I have had jobs where I hardly worked at all, yet I received about 10 times minimum wage. Who is supporting the people in such positions?
Many pro-Uber arguments point out how rigged against everyday drivers the medallion system in some cities was. Precarious contract labor with all the power in the medallion owner's court.
In theory, "optional light second job or side work while a student" things sound great.
In practice, if you find that that's not the case for the majority of these workers, and that in many cases you've just enlarged an existing problem that was there, but largely ignored, in the case of taxi drivers and some other niches... then it's time to consider regulating this new system. (The taxi system also wasn't much in the news, but this newcomer was, well, news... so that's also gonna play a role.)
(You could also make full-time-employment less of a requirement for things like affordable health care - the market rates for individuals are still very different than what my employer pays for my coverage - but that's an even bigger political non-starter in the US...)
The argument is basically "Ayn Rand was right", for which there are an almost innumerable amount of rebuttals already in the literature and regular discourse.
An agreement between a worker and a company does not absolve either of their legal responsibilities. Structures made to evade or abuse the letter of the law while violating the spirit are what we're seeing cracked down on here. So that's what's happening legally.
Morally, there are a few issues:
1) Workers are coerced into working because they need money to live. When it's between a life of despair and working for a shitty employer, workers will choose the latter. Laws are meant to prevent abuse in this situation.
2) The information disparity between the two parties means workers cannot make informed decisions, making them abuse their cars and insurance for less profit than expected.
3) The company can still abuse employees, for example by unfairly controlling rideshare rates, refusing to give them things they are supposed to get as employees (the nature of that relationship being defined by the state for the protection of the people).
I think the title is kinda vague. What FTC really tries to do is "Commission outlined a number of issues facing gig workers, including deception about pay and hours, unfair contract terms, and anticompetitive wage fixing and coordination between gig economy companies." That sounds legitimate to me.
If "take advantage of" is not well defined as you said, then it reminds me how intellectuals and young people loved Soviet Union in the 30s and 40s, and how European countries and Japan had so many communist parties and political assassinations after WWII. The word "taking advantage of" and "exploit" have such a great appealing to people's righteousness that even the US government can use them freely to gain support from a large number of people.
edit: read the actual announcement and added a paragraph accordingly.
I assume you are located in a country with poor to no worker protection laws or you would not be asking such a question.
In most European countries workers have protections which include paid sick leave, worker comp, social security payments, pension payments, maternity leave, etc. etc. All these are required by law to be provided partially or fully by the employers.
Uber does not pay any of those. They expect you to be self-employed and pay for all these things yourself yet dictate the price which makes it impossible to live. If you were truly self-employed you would not take the project at that price.
This doesn't answer the question of why people choose to work at Uber if there are jobs available that provide all of these things. People in Europe have the opportunity to work in a job that covers for all of these benefits. Driving for Uber isn't mandatory. Is the implication that the adults working for Uber just aren't smart enough to know they're being exploited?
The bigger argument is that they don't have the power to avoid being exploited.
You could compare too-low wages in many situations to a prisoner's dilemma or tragedy of the commons. Being smart can't save you; you need solidarity/regulation.
In game theory, sometimes giving people extra options can make their situation worse.
I am not saying that this is necessarily the case of e.g. Uber drivers. I am just arguing in general around the argument structure of "the old options are still there, a new one was added, people have free will, therefore they cannot possibly be harmed by this".
(3) doesn’t come from (2), but (2) doesn’t negate (3) either. There are people in (1) who are desperate, when (2) occurs those desperate people freely choose this opportunity. Whether this opportunity is exploitative needs to be argued outside of (2) or (3).
Here are two example of how society doesn’t allow certain freely chosen compensations schemes. (A) suppose one could offer money for organ donation, we would see increase in donations. As a society we do not allow it because it is exploitative. (B) More extreme, suppose someone could offer money for the right to kill a volunteer, with enough money I’m sure there would be volunteers, but we don’t allow that because it is also exploitative.
The OPs (2) is less extreme than my (A) or (B), but I hope my examples show that (2) and (3) can be both true.
> Even if that's the case, I'd like to see the argument that those people who chose and choose to work at uber have worse outcomes than they otherwise would.
It only takes one common situation, right?
They go into debt on the vehicles they lease from the company or from an agent. They were given deliberately incomplete information about how much money they would make, so taking into account all the circumstances, they wind off worse than they would be at a standard, legal job. In other words, "by some process" of deception, they wind up below minimum wage.
This isn’t an answer, but another question. Is there anything that you would consider to be “a company taking advantage of workers” short of direct physical coercion?
Full time drivers are taken advantage of because full time drivers are not really free contrators: they can drive only for Uber and nothing else. Before UBer, these people had full time jobs as limo drivers, personal drivers, or something like that.
Of course, there are also people who have other jobs (firefighters, nurses, teachers, etc), students, between jobs and they love it. And regulations like this will hurt them.
Would you be upset if somebody shot you? Why! It's perfectly reasonable that given enough time and proximity to the inherent risk of life that among the billions of people on earth that you would be in a situation where it resulted in you being shot? Seems logical to me?
Sometimes people want the world to be better than the bare minimum. And sometimes but clearly not in your case they feel sympathy and empathy.
3) Uber finds a loophole that allows them to pay people in #3 less than the federally required minimum wage, exploiting the very people that they rely on to exist as a functional company.
Somehow people are confused how a voluntary action can be illegal if the circumstances that surround that action are not legal.
Uber originally hired licensed drivers and paid them handsomly. As Uber continued to become Uber, the deals the drivers had kept changing. That by itself is being taken advantage of from the driver's perspective. It only got worse from there.
Many Cherokee lived freely not all that long ago. Now some are wage slaves for Uber. Some west Africans lived freely, then were slaves in the USA, and their descendants now out of Jim Crow are wage slaves for gig companies. For others groups this process happened earlier.
There are those who work, and then there is an idle class aristocracy of heirs who do not work, but who expropriate surplus labor time from those of us who do work.
It is not the job of the working class to make convincing arguments to the parasites who live off their labor, it is the historical mission of the working class to eliminate the parasitic class which does not work, and which lives off worker's expropriated surplus labor time surplus.
Because the people that are clueless about business can easily price their service below even minimum wage and companies use it exactly for that reason
You get paid per service of moving people around, but might not be knowledgable enough to calculate deprecation and other stuff correctly.
More than that, any problem with the car is also on you, not on company car, so you'd have to budget for that too.
It's a way for company to shift the risk entirely to the lowest paid worker, including every risk involved with car itself.
It's even worse in say food delivery when the couriers are bidding for who can ship it the cheapest. You're essentially getting bidded out in race for bottom if there is enough competition, again going around minimum wage.
> 3) those people that willingly took those jobs are being taken advantage of
> What is the principal that justifies 3? People are not agents of free will, and any sub-utopic framework they have to participate in is immoral? Even if that's the case, I'd like to see the argument that those people who chose and choose to work at uber have worse outcomes than they otherwise would.
Because as society we decided letting capitalism exploit dumbasses willing to work for half-free is a bad thing. That's why we have minimum wages. That's why jobs like that should have unions. Because without body to represent them there always will be someone willing to do it for half free.
Unironically, hating on gig labor is just a proxy for hating on wage labor and capitalism. It has basically shown an even more effective way to exploit people than wage labor (because now you don't even have to guarantee them hours, a minimum wage, or even that their job will still be accessible to them tomorrow)
People who get super pissed at Uber without materialism just have a narrow perspective (Uber's still evil tho)
< I have yet to see a convincing argument, here on HN or elsewhere, about how these companies are taking advantage of workers.
Some issues referenced in the link the FTC intends to address:
Misrepresentations about the nature of gig work:
While gig companies promote independence to potential workers,
in practice these firms may tightly prescribe and control their
workers’ tasks in ways that run counter to the promise of
independence and an alternative to traditional jobs.
Holding companies accountable for claims and conduct about costs and
benefits:
Gig companies must not be deceptive in their claims to prospective
gig workers about potential earnings, and they must be
transparent and truthful about costs borne by workers.
You may object that workers can just quit if they find the work unsatisfactory, but people often commit large investments of time or money to get these jobs. As a personal example, I once worked as a google search query evaluator. The job was advertised as paying $14.50 per hour, and you could work at any time. It required studying a ~100-150 page manual of search query evaluation minutiae, and passing a test demonstrating mastery of the material. Once I started, I found out the advertisement was a misrepresentation. You would periodically be given some allotment of work, it could be several hours worth, it could be two minutes worth. You might go weeks without being assigned work, and you had to login to check if any had been added to your queue. To be paid you would submit a timesheet weekly, where you would note each type of task completed, alongside the count, and the time spent. There were target rates and minimum accuracy levels for each type of task. Failure to meet accuracy requirements resulted in termination. If you submitted a timesheet where the calculated rate was lower than the target rate for any category of task, the timesheet would be flagged, and you would be enjoined to ‘correct’ it. I’m sure most people simply lied and decreased the time billed in these situations, accepting tacitly a wage far below that represented to them. The thing is the target rate for most tasks was impossible. It wasn’t based on people’s ability to complete tasks, but by the degree to which they could be squeezed.
Concentrated markets: Markets populated by gig companies are
often concentrated, resulting in reduced choice for workers,
customers, and businesses. These companies may be more likely
to exert their market power in anticompetitive ways that
harm workers’ wages, job quality, and other aspects of gig work.
Combating unlawful practices and constraints imposed on workers:
Gig companies using artificial intelligence or other advanced
technologies to govern workers’ pay, performance, and work
assignments are still required to keep promises they make to
workers. Companies must also ensure that any restrictive contract
terms, including those limiting workers from seeking other jobs,
do not violate the FTC Act or other laws.
Policing unfair methods of competition that harm gig workers:
The FTC will investigate evidence of agreements between gig
companies to illegally fix wages, benefits, or fees for gig
workers that should be open to competition. The FTC will also
investigate exclusionary or predatory conduct that could cause
harm to customers or reduced compensation or poorer working
conditions for gig workers.
From what I've seen, the majority of arguments against gig work is a combination of information asymmetry (usually that a worker does not know the "true" payout of such work because they haven't accounted for things like depreciation and car maintenance costs) and the idea that you can't "overcharge" for unskilled labor. E.g. one could make the same argument that a general contractor also "does not know the true payout" of their contracts since they also have various difficult-to-calculate cost-of-of-doing-business costs, but the rebuttal is that these costs can be built into the cost of the service.
Something that I think a lot of these discussions fail to account for (and was, incidentally, an underlying theme for California's Prop 22) is that gig companies artificially create a type of market that would otherwise cannibalize itself into a different type of market. If one were to follow the ideals of increasing payouts to [whatever arbitrary point is deemed acceptable], the logical conclusion is that either demand has to increase proportionally to create upward price pressure - and there's no reason to believe the market would simply increase demand just because one wishes for it - or service volume has to decrease (the service becomes less affordable, meaning less demand from price-sensitive customers, which in turn means less drivers on the road, longer wait times, etc).
But once we get into these terms, we run into the classic "I got mine" mentality. Then it's complaints that taxis aren't reliable, or smugness about how one doesn't even use these services in the first place. Well, which is it, does one supposedly "care" or is it really insofar as it doesn't become an inconvenience to themselves? Easier to just blame the companies for everything, right?
The one group that does truly care about the payouts is drivers themselves. From what I see in driver youtube channels, they can in fact become quite savvy about how much they can expect to take home, and come to their own data-based conclusions about whether new features or bonus structures are good or not. Common themes: two [gig companies] are better than one, long term is worse than short term, weekends are better than tuesdays.
And to tie back to supply and demand, gig worker supply base is highly elastic, aggressively more so than any other type of business. Uber's CEO even said inflation helps business because with rising cost of living, more people look to gig work to make a few extra bucks. So, in a way, sure, gig companies promote an environment where more workers can freely come in a take a piece of a pie (which is not infinite). The thing is everyone wants more of it and there's only so much to go around. Is setting up such a system akin to taking advantage of these people? In a way yes because it's playing to their desires to earn more in a world that is largely structured to think payouts should always go up over time, whereas the reality is that they're exposed to these raw supply-and-demand market forces more directly. But also no, because they wouldn't have that opportunity to make extra cash at all otherwise.
There are many ways these companies are taking advantage of people, I have some small data points / insights, it would be easy to mark some of them as 'well they designed for this one thing and did not think about the other thing, so it was not intentional'
- but for example, if you look at how the office folks are treated at lyft compared to how the driver 'hiring people' are treated, and how the drivers are treated, and how the customers are treated - you can easily see some very stark differences in many things.. and so it is intentional.
Sure they have free will and all that - but certain dark patterns definitely take advantage, and other omissions are an issue as well.
'The game theory' that keeps people driving and picking up more people and guiding them to hot spots for bonuses for example is not helping the driver be more healthy and alert and safe - it helps the company get coverage where they are lacking.
Quick payments could be advertised as bonus help - but if we are totally honest it helps attract and keep people who are trapped in addictions to keep doing things - so it may be a good thing but also in some cases a take advantage of people thing.
The 'money earned' thing is gamified in many ways.. from the emails saying 'make X dollars per week / month when you come back to drive with us' - to the lack of showing expenses.. many people are ignorant of what they make each week after expenses and have zero clue about tax burdens, and lack of investment in social security and other things they would glean from standard jobs.
Hey I am not hating on this - and it can be super great for the single parent who need super flexible work option temporarily for example- but it's a farce.
I frequently talked to drivers who were all shiny happy people showing they made "$1,000 this week' - but had no real understanding that they spent $400 on gas this past week compared to the 200 the week before, did not account for the car maintenance and no clue about the taxes owed.
At least in the market around here, I calculated the average money made to be about $6 per hour once considering taxes and gas.. and this is for a semi-dangerous job - no not talking about the passengers which are mostly okay - just driving around streets that many more hours is adding that much more danger of wrecks and such.
It would be trivial for these companies to add in expense reporting, scheduling for maintenance and taxes and bathroom breaks - but they don't - and we know why - it's the start-up- gig culture trying to maximize the valuation for wall street at the expense of those who are less educated about the sacrifices being made in the short term.
I have many more small data points to add - from pics of the tires some of these drivers are using to the lack of transparency about surges in more drivers coming - to uncompensated long drives to last minute cancelled rides - all sorts of things that are at the expense of those that can least afford it - and at this point these companies should know better about a lot of these things - but they are purposefully kicking those cans down the line to future issues in order to prop up the quarterlies for the short term benefit of those who do know better.
This could be a blog post with some pics and screenshots for better examples I guess. Oh, and the effects on the riders.. so many things to add - but the question was proof of taking advantage of gig workers.
Most of us are old enough to have seen these companies spring into existence, so here are the steps:
1) 100% of people are employed or unemployed. Uber (for example) doesn't exist
2) uber starts existing, some previously unemployed people and some previously employed people start working for uber
3) those people that willingly took those jobs are being taken advantage of
What is the principal that justifies 3? People are not agents of free will, and any sub-utopic framework they have to participate in is immoral? Even if that's the case, I'd like to see the argument that those people who chose and choose to work at uber have worse outcomes than they otherwise would.