[constantcrying]

Somebody really needs to put a stop to what Uber and the like are doing.

They are doing their best to destroy basic labor protections, by circumventing employing their workers. Why are countries just allowing them to clown on established worker protections?

If you want to pay someone to do something employ them. The roll out of the gig economy is only viable because it allows companies to push costs on to the labor force.

[sokoloff]

> If you want to pay someone to do something employ them.

There is a purpose for casual/contract labor. If I want my lawn mowed, some basement junk hauled away, or my house painted, I want someone on contract/gig to do something for me, but I sure don’t want to hire an employee.

How that person chooses to relate to an employer (whether to be self-employed or work for someone else) is their business, not a concern of mine.

However, from a policy standpoint, I certainly don’t want to prohibit them from being a solo entrepreneur or similar.

So, there’s a reason to allow contract work, even with individuals. Whether you extend that to Uber transportation or to Uber’s new business is a fair question, but “employ them” is not the universal answer to Uber and non-Uber.

[FredPret]

In addition to your very good points: an economy of people who take this live-and-let-live view is going to be far more flexible and efficient in different scenarios.

An economy made up of people who think it proper to make entire classes of employment like gig work (or work that pays under a certain minimum wage) illegal is not only interfering in the decisions of adults, but can only prosper under the exact set of circumstances those people consider ideal.

[Avicebron]

Your spherical cow version of economics is laughably naive and misguided. If "adults" decided tomorrow that it was fine to employ people at only the infrastructure cost of preventing them running away, people would be outraged. But somehow flooding an ecosystem with money to starve meaningful competition and capitalize on people's inherent lack of options, which is "preventing them from running away with extra steps", is somehow... "a robust and dynamic economic ecosystem between consenting adults".. let's not be naive on HN.

[FredPret]

It’s reality-based, empirical economics, not “mine”.

Place that let adults choose who to work for and who to employ, and furthermore consider it improper to even use the word “let” in this context, universally have better employment situations than places that follow your “spherical cow” theoretical planned / over-regulated economies.

You seem to ascribe agency only to the employers, but remember that every Uber driver and every shitty minimum-wage job holder is almost certainly just doing their best. Making their jobs illegal will not improve their lives one iota, not in theory, and not in practice.

[array_key_first]

Similarly, a lot less children would be impoverished if they could work in factories. Time to put those little hands to use! Oh, uh, for humanity or something.

We do have to draw the line somewhere and it is arbitrary.

[FredPret]

I just knew someone would bring up child labour / slavery.

There's a big difference between gig jobs and very low-paying jobs that help free adults with no other options in life, and kids in work houses & coal mines, and you know it.

[loloquwowndueo]

Has a whiff of Atlas Shrugged.

[zeroonetwothree]

Sounds like a compliment

[loloquwowndueo]

Just a neutral observation :)

[skeeter2020]

>> How that person chooses to relate to an employer (whether to be self-employed or work for someone else) is their business, not a concern of mine.

I think it will be, when the same strategies & policies come up the foodchain to your work that you probably think could never be modeled like this.

[JKCalhoun]

> How that person chooses to relate to an employer … is their business, not a concern of mine.

I could try and score points and ask if you would be okay if the lawn employee was prison-labor—if you would be okay employing them (money to go to the prison, of course).

My point though simply is that I don't think anyone should be okay hiring someone whose labor may be being exploited.

I was going to say that I don't think that is ever the case with lawn care but remembered that when I was maybe 10 years old, a neighbor had a lawn business during the Kansas summertime and he "hired" me and my sister (she was 9) to come with him (with his own two kids) to mow lawns for his business. I mean he bought us lunch at a fast food place and we made maybe $0.50 an hour—we were happy to have pocket money in order to buy candy at the drug store. I suppose we were being exploited though. ;-)

But anyway, I ramble.

[constantcrying]

The gig economy is neither contract work nor casual work.

>If I want my lawn mowed, some basement junk hauled away, or my house painted, I want someone on contract/gig to do something for me, but I sure don’t want to hire an employee.

Error of categories. This simply is not the same.

It is normal employment in everything but name. Uber is replacing the taxi industry, which can not compete, because the taxi industry has to pay for labor protections. It is a scheme where Uber tricks existing labor laws to have employees it does not need to treat as employees.

>“employ them” is not the universal answer to Uber

It is. Before Uber ride hailing existed and it was done by employees or self employed people.

[sokoloff]

You know that when you cut the last two words off the quote “is not the universal answer to Uber and non-Uber” and respond to only the part you quoted that it leaves the impression that you’re arguing in bad faith, right?

[constantcrying]

I left it off because I did not know what you meant by "non-Uber". It is a category so wide that I have no idea what you were talking about, so I decided to focus on the part where the subject was clear. In the case of Uber I know that it is possible to replace it by employee labor.

You did not give any examples for "non-Uber" companies and we certainly were talking mainly about Uber, as was the article. I do not consider it at all bad faith to focus on the "Uber" part and ignore the totally unspecified and somewhat irrelevant "non-Uber" part.

To be honest you calling me dishonest because I focus on the topic, namely Uber, and leave out a category which I can say basically nothing about such as "non-Uber", seems to me like you are trying to dodge making any argument at all. Since you are ignoring what I said and focusing on what I did not say.

[loloquwowndueo]

Wait you sign a contract with the person mowing your lawn?

[trenchpilgrim]

If they're an adult professional, yeah. Helps smooth out the home insurance if something happens and they get injured on your property or damage your property.

[loloquwowndueo]

“I want my AI to handle my contracts so I can mow lawns in peace”. Ok now I see how that works! Thanks!

[skeeter2020]

How far away are we from AI running the business (marketing, contracts, payment, scheduling, etc) while the humans compete with each other to do the lawn mowing for subsistence food & shelter? Put one of these tech bro CEOs in charge long enough for the AI to get good enough to do the top-level coordination and then recycle them into energy to power it all, and we're good to go!

[trenchpilgrim]

A ways away. Anthropic tried recently and it went off the rails. https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1

[zeroonetwothree]

Verbal contracts are still contracts. Anyone you hire for a job has a contract with you (implicit or explicit).

[petre]

Is there an Uber for lawn mowing?

[zeroonetwothree]

I recall a startup doing this a few years ago but I think they went out of business.

I think the issue is lawn mowing is usually done on a set schedule for a long time so the transaction cost is fairly low and you don’t want to pay a third party to handle the matching problem.

[loloquwowndueo]

Maybe taskrabbit can cover this.

[skeeter2020]

They're really missing out by not moving into federal services. Current administration would be all over firing federal employees and paying a fraction to gig employees.

[porridgeraisin]

Urban company is a gig platform for all manner of house work, I think it's only india based though.

[JKCalhoun]

Someone should write a "Gig Striker" app (or web site) for mobile phones.

When you sign on you select the company you work for and have access to group chats, forums (by region?). If a thread gets going on striking, the word can be put out on the app and all Uber drivers, just to pick an arbitrary example, refuse to accept calls for one day (again, as an example).

It would be an interesting experiment and tell us a little more about the world and economy we live in today.

[nativeit]

I’ve got a brilliant idea! What if, hear me out, we had some kind of united alliance of workers, and they could do things like leverage their collective labor power to negotiate better working conditions and/or pay? We might call them something, let’s say “unions”, and we could even setup some sort of National Labor Relations Board to ensure fair access to them, and to help settle disputes? Then we might get some of the things we need, even without resorting to labor strikes, which are disruptive and expensive to everyone on all sides.

Surely this is possible, and companies like Uber haven’t been sandbagging and poisoning the well for decades?

[nativeit]

I bet it’d be so popular, we would set aside a whole Federal holiday to commemorate all of the people who fought, and/or died, to win these basic labor protections 100-years ago! We’ll call it “Labor Day” and everyone will eat hot dogs while totally not spacing on the fact that they even enjoy “holidays” at all due to these very fights.

[aranelsurion]

That sounds like a union plus mobile app and minus legal protections, or am I getting the idea wrong?

[noir_lord]

> Why are countries just allowing them to clown on established worker protections?

Money - directly towards politicians.

Money - buys them the best lawyers for when they sit down with the government lawyers.

Money - allows them to move faster than the legal system can catch up.

Money - they focus all of their resources on doing the things we'd prefer they didn't, governments have other things to do deal with.

[phatfish]

Because trust in governments and their ability to execute has been successfully eroded by the holders of private wealth. There are also plenty politicians that simply work for private wealth and deliberately sabotage government from the inside.

The current situation is that even a government that wants to work for the majority of people is too scared to go against a corporation like Uber, or simply doesn't have the means (means being political capital as well as skills within the civil service).

Building that means is a project that lasts beyond election cycles, and needs one elected government to not immediately undo the work of a previous one.