This is a pretty disgusting level of paternalist condescension towards workers that's unfortunately all too common in these discussions. Believe it or not, not all blue-collar workers are stupid ignorami who don't understand what labor regulations means for them. As the article says:
> Plenty of drivers said they understood Uber’s and Lyft’s political messaging. And some drivers who spoke to Recode made an articulate case for why they want to remain independent contractors. (A poll of 1,200 drivers by independent blog The Rideshare Guy last year showed that about 76 percent of respondents wanted to remain independent contractors rather than become employees.)
That isn't to say that there isn't an issue with deceiving workers: Uber and Lyft hardly have a reputation for ethical business practices, and I wouldn't be surprised if their messaging was intentionally unclear here. On top of that, it's possible that restrictions on labor can be positive and I'm not ruling out any degree of labor paternalism as valuable to society.
But your reductionist framing of blue-collar workers as simpletons who couldn't possibly disagree with you about _the way their own lives and employment should work_ is despicable. And frankly, the doublespeak involved in labeling restrictions on labor relationships as rights (and thus obviously and unambiguously positive) says much more about your ignorance than theirs.
If I strip the outrage and emotional rhetoric from your comment, what I’m left with is a suggestion that not all workers were deceived into opposing labour regulation.
Well, ok.
And then there’s a suggestion that people talking about labourers are looking down their noses at labourers. Well, that is a thing. As is people looking down at “Apple fanboys,” or looking down at “People who buy whatever marketing tells them to buy,” or “People believing whatever Fox tells them to believe.”
That is absolutely a thing, and it goes across almost all discussions about almost all topics. You can’t bring up interviewing without a bunch of people confidently stating that everyone else is doing it wrong and stupidly cargo-culting.
But I don’t see the OP talking about the way that disinformation and political dark patterns as framing labourers as simpletons.
If you want reductionism, when it comes to humans persuading other humans to do things, we are all simpletons. We all have what amount to zero-day vulnerabilities. We all can be stunningly brilliant in one area of our lives, but thicker than a block of wood in another.
I don’t think there's anything condescending or paternalistic about saying this.
The GP didn't say this is exclusive to blue collar worker; they only used blue collar as an example. It is shockingly easy to convince any kind of workers to go against their own best interest, whether it comes to unions or employment regulations.
E.g., I know plenty of white-collar workers in my country who believe they're being robbed by their country because their employers have to also pay for their socialized health insurance, naively assuming that if that was not the case, they could actually pocket that money.
Sure that's fair, but that only expands the circle of condescension, which is perhaps _slightly_ better because it weakens the element of class snobbery. The notion that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot who doesn't understand what's good for them as well as you understand what's good for them is what I'm pushing back against. The very phrase "voting against their own interests" is dripping with condescension and the presumption that you understand their lives better than they do. It's the same justification used for every historical and current violation of freedom in the social sphere: gay conversion therapy, the drug war, mores around gender roles, etc etc. The fact that economic constraints don't evoke the same immediate reaction as social ones doesn't mean that economic policy can't have an immense impact on people's lives, and cause or alleviate immense suffering.
Now don't get me wrong: I'm not some extremist hyper-individualist believer in Homo Economicus, and I think there's plenty of scope for paternalism in policy. I think that it's entirely possible to talk to a specific person about their policy beliefs and come away with the view that they don't understand what's going on and are voting against their own interests. I just think that a little humility is in order when making assumptions about other people's lives and struggles a d choices, and applying this approach en masse with blanket statements like the GP comment (and your own, to a lesser degree) is a lot more likely to be ignorant of the realities of the variety and complexity of these people's lives.
> It's the same justification used for every historical and current violation of freedom in the social sphere: gay conversion therapy, the drug war, mores around gender roles, etc etc.
It is. It doesn't mean the justification is always wrong, much like Stalin believing 2+2=4 doesn't disprove arithmetic. I agree with the call to humility and I generally not tell individuals I know better than them how they should live their lives, but my comment is a) on the systemic level, and b) based on direct and indirect experience.
For instance, some of the evidence backing my belief is the experience of people close to me who went through periods of abusive employments, and whose stories I got to hear throughout it. For instance, one of those people was stuck under a verbally and mentally abusive boss who exploited the perception of local employment conditions to keep people underpaid and overworked. The irony is, the abused employees were also critical to that man's financial success, and they could've easily fixed the situation for themselves, if they got together. Unfortunately, they (including my close acquaintance) were all scared shitless and couldn't coordinate - everyone was essentially worried no one else would step up, and the lone person would lose the job.
Having seen or heard of cases like this, and also having read here many stories that essentially boil down to "short-term rewards prevent people from taking actions beneficial to their career longer-term" (carrots work better in our industry, for now), I came to the conclusion that it's ridiculously easy to exploit workers. Now, since the context of this discussion is Uber, a notoriously morally bankrupt company, I don't think myself or the OP are too paternalistic with this sentiment. It's not intended as a criticism of workers (myself I'm not immune to this kind of pressure either), but exploitative employers.
Sorry for the aside and the patronizing tone, but it's actually ignoramuses and not ignorami, as the word comes from the Latin verb meaning "we are ignorant", so it has no plural form.
Appreciate the correction. I think this is one of those things that I've heard multiple times and for some reason failed to retain; its worth noting that many dictionaries[1] recognize ignorami as a plural form, independent of the original Latin grammar. I'm usually a bit more of a prescriptivist than is probably rational, but I don't find myself too worked up about this error since the normalization of the error causes no loss of descriptive power (unlike, say, the transition from literally to figuratively).
Part of the issue is that there's great diversity in how rideshare drivers are using Uber and Lyft. As a result, it doesn't really make sense to speak of the interests of drivers as a whole.
For example, in the Rideshare Guy survey, there's a pretty even distribution across the buckets of "How much of your total monthly income comes from driving?" About 24% responded "very little", while 19% responded "all or almost all", with the rest somewhere in between.
The ones who responded "very little" are likely using Uber/Lyft in their spare time to supplement income from another job and might be better off as independent contractors. Those who rely on driving for "all or almost all" of their income are driving as their primary occupation, and might be better off as employees. I'd imagine that what's good for the first group on this issue might be bad for the second group and vice versa.
A right, even and especially a positive right, is strictly always a curtailment of some form of freedom. The "right to life" means that no one has the freedom to kill you arbitrarily. The right to health care means that the market is not free to deny you health care. The right to freedom of religion means that the religious must make do without your religious donation.
The NAP is literally impossible to not break over even the most trivial of things and if you seriously believe in it or similar you're far more ignorant than the person you accuse.
Freedom of religion (at least in the US constitutional sense) is a negative right in that it obliges inaction (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof). Did you mean to imply it was a positive right?
Miranda rights are positive rights (you have the right to). Much of the Constitutional rights are negative (shall not infringe on...)
For instance, most of organized labor may understand that "Right To Work" legislation is Luntzian doublespeak, because their orgs have policy people to unravel the lies.
But it's effective against non-union labor, editorial boards, and low-information voters. Providing much needed cover for corporate shilling legislators.
"And frankly, the doublespeak involved in labeling restrictions on labor relationships as rights (and thus obviously and unambiguously positive) says much more about your ignorance than theirs."
More generally, it is shockingly easy to frame an issue with disinformation to misguide the general public.
The only solution to this is better education that teaches critical thinking rather than mechanical parroting-exams based system that is widespread today in majority of the world.
Cognitive Dissonance is a real thing. I think those nonsensical views are largely possible to hold because they're commonly held and not that they have any merit. Unfortunately we are extremely susceptible to conformity and social proof.
Fair enough. Critical thinking is a way to think about a problem that does not guarantee similar conclusions, nor does it imply that it can used effectively for all problems.
"Everyone is capable of anything" is a bit of a stretch, but as general rule critical thinking is not improbable for majority of the people.
That is, I believe with better education we can have a substantially larger number of people who are capable of critical thinking and can navigate through trickery and misinformation at a basic level.
Even under assumptions of universal inherent capability, the dirty truth is that we simply don't know how to reliably teach critical thinking en masse. That's nominally what college is for, but the universalization of college admissions has exposed the fact that the difference between a degreed and non-degreed worker had more to do with the input population to colleges than any direct effect of a college education.
This is an unsolved problem, and a really important one in the modern cognitive economy, which is why theories about inherent cognitive capability have gained so much purchase recently. For my part, I think these theories are plausible, but also think that their implications are significant enough that I don't want to be too hasty and buy into them until I've been convinced that we've exhausted the possibility that thinking can be taught.
IMO critical thinking seems to appear when multiple conflicting hypothesis of truth are thrust upon the individual.
The people I’ve met who are least capable of critical thinking seem to have accepted some form of universal or protouniversal truth, usually an ideology that sort of explains all things away they don’t want to think about. Religion, strong societal rules and position, and lack of unwanted interference in your life can do that.
Some degree of oppression doesn’t seem to harm either as it seems to me it forces people to confront the fundamental sense of fairness they might want to believe in has no grounds in society. So it’s a mix of things.
I’ve also always had trouble meeting very uncritical students of history or philosophy. I think both sort of have a tendency to remove illusions from your mind, although philosophy in particular is not too useful I think beyond the fundamentals.
Learning Socratic dialogue seems useful though.
Probably the least critical thought-inclined people I’ve met are students of economics who take the theories at face value though. Interestingly they are very often quite sheltered and privileged people, which goes into my point about oppression.
I don't know what direction the causal arrow flows here though: it's just as plausible to me that those inclined towards or capable of critical thinking gravitate towards those degrees. Like I said, I have no idea what the reality is, but I don't think anyone does, and what I'm pushing back against is the notion held by so many that throwing arbitrary education at people magically grows critical thinking skills
In fact I’d like to add that I said above - probably the best education for critical thinking I can imagine is teaching people about cognitive biases and heuristics.
Right, I didn't mean to suggest that _you_ were falling into this trap in your comment. My second sentence isn't too tied to my first, it's just a clarification that I'm not completely fatalist about the issue (yet).
"everybody is capable of improving anything if only they were given more education than they are now and cared enough to study"
Is probably more accurate. You can bring a horse to water but you can't make them drink. It's impossible to know but it may be that those who are willing to be educated already have been and those who are left are willfully ignorant or have low enough intelligence that education isn't possible.
As society becomes more complex, greater and greater numbers of people will be unable to successfully interact with it. What we do with them is a unsolved problem.
>The only solution to this is better education that teaches critical thinking rather than mechanical parroting-exams based system that is widespread today in majority of the world.
As long as...
a) The politicians find it easier to manipulate dumb voters and realize that voters with good critical thinking skills are more capable of calling out their BS.
and
b) The bureaucrats deciding what gets taught in public school are ultimately accountable to people appointed by and accountable to politicians
and
c) Most of the voting public gets a public school education.
...we will never have a general public with good critical thinking skills.
Now, before anyone puts words in my mouth, no there isn't some grand conspiracy to keep the proles stupid, it just so happens that there's a disincentive to making them smart and making them smart takes resources so obviously there's no will to get it done.
You'd be surprised how much good stuff the government doesn't do is attributable to this incentive structure.
Because it's very easy to get turkeys to vote for Christmas. Turkeys have no idea why you like Christmas or what you're planning for Christmas, they just know what you're telling them. Tell them that turkeys are the most important things on Christmas and it would be entirely spoiled without them, and promise them a handful of feed right now as a reward for voting for it. You don't even have to lie.
A few years ago Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay all successfully kept engineer pay down through anti-poaching agreements[1].
Unions provide checks and balances against that type of abuse.
In the programming world, how many people are convinced that white-collar desk labor is qualitatively different from assembly line work, such that unions apply to factories but would never apply to a bunch of coders in an office building?
I grew up hearing that programmers are professionals and individuals and we can all negotiate for maximal pay, and of course that's poppycock. The vast, vast majority of programmers would be well-served with a guild or union at their workplace, because most are simple laborers trading their time for dollars; exactly the same boat as people building cars or wiring buildings.
Everyone cites the rock star making bank -- you are probably not it, and even if you're on the upper tier, a union could get you a larger slice of that company pie, and could get you more of a say in how the workplace is run (no more crunch time? more schedule flexibility? more time off? more opportunities for mentoring or being mentored? pick how you want your workplace improved...).
The thing is, technical workers were headed down the path of considering themselves labor until IBM brought in union-busters that crafted this propaganda of "the nature of the work means we're more like engineers or doctors or lawyers and THEY'RE not unionized" (ignoring that they're all members of professional guilds).
So, thank IBM that we're only now, decades later, starting to see labor organizing in tech fields, and here, only in the most abusive of fields (video game development); thank IBM and our desire to see ourselves as somehow above the guys who built the buildings we're in.
Apropos of nothing, I belatedly realized that all my libertarian minded friends (geeks of an age) are often simultaneously fans of both Ayn Rand and game theory, two notions largely in mutual opposition.
Reminds me of what happened when they were passing the "Hobbit" law in NZ. The companies that stood to gain from it got their people out to protest against the unions, but few knew how the largely Hollywood written legislation might affect them down the line. I actually know of one person who attended the protests and got bitten by the law a few years later, in an entirely different industry too.
From what I vaguely recall hearing, most places don't like to have employees that work more than half time but less than full time. Maybe fixing whatever misincentives are causing this discontinuity would also help make the contractor / employee difference less of an issue?
All the other people in the office see that employee as "lazy Bob". The guy who isn't around every 2nd Friday. They guy who works slower than everyone else. They guy who always seems to be randomly missing from important meetings, and then doesn't know what's going on.
A 90% time employee is worth far less than 90% to the company.
Source:. Worked at a company where employees could either take a few days off after a bout of overtime, or get paid extra. Those who took days off were seen as lazy, not committed, and wouldn't get promotions or roles of responsibility.
A 90% time employee is worth far less than 90% to the company.
I had a 90% job with a large software vendor. The deal being 20 days additional vacation for 10% less pay.
I can guarantee you that during the time I worked I was a far better and efficient employee. That's based on the simple fact that I ws much better rested, far less stressed and much more creative due to the additional time off, in which I travelled the world.
Based on my anecdotal evidence I stipulate that you're dead wrong.
A higher rate of vacation absence is much less noticeable day to day than a shorter routine schedule in "projecty" occupations where a team effort is pushed to completion. Being on vacation is quite similar to being temporarily assigned to a different project, the temporarily smaller team will cope just fine, they might even win efficiency tho compensate for some of the nominal throughput loss.
But most hours reductions are of the predictable continuously reduced schedule type, which is great for occupations where a defined number of positions has to be filled at all times (pretty much everything that is more reactive than active). But in "projecty" work, that predictability is of little value, the reduced-hours teammember will count fully (or more) to team size in terms of organisational overhead and task dependency delays, but will contribute fractionally less. It's not the lower amount of total hours in that scenario, but the permanent asymmetry.
That's a lot of anecdotal evidence framed as facts.
I for one have been working 80% for two years (Germany) and have never felt more productive and motivated. And not only that, but I've also been able to use my Fridays off to acquire skills I would otherwise not have had the time or motivation to learn.
None of my colleagues ever complained about me seeming lazy or slow, quite the opposite, really.
I think one of the reasons that your experience is so different is that Americans tend to have a very different work culture than other countries. It partly stems from the fact they get almost no holiday and are often encouraged not to take the holiday they're allowed anyway. Whereas in Europe the idea that you wouldn't take holiday you're entitled to is just crazy.
Whereas in Europe the idea that you wouldn't take holiday you're entitled to is just crazy.
And depending on the country it's outright illegal.
In Switzerland, for example, which has one of the more liberal (as in employer friendly) employment laws in Europe an employer can not compensate vacation days with money, except in very exceptional circumstances (i.e end of employment and employee has remaining vacation days).
To add some anecdotal evidence for America: I've always stuck to a hard 10-6 and I have a great career. Any company that doesn't let you trade talent against time is a company that doesn't respect you as a worker or even an adult. Granted, I work in the single American industry that likely respects its workers the most, but I have friends in other industries who believed that working sane hours was impossible until they... Tried it.
Obviously working more means you get more done (assuming you don't burn yourself out), so the cost of working less to your career is nonzero, but this is practically tautological, and the stronger claim made here that it affects your reputation beyond its actual impact on productivity is not as universal in the US as people like to complain.
I've lived and worked in both America and Europe, and while I find the living conditions in Europe generally better - healthcare and social safety nets are awesome - the environment for working in America was just more vibrant and lively.
I much prefer working in America, or at least with Americans - but in terms of lifestyle, Europeans have it much, much better.
Thanks for the input. I also think that there's a significant cultural difference in that regard. I just wanted to share my very good experience, because I didn't like the GPs conclusion that part time cannot work.
> That's a lot of anecdotal evidence framed as facts.
Anecdotal evidence is, by definition, facts that are gathered in an unstructured manner which limits their probative value when it comes to supporting broader generalizations.
So, it's quite appropriate to frame anecdotal evidence as facts, though one is on weaker ground drawing generalized, conclusions from such evidence, which was the actual problem with the grandparent post.
Your feelings aren't facts nor are they universal.
I've worked with some of the best people in the world building billion dollar systems in small teams. People have different work habits and some of the best people I've worked with worked on their own schedule and always produced world class results.
What you're describing seems to be a mediocre environment where the perception matters more than the results. And not only that, but you seem to present your perception as universal within your company.
This seems like maybe you're projecting your own personal feelings onto others. The last place I worked was a consultancy that was super flexible with working arrangements. Some folks were half time, some worked 30 hour weeks, and others worked traditional 40 hour weeks. Nobody expressed any problems with it. Everybody got rewarded for the effort they contributed. The people (like me when I started) who wanted to focus on work could do that and the people (like me when I left) that were focused on other things but still wanted to work could do that. Where's the problem other than inside your own head?
Most Uber/Lyft drivers would be happy as independent contractors if the companies didn't keep reducing rates/incentives.
The mileage/time rates of pay have been slashed drastically and Lyft recently removed Primetime rate increases altogether, so drivers now get essentially no additional money for driving during the busiest times.
When you've been so completely re-intermediated by the platforms you operate on, the assumption that you are an independent contractor no longer holds.
Then the platform will fail due to lack of supply of labor. It’s not ideal, but these freedoms of both parties are part and parcel of independent contracting.
Bullshit. If they can't set their own rates and have customers (riders) accept/reject them they're not really independent contractors. Having Uber/Lyft set the price is like having a centrally planned economy instead of a free market.
No it won't. Uber and Lyft offer significant incentives to boost driver recruitment at the start, and then start peeling them back once those drivers have invested time and rides on the platform. The whole demand/supply equilibrium thing is Econ 101; it belongs in textbooks, because it's oversimplified and doesn't match how business operates in real world conditions.
- predatory pricing, where a product is sold below its true cost, to undercut competitors. Similar to 'dumping' in international trade. Example would be Walmart's undercutting of Target and other pharmacies for Birth Control pills in Wisconsin [0].
You could argue Uber does this as well, as it built market share on the backs of billions in investor capital, as opposed to setting its prices based on demand and supply. In the Econ 101 world, it wouldn't be possible to scale to the size of Uber while losing billions every year, with profitability nowhere in sight.
in terms of other examples:
- minimum wages (pretty much every country has this)
- letting banks borrow from the Fed at an effective 0% rate, and letting them profit by arbitraging that capital by charging "market rates" to consumers
- minimum price guarantees for farmers (again, almost every country has this)
All of these distort the demand-supply relationship as described in economic theory, where all actors have equal bargaining power, equal access to information and where every concept must be prefaced with "all other things remaining equal". That's why it is ultimately "theory". It provides the basic conceptual grounding, but beyond that, everybody has to do their own estimations about what price to charge, because of the various distortions specific to their business environment.
Back to Uber, no, they don't need an infinite number of drivers in the US. They just need enough drivers to replace those that leave their network. They can do that by offering attractive sign-up bonuses, and then start cutting fares once the drivers are settled and it's harder for them to leave because of the potential loss of income.
Or a concessionaire? My cousin ran a concession in my town's largest sportsball stadium. The way the deal is structured, my cousin was paying Ogden (the host company) for the privilege of working there.
I'm not 100% sure on this but I think when you start a franchise, the model is that you pay an huge up front price for being able to use the brand. I think that's kind of what the New York taxi license model is; Pay $1,000,000, now you too can drive a cab.
I think the dream of the gig economy is that you can use your own tool/skill to work when you want. Think of it more like cutting the grass or shoveling snow in your neighborhood for $15-$30 bucks depending on the area (If you had a neighborhood like that).
Yeah maybe — it should really just be the entrepreneurial economy. I think one of the big challenges is that most people jumping into this type of work want the freedom of an entrepreneur and the "safety" of an employee. There seem to be services that offer full-time employee like benefits[1], but I'm not sure how effective they are.
As an entrepreneur, it is a "bring your own tools" type of system. When I did contract development, I had to bring my own laptop, my own software, and use that to produce and bill the client. I think the challenge in this new system is that the pricing dynamics aren't fluid. You know what, as I'm typing this I wonder if building a system that lets the entrepreneurs somehow control the prices will maybe help set an equilibrium.
If uber and lyft drivers are employees, what about people who post on youtube or twitter, since they are creating revenue for the company and being paid?
Interestingly, the text messages Uber and Lyft sent are factually accurate in that being made an employee will limit the ability of drivers to choose their own working hours. What they dont tell them is that they will also have better entitlements and cost the company more.
The annoying/hard part about this debate is that the law is making a distinction, and everyday speech makes a distinction, and we use the same words in both cases, even though they have different meanings and implications.
It doesn't help that the legal distinction is hard to reason about since its goal is kind of nebulous. As best I can tell, it's balancing between "ensuring that businesses pay social insurance[1] obligations for anyone who they've made economically dependent on them" and "not making it burdensome to hire sporadic workers that 'feel' like legit independent contractors".
So yes, Uber can absolutely class drivers as employees (EmploymentLaw::Employee) and then say "oh just work whenever" (LaySpeech::Contractor).
[1] an umbrella term covering a lot of things; here, unemployment insurance and worker's compensation insurance.
Edit: Rewrote when I realized you were saying the opposite and I was disagreeing.
Uber and Lyft said the right thing. If they are forced to take on drivers as employees, they aren't going to hire these random people who are driving for them now, and they aren't going to hire them to work flexible schedules.
They are going to hire the best people they can get for an employee's salary and benefits ... and that isn't going to be the same people benefitting now.
People seem to think that they are going to get the jobs once those jobs become more desirable. No, they won't. Once its a more desirable job, it's going to get the best worker willing to work for that wage. Not the hodgepodge who are driving now.
Something similar goes through the heads of teachers that demand higher salaries. If salaries get really high, existing teachers won't be the ones parents will want to hire. They'll hire really highly skilled people that are currently in other more lucrative careers. If you look at Finland where teaching is a well compensated job, the people teaching are similar to people going into lucrative consulting or programming jobs. It's not the bottom performers from third tier universities, as in the US.
I think it's disingenuous of Uber and Lyft to tie working hour flexibility to employee status. Yes many full-time employees don't have that level of flexibility, but being a full-time employee does not de-facto prevent you from having that flexibility. They tie the two issues together in order to get their "contractors" on their side.
Also, you mention twice "these aren't the people they will hire", in the context of Uber/Lyft drivers and teachers, but labour isn't infinite. There aren't millions of highly qualified people sitting around unemployed waiting for these jobs to pay better – those people are employed in other jobs that do pay better. If teachers were paid more it may incentivise many to get better qualifications and training (that they can't currently justify). If the US pays terrible salaries for teachers, no one is going to want to go to an expensive university and rack up large student debt in order to get a teaching job.
The causality may be the other way around from what you're suggesting.
> Yes many full-time employees don't have that level of flexibility, but being a full-time employee does not de-facto prevent you from having that flexibility. They tie the two issues together in order to get their "contractors" on their side.
They are actually tied on the other side, AFAIU. It's being an independent contractor that _requires_ having that flexibility. So if Uber/Lyft want to keep that arrangement, they have the obligation (and, symmetrically, the contractors have the right) to keep their hours flexible. If the drivers become employees, Uber/Lyft no longer have any obligation to maintain that flexibility.
> Also, you mention twice "these aren't the people they will hire", in the context of Uber/Lyft drivers and teachers, but labour isn't infinite.
Neither is the demand for Uber's services.
If prices for rides go up to pay for mandatory drivers' vacation and sick pay and dental insurance, the reality is they will, as a group, have even less money than before because customers will switch back to cabs, public transit, or worse, driving drunk.
If Uber's prices can't pay for reasonable wages for their drivers, then it might well be for the best to remove that competitive pressure on employers that can.
To me it seems like awful public policy to let companies get away with paying too little, as society ends up effectively subsidizing competition against employers that treat their workers better, through benefits and lower taxes. In doing so we're also hiding the real costs of a lot of products and services
Agreed, plus (un)employment is used as a fairly common headline statistic which strongly informs government policy. If you have 2% unemployment but 20% of the workforce without healthcare and working multiple jobs, it's much easier to ignore the problem than if you had 20% unemployment – a figure that would likely trigger a huge and immediate government response as it indicates a crisis, even though those people may not be that much worse off given social security programs (although I don't know much about the US social security programs).
Totally agree. Very often people will analyze a snapshot of a scenario, recognize something they want to change, and campaign for change without considering how the system will change. They fixate on that one variable.
"Uber drivers are not paid as well as they should. Let's mandate that wages go up!"
Expected outcome: wages change and nothing else. The people who are currently underpaid get a big raise.
Real outcome: The market adjusts and Uber only hires professional drivers, who were earning about the same anyway. Previous Uber drivers are unemployed.
Where is this huge pool of more professional drivers who are unemployed waiting for Uber to add additional benefits before making the leap?
Because if they're not unemployed, then if Uber suddenly starts competing for them, other jobs are being freed up.
While some individuals may be affected, it seems highly unlikely that there is enough slack in the labor supply in that market that the addition of a few benefits will let Uber suddenly make large shifts in who they let work for them.
Especially given that Uber already have a huge amount of hard data on which drivers do best with them anyway, and so it will continue to make far more sense for Uber to manage drivers based on actual performance.
>Something similar goes through the heads of teachers that demand higher salaries. If salaries get really high, existing teachers won't be the ones parents will want to hire. They'll hire really highly skilled people that are currently in other more lucrative careers. If you look at Finland where teaching is a well compensated job, the people teaching are similar to people going into lucrative consulting or programming jobs. It's not the bottom performers from third tier universities, as in the US.
Like there are a lot of skilled teachers working in other domains. There may be exceptions for match, programming and some other discipline that are working in a better paid job, Also to be a teacher you also need the teaching skill and to like working with children, so you will not see a programmer that hates teaching go and work in a school because of his greed.
If teaching software engineering taught me as much as I do as a software engineer, I'd make that leap. Wouldn't be a bad thing for the education system either since my AP Computer Science teacher in high school was a terrible teacher and caused me to give up the idea of doing CS as my major in college.
So what you're saying is that when workers have leverage to negotiate high salaries this leads to competent workers being well compensated and high quality of services, at the expense of companies that run on price dumping models?
Not sure you're making the point you're trying to make
He's saying that the average person working Uber/Lyft right now aren't the "competent workers" they would hire if you have to pay a higher salary with benefits.
So yeah if all this stuff changes a Uber/Lyft drivers would be better off the people currently driving for Uber/Lyft wouldn't have a job.
which I think is perfectly fine, we shouldn't treat companies like uber like some employer of last resort because people are struggling to make ends meet and are pushed into the gig economy. It was never advertised as an alternative to regular employment by the sharing businesses themselves.
There's something more deeply wrong about the state of affairs if that's the case.
So you're saying that these people that wouldn't have a job don't deserve the opportunity to do any job? Eliminating such employment opportunities means that they will only have the choice of welfare because they've been priced out of the labor market by well meaning progressives.
> Generally private school teachers make way less than public school ones though do.
Private schools have looser licensing requirements and fewer overall positions to fill, so there's a greater supply of labor competing for a lower demand. That already would lead to lower pay in itself.
They are also able to offer benefits that private schools typically cannot (such as a reduced responsibility for administrative work). Teachers who come from industry or higher education are oftentimes willing to trade a lower salary for the additional flexibility (which they can oftentimes use to pursue other adjacent work in their field.
That's why private school teachers are more likely than public schools to have teachers who old PhDs, despite the pay being higher at private schools, and despite the licensing requirements being less strict for private schools.
Their union won’t let you pay a new hire more than a less competitive teacher with more seniority. Therefore almost nobody with the capacity to work at a FAANG will choose to become a high school CS or Math teacher earning poverty wages.
Texas doesn't have a teachers union and they still don't pay them all that well. Blaming unions for such things doesn't appear to be a well researched argument.
Someone who doesn't have or is unable to obtain a job offer with much higher compensation in industry.
For example, hiring a CS or Math grad as a HS CS teacher is more competitive than hiring a French Literature grad as a HS French teacher. The CS grads have a lot of other options and at any fixed compensation you will get much better French teachers than CS teachers.
