
California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/opinion/california-gig-economy-bill-ab5.html
======
neilwilson
The way to reshape labour laws is to offer an alternative job defining the
socially minimum acceptable job in a local area.

Business then has to compete with that to attract labour. No other labour law
required. Simple competition sorts it out.

That is also has the advantage of being a geographically targeted federal
automatic stabiliser that operates far more effectively than interest rate
targeting via bank lending, and ends unemployment permanently and forever is
just an added bonus.

~~~
C1sc0cat
No what you really need is federal binding minimum standards for Annual leave
(4 weeks ) and Sick pay and minimum wage.

Repeal all the right to work laws and massively reduce the ability of
employers to use non compeats (us CA as a model here I think)

~~~
Shivetya
How do you decide who qualifies for four weeks pay? that is a significant cost
to many small businesses. Do you limit it based on how many employees they
have? How many hours the employee averages per week? The last time Congress
set limits they threw low wage earners under the bus; the now infamous ACA
twenty nine hour rule.

minimum wage should not be at the federal level, it is a state by state and
city by city issue that should be based upon cost of living in that area.
federal laws should protect from working without pay and discrimination. if
localities wanted to protect low wage earners they woulds step back
occupational license requirements for many positions and reduce the burden of
fees and regulatory compliance as well; that twenty to twenty five dollar fee
some states charge just for a license may not be bad for you or me but for the
low wage earner it is very bad. having to pay five hundred dollars for a
license to work is no better, but these costs exist and are not income scaled

~~~
kornakiewicz
> How do you decide who qualifies for four weeks pay?

You don't. Every full-time employee have right to paid holidays, like we have
in every other country in the world.

~~~
linuxftw
That leads to less full-time employees. People will get their hours cut.

Maybe we need to consider someone who works more than 15 hours a week full
time. Or perhaps the benefits scale for employees based on number of hours
worked.

~~~
Ididntdothis
The US is pretty much the only developed country without mandatory vacation
time. This is a solved problem. Just look around how other countries do it.

~~~
linuxftw
If it's such a bright idea, why can't NY and CA do it? They're literally the
size and population of many other countries. In the US, the states are free to
do whatever they want with wage and employment laws, so long as it doesn't
violate the constitution. If CA wants to set the minimum wage to $30/hr + 2
weeks mandatory PTO, they are 100% free to do it. It's pretty much a single
party state at this point.

Other countries are able to support higher labor rates because they have
protectionist tariffs, such as the VAT. But if the US wants to raise tariffs,
all of a sudden we're racist idiots.

Anyway, a lot of what's perceived to be wrong with the US can easily be solved
at the state level, but turns out nobody actually wants to foot the bill for
these things.

------
maehwasu
So "feudalism" = "things I think are bad?"

The gig economy has many, many downsides, but those downsides don't share much
at all in common with feudalism, even by analogy.

If we let all words deteriorate to mean simply "good" or "bad" (with
gradations of good or badness), we're barely communicating.

~~~
BaronSamedi
We could even take an additional step on the path of honest communication and
instead of "good" and "bad", say "things I like" and "things I dislike".

~~~
simias
That's not the same thing. I like ice cream but it's bad for me. I don't like
having to pay for it but it's probably good for society that ice cream makers
are rewarded for their work, at least if I want to be able to eat more in the
future. The world would be a literal paradise if doing thing we like and doing
good things were always one and the same thing. I don't see how you can
discuss morality and ethics without "good", "bad", "right" or "wrong".

IMO the problem with modern political discussion (especially online) isn't
vocabulary, it's lack of nuance and empathy. "Good" and "bad" are not really
the problem, but rather when you _only_ classify things are either completely
good or completely bad with no middle ground.

~~~
BaronSamedi
You are using the word "bad" equivocally. Bad as in "bad for your health" is
one thing (no problem with that), bad as in "eating ice cream is morally bad"
is quite another. What would the claim that eating ice is morally bad even
mean?

All I'm suggesting is that we take care in our language and be up-front about
subjectivity rather than mask it with objective-sounding reifications. This
isn't an attack on morality nor its importance, rather it is an acknowledgment
of the fact that such judgments are ultimately based on what we as individuals
or as a society find acceptable or unacceptable (i.e., like or dislike). It is
perfectly possible to have a strong sense of ethics without claiming that
one's ethics are somehow objectively or empirically "true".

~~~
false-mirror
Moral relativism does not negate good/bad/right/wrong to the point that they
are equivalent to "like" and "no like". That is a radical reduction, and
removes the whole process of moral reasoning people use to live a moral life.

There are plenty of examples where the "right" thing to do is not pleasant, it
is not socially acceptable, etc because it is instead congruent with a greater
ethical structure. Please check out some moral philosophy before throwing the
whole field into a bin.

------
lugg
Good.

People forget the past all too easily. It took a lot to get us the protections
we have today. Giving them up so easily is a mistake.

For those thinking this is overreach and stifling innovation you need to look
back at history and realise the same thing could be said about many
commonplace workers rights that you take for granted now.

~~~
gerbilly
The fact that you're bing down voted is beyond me.

My wife describes engineers as 'smartdumb'.

We're super smart at figuring out technical solutions that enable things like
social media, ridesharing and short term rentals.

But we're either willfully ignorant or just plain dumb about the second order
effects on society.

And you know what you call it when people discuss the social good? Politics.

That very thing that coincidentally we're not supposed to talk about on this
site.

~~~
mkane848
Seeing people say things like "Simple competition sorts it out" as if any
complex problem can be answered like that. We should really know better, given
our field.

Also interesting that basically anyone saying anything mildly critical of
capitalism is getting downvoted without much response

~~~
weberc2
I’m open to thoughtful, constructive criticisms of capitalism. Mostly what I
see is “capitalism allows for some to slip through the cracks, so let’s burn
it all to the ground and start over with system that has only ever failed
catastrophically (or in the words of its proponents, ‘has never truly been
tried before’)”.

~~~
gerbilly
I see literally no-one one this site suggesting we go to full communism, if
that's what you're implying.

Carefully regulated capitalism should do fine. This is obviously not easy to
achieve.

