Yes, some laws are silly. Worker protections though? I don't think there's much to cheer about when the reason many of these sharing companies are so profitable is because they basically eliminate using employees for their "unskilled"(read: job markets with an excess of employable people) labor.
Also I would dispute that people(edit: this is basically impossible to prove, it'd be nice to see some data) see the sharing economy as "morally good". I certainly don't. Not because I don't think people should be allowed to share, but because I don't think corporations should be able to 1099 what are obviously employees in order to cut costs.
edit. I guess I'm getting downvoted because worker protections actually are considered a bad thing here? smh
I agree with you, and I think companies are abusing the word "sharing." If I lend my neighbor a tool, that's sharing. If I bring cookies in to work and put them in the break room for everybody, that's sharing.
If I visit a website, order something and pay for it, then it's not sharing - it's ordering a product or service. I don't care who actually owns the car or the room.
Regarding worker protection: Lets take the case of a simple roadside flea market. The property owner sets up a situation where workers can sell goods at a table, and connect with customers. But the people running the individual tables may sit there all day and only make a few bucks. So is it the venue owner's responsibility to make sure that everyone that he rents a table to is getting minimum wage? I think that is what Uber et al. are arguing, is that their duties end at connecting individual sellers with individual buyers.
That's one of the side effects of strong worker protection laws -- if applied too far, then they have the effect of causing some work to just not exist, even if there are people that really want to do that work. Of course, the flip side of this is that it can prevent a tragedy of the commons situation, in which workers desperate for income will get into a competitive race to the bottom.
But as for your analogy, what's the big difference? Uber controls too much of the process to really classify them as "connecting individual sellers and buyers". They are the seller.
Which worker protections? AirBnB has no unskilled labor, and Uber is replacing an industry where the workers were already contractors with no benefits - in fact, an industry where workers had to rent medallions to work.
I specifically mentioned AirBnB is not one of the companies screwing their employees in the name of profits, but Uber/TaskRabbit/etc most certainly are.
As far as "well, it's better than what existed" w/r/t Uber, It's still illegal.
As far as "well, it's better than what existed" w/r/t Uber, It's still illegal.
... in California. In any case, I was disagreeing with the claim that they are "eliminate using employees". Not using employees was already the status quo, so Uber couldn't eliminate it if they wanted to.
I guess that depends if you consider Uber some kind of brand new business type or just a lower class limo service combined with a taxi dispatch. Because there are plenty of drivers out there that do receive benefits, even if Taxi drivers aren't one of them.
Also I would dispute that people(edit: this is basically impossible to prove, it'd be nice to see some data) see the sharing economy as "morally good". I certainly don't. Not because I don't think people should be allowed to share, but because I don't think corporations should be able to 1099 what are obviously employees in order to cut costs.
edit. I guess I'm getting downvoted because worker protections actually are considered a bad thing here? smh