
How anti-trust laws are used to stop independent contractors from organizing [pdf] - jasonhansel
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20191029/110152/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-PaulS-20191029-SD002.pdf
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EdJiang
This is a really interesting topic. If you go to conventions for different
trades, they usually make sure to emphasize that the convention is not a venue
to discuss specific pricing, as that could be seen as collusion and anti-
competitive. You wouldn't want a plumber's convention to be a place where they
collude to fix prices!

With technology enabling more peer-to-peer connections, the game changes. If
you're a productive plumber, why join a company and work for a salary when you
can work directly for the consumer and enjoy higher margins (and higher risk)?
However, as time goes on, more plumbers will make the same decision and enter
the market. This results in a more efficient economy: more people can get
plumbing at lower prices, and more people can work as plumbers.

But what if some business owners cost structures (due to mismanagement, poor
productivity) do not result in good wages? (eg, XYZ Plumbing struggles to stay
in business while ABC is doing just fine). Or what if the market forces end up
in a clearing price that's too low? In today's economy, it's considered normal
for some businesses to shut down if they cannot make money (know of a
restaurant that has closed due to COVID?). But do we as a society want
individuals taking on that much risk? If not, how can we insure against that
risk?

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alextheparrot
One solution could be to target 100% employment and have the risk state
subsidised (Through a guaranteed government wage). If the government is forced
to spend money to employ people (The military could be argued to be a weak
form of this), irrespective of need, I’m sure someone would figure out a
solution to the government’s labor surplus. Pretty easy to implement too —
just conscription - with the ability to opt in and out as you choose other
jobs instead or leave those jobs.

Overall, this means individuals are free to attempt different employment at
market rates. That could even be below the guaranteed government wage, just
there’ll be no subsidies that if individual can’t make the economics work out.

Hard to argue that the 1.2% employment rate in 1944 wasn’t helping drive the
economy forward.

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pyuser583
And what would this army of people be doing?

I have an image in my head of all my neighbors working at the same company.
WTF would we be doing?

I’m a software engineer, my wife a reporter, my next door neighbor a nurse,
the guy across the hall plays video games all day. His girlfriend is a
cleaning lady.

This doesn’t include the sex offender down the street, the guys who shoot guns
in the middle of the night, the drug addicted and mentally ill who hang out
near the bus station, or any other “hard cases.”

So what would we be doing?

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sdenton4
A vast quantity of paid labor is great for infrastructure projects. This is
what pulled the US out of the depression, and is the reason we have so many
gorgeous post offices and public buildings everywhere. (Particularly on the
post office front, this included stone workers, but also artists and
architects and engineers.)

(Expanding on edit...) And really, infrastructure is about building the solid
foundation on which the nation runs. Fix the digital infrastructure at all
levels of government. Put out wild fires, and provide other emergency relief.
You're already paying people; that's generally the expensive part...

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pyuser583
Infrastructure work requires specialized training... that I don’t have. And
most people don’t have.

We could certainly build a construction corps. But I don’t think many people
in my neighborhood could be part of it.

Modern construction is far more technical than in the 1930s. Failure isn’t
tolerated. Environmental impact statements are needed.

It’s insulting to the highly trained construction workers to say the average
person could be conscripted into doing their job.

~~~
alextheparrot
Re-institute the Manpower Board then, the government’s management of large
amounts of manpower means they have a vested interest in their training. Look
to the military, kids turn into marines, fighter pilots, engineers.

~~~
pyuser583
Only 30% of young adults meet the requirements for military service.

Most previous mass mobilizations focused on young men.

I still can’t imagine what sort of work my neighbors and I would be doing.

Not building roads, that’s for sure. Lots of bad backs.

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daniel-s
I will confess to not making it to the end of the introduction, but this is a
general comment about anti-trust and monopoly laws.

They're made up and arbitrary. The best definition I have seen is that someone
is a monopoly if they haven't made enough campaign contributions and weild
enough political influence to appease government bureaucrats from shaking them
down. The exception is for a monopoly created by the government itself by
legislation/regulation giving someone special privileges or banning
competitors.

I challenge a reply to this comment for a definition of monopoly that
rational+reasonable people could use to unambiguously differentiate between
business that are and are not a monopoly (asside from the one I gave above).

I like Walter Block's joke on monopolies. He starts with 3 prisoners in a
gulag who are chatting amongst themselves about how they got there. First guy,
"I was always late to work. I was accused of depriving the Soviet people of my
labour, so was sent to the gulag." The second guy, "gosh, I was always early.
They accused me of being selfish and ambitious: trying to brown-nose and get
ahead of my fellow workers, so I got sent here too." The last guy, "I was
always precisely on time. They said I must be a spy and accused me of having a
western wristwatch."

The same joke applies to monopolies. Three businessmen are all accused of
being monopolists and are sent to prison. First guy, "I was charging more than
my peers. They accused me of price gauging." Second guy, "I was charging less
than everybody else, they accused me of undercutting the competition." Last
guy, "I charged exactly the same as my competitors: I got charged with
collusion and participation in a cartel."

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burfog
We unambiguously differentiate by setting a threshold.

Does your water heater produce hot water? We can decide this unambiguously if
you provide your required temperature and the actual temperature you are
getting.

Despite the lack of a universal definition of "hot", we can unambiguously
determine if your water is hot or not.

For your water heater, you probably set the threshold based on how much you
enjoy your shower, how well your dishes get clean, and so on. For a monopoly,
we can set the threshold at the point where there is an unacceptable amount of
market control.

Measurement of market control is more difficult than measurement of water
temperature, but that is no excuse to give up. We measure beauty,
intelligence, bad driving, poverty, odor, and misery.

~~~
daniel-s
You have provided no definition. "Unacceptable amount of market control"
defines nothing at all. In fact, it only supports what I said. "Unacceptable"
will be what the bureaucrat/politician has decided he wants to go after.

Perhaps you want to try again?

~~~
burfog
Define "pain", so that we know if opiates are appropriate. (or we give them to
everybody who asks?)

Define "reckless driving", so we know who the police should stop and who
should be charged with that crime. (or we just give up on that concept?)

Define "nuisance odor", so we can fine or arrest people who make entire
neighborhoods unlivable. (or we let a condo smell like a huge industrial pig
farm?)

Define "mentally disabled", so that we can pursue rape charges (due to
inability to consent) or appoint a financial caretaker. (or we just let the
profoundly unintelligent get abused?)

Life and law are full of fuzzy judgement. Pretending otherwise is a terrible
idea.

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caylus
Wow, this is wild. A great example of how regulation can be a double-edged
sword. Anti-trust law prevents market participants from colluding to increase
their influence - which is exactly what a labor union does. Lawmakers patched
the issue by exempting labor unions, but they didn't cover independent
contractors.

The latest attempt to patch the issue is to force reclassification of many
independent contractors into employees. What unforeseen effects might this
have? Does AB 5 have enough special cases to avoid making things even worse?

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andromeduck
Why should we protect cartels?

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wahern
If a union is a cartel because its members bargain collectively, so is a
corporation. If you want to keep corporations because of the organizational
efficiencies that maximize productivity and welfare, then why not unions?

And let's not get into a semantic debate--the rules for forming corporations
are designed to make it efficient for investors to organize; likewise the
rules for forming unions are designed to make it efficient for laborers to
organize. So if you argue that laborers should instead form a corporation if
they want to organize, I'd rhetorically ask why not make investors use unions
as their vehicle.

~~~
seibelj
Unions are expensive and the reason they hold power is because they strike.
And when they strike they threaten violence against “scabs”, or someone
management hires to do the job despite union threats.

Unions are simply labor using violence to achieve their aims, which is soaking
the payer to enrich themselves. Nothing more and nothing less.

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matchbok
You clearly need to read up on a few books on the history of labor kid.
Embarrassing comment.

~~~
seibelj
Why would management subject themselves to a union? It’s because the law makes
them once their labor organizes. And if they try to fire their unionized labor
they get into a world of pain.

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Xunxi
That is quite the size of an entire book and a timely submission for a weekend
skim for those interested.

I did skip to the conclusion, typical ambiguous wrap-up, to say the least.

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jasonhansel
I don't think that this shows that anti-trust laws are bad. But I do think
that this partly explains why Uber and Lyft drivers don't "just
organize"\--it's because they don't receive the protections (limited as they
are) that ordinary employees would when they organize.

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Animats
That's a fascinating read. I'd never thought of that implication of antitrust
law.

Owner-operator truckers are in the worst position, as that paper points out.

