[Broken_Hippo]

"you are free to work or leave" isn't actually true, though. It only works if no one has problems, if there is a safety net, or if you simplify the world too far.

People need to eat and have housing. Some folks have to pay child support or risk going to court. Some folks have to pay for medicine or risk dying.

You really aren't free to work or leave until we have the choice to work. An actual choice - as in, me, an able-bodied human, can decide to just stay home and make artwork (without selling). And I wish folks would stop pretending this isn't the case. So long as we have poverty and poor folks that are just-over-poverty, we have people that can be exploited.

That's where we are at, and the laws keep the exploitation from going further: Without those laws, what is to stop folks from doing such things? The market doesn't correct for it - if it did, we'd see better wages now.

A low-wage worker is basically powerless, and can be made more powerless by things like a past felony conviction or court-ordered child support and things like that.

[manigandham]

They have limited choices, yes. This doesn't change the fact that they do have a choice.

Tell me how limiting their power and opportunity further helps them exactly? What were they doing before ride-sharing and other contract work? What jobs are suddenly available for them? Wouldn't creating new opportunities be better? Wouldn't creating a new classification be better? Wouldn't creating a general health and benefits pool for everyone be better?

Yes, better situations can/should exist, and yes, this legislation is terrible and helps nobody. The opposition is that a real solution was never sought after and instead we have unintended consequences, not that things were fine before.