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On April 07 2024 00:53 riotjune wrote: Huh, I thought she was going to blame the earthquake on immigrants like she does with everything else, just like with the Key Bridge collapse.
After 2016 all the clowns came out of the woodwork and copied Trump to get elected after they realized it's just that easy because most voters are dumb. It's not just the United States, the sickness has already spread all over the world (some people argue that it all started with Boris Johnson's Brexit, aka Patient Zero, and Trump copied him). And who says insanity isn't contagious? Clinical psychologists and psychiatrists might as well agree that it does!
Marjorie looks like a Twitch streamer who resorts to rage-baiting and intentionally creates drama in order to remain relevant.
This is my frequent argument when it comes to Trump, he’s effectively legitimised this particular form of stupidity. Which I think will ultimately do much more damage than what he does/doesn’t do personally. It’s the kind of glass ceiling one really doesn’t want to see shattered.
What keeps ignorance and stupidity in check is a general cultural understanding that these are bad things to make apparent, and deferring to those who are less so.
I doubt we’re getting collectively dumber, merely folks are more emboldened to show it given it seems to carry considerably less cultural stigma
On April 07 2024 00:53 riotjune wrote: Huh, I thought she was going to blame the earthquake on immigrants like she does with everything else, just like with the Key Bridge collapse.
After 2016 all the clowns came out of the woodwork and copied Trump to get elected after they realized it's just that easy because most voters are dumb. It's not just the United States, the sickness has already spread all over the world (some people argue that it all started with Boris Johnson's Brexit, aka Patient Zero, and Trump copied him). And who says insanity isn't contagious? Clinical psychologists and psychiatrists might as well agree that it does!
Marjorie looks like a Twitch streamer who resorts to rage-baiting and intentionally creates drama in order to remain relevant.
This is my frequent argument when it comes to Trump, he’s effectively legitimised this particular form of stupidity. Which I think will ultimately do much more damage than what he does/doesn’t do personally. It’s the kind of glass ceiling one really doesn’t want to see shattered.
What keeps ignorance and stupidity in check is a general cultural understanding that these are bad things to make apparent, and deferring to those who are less so.
I doubt we’re getting collectively dumber, merely folks are more emboldened to show it given it seems to carry considerably less cultural stigma
Yea the cat's out of the bag and we can't force it back in at this point. The best we can do now is what Thomas Jefferson (supposedly) quoted: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
Or in this case, vigilance against the martyrs of stupidity.
On April 07 2024 00:53 riotjune wrote: Huh, I thought she was going to blame the earthquake on immigrants like she does with everything else, just like with the Key Bridge collapse.
After 2016 all the clowns came out of the woodwork and copied Trump to get elected after they realized it's just that easy because most voters are dumb. It's not just the United States, the sickness has already spread all over the world (some people argue that it all started with Boris Johnson's Brexit, aka Patient Zero, and Trump copied him). And who says insanity isn't contagious? Clinical psychologists and psychiatrists might as well agree that it does!
Marjorie looks like a Twitch streamer who resorts to rage-baiting and intentionally creates drama in order to remain relevant.
This is my frequent argument when it comes to Trump, he’s effectively legitimised this particular form of stupidity. Which I think will ultimately do much more damage than what he does/doesn’t do personally. It’s the kind of glass ceiling one really doesn’t want to see shattered.
What keeps ignorance and stupidity in check is a general cultural understanding that these are bad things to make apparent, and deferring to those who are less so.
I doubt we’re getting collectively dumber, merely folks are more emboldened to show it given it seems to carry considerably less cultural stigma
Yea the cat's out of the bag and we can't force it back in at this point. The best we can do now is what Thomas Jefferson (supposedly) quoted: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
Or in this case, vigilance against the martyrs of stupidity.
It often feels like a few of them are fighting over who can say the dumbest shit or do the worst thing, with MTG and boebert leading the charge.
Lol I don't know how Boebert thought giving handjobs in public was a good idea, poor dude probably didn't even get to finish as she was edging him on. Her getting totally shit-faced at the GOP gala is news to me, though not surprising.
Yes there are plenty of seemingly stupid politicians. Another example is the congresswoman talking during the eclipse about how the moon was a planet and made up primarily of gases, then marveled that we might one day live on the moon because the gases were such that we could do that. She was a Yale graduate no less.
We could laugh over the dumb shit they say but I'm always more bothered by the dumb shit they do that impacts people's quality of life. Some recent examples
Seattle passed a law forcing Uber and Lyft to pay their drivers more. The predictable result ensued: Uber/Lyft raised their prices to offset the new labor costs, now ordering out became much more expensive so people stopped paying $25 for their breakfast burrito. The amount of available deliveries plummeted so drivers are now making half of what they normally made in a day. This 2 minute youtube sums it up..
The delivery app companies earn less, the delivery drivers earn less, the restaurants get fewer orders, and the consumers pay more for their orders. They managed to make a lose-lose-lose-lose law for everyone involved.
Apparently the city council changed a lot in the last election and a lot of people responsible for the law are gone and replaced with more pro-business centrist politicians that may repeal or partially repeal it.
Minneapolis Minnesota passed similar laws for Uber and Lyft and now they are scrambling to delay their own law from going into effect as Uber/Lyft have decided to pull out of that area if the law takes effect.
In California we have a US congresswoman running for Senate who's arguing in favor of a $50/hour minimum wage. I guess under the belief that the only thing stopping everyone from being fabulously wealthy is that the government has not yet decreed it so.
It's unfortunate that the collective intelligence of some of our elected bodies would fail even an intro to economics 101 class and as a result people and businesses have to pay the price for it. To the credit of progressive areas like the one I live in, when the shit does predictably hit the fan they are able to acknowledge it instead of doubling down and they allow the pendulum to swing back. Perhaps that's the whole point - try the ideas that may be a little more crazy and risk them not working to find the occasional ones that do. Maybe that's why California is a bastion for innovation and creativity.
Isn’t part of the disruptive impact of an Uber/Lyft that venture capital pumps so much money into them that they’re effectively just loss-leading exercises?
Part of the reason certain services had less penetration over this side of the Atlantic were attempts to regulate them as businesses with employees, and not as a loose collective of self-employed workers who you don’t need to extend certain rights to.
I.e uber is a taxi/delivery company and thus playing by the same rules as others in the sector.
In a similar vein most calls to regulate an AirBnB is as a commercial/residential property rental company. Which I’m big in favour of but is taking its sweet time
I’m not particularly familiar with this instance, was it an attempt to regulate in a similar fashion or some kind of arbitrary ‘you must pay x’? thing or what?
On April 11 2024 18:59 BlackJack wrote: Yes there are plenty of seemingly stupid politicians. Another example is the congresswoman talking during the eclipse about how the moon was a planet and made up primarily of gases, then marveled that we might one day live on the moon because the gases were such that we could do that. She was a Yale graduate no less.
We could laugh over the dumb shit they say but I'm always more bothered by the dumb shit they do that impacts people's quality of life. Some recent examples
Seattle passed a law forcing Uber and Lyft to pay their drivers more. The predictable result ensued: Uber/Lyft raised their prices to offset the new labor costs, now ordering out became much more expensive so people stopped paying $25 for their breakfast burrito. The amount of available deliveries plummeted so drivers are now making half of what they normally made in a day. This 2 minute youtube sums it up..
The delivery app companies earn less, the delivery drivers earn less, the restaurants get fewer orders, and the consumers pay more for their orders. They managed to make a lose-lose-lose-lose law for everyone involved.
Apparently the city council changed a lot in the last election and a lot of people responsible for the law are gone and replaced with more pro-business centrist politicians that may repeal or partially repeal it.
Minneapolis Minnesota passed similar laws for Uber and Lyft and now they are scrambling to delay their own law from going into effect as Uber/Lyft have decided to pull out of that area if the law takes effect.
In California we have a US congresswoman running for Senate who's arguing in favor of a $50/hour minimum wage. I guess under the belief that the only thing stopping everyone from being fabulously wealthy is that the government has not yet decreed it so.
It's unfortunate that the collective intelligence of some of our elected bodies would fail even an intro to economics 101 class and as a result people and businesses have to pay the price for it. To the credit of progressive areas like the one I live in, when the shit does predictably hit the fan they are able to acknowledge it instead of doubling down and they allow the pendulum to swing back. Perhaps that's the whole point - try the ideas that may be a little more crazy and risk them not working to find the occasional ones that do. Maybe that's why California is a bastion for innovation and creativity.
Your logic seems to indicate that the most “win-win-win-win” situation would be if Uber/Lyft would be completely unregulated, allowing them to charge/pay whatever they want, leading to a market equilibrium where the maximal amount of orders are placed, profit is earned by the company, and wages are earned by the drivers.
I don’t think that would happen though, because in that situation Uber/Lyft control all the variables and they’re incentivized only by profit, not market equilibrium. They could supercharge a local economy by paying higher wages to drivers while simultaneously lowering delivery fees, but since that’s at the expense of profit they would never do that. What they would do (and what every other company does when given the power to do so) is maximize their profit to the detriment of the rest of the market.
The law forces Uber/Lyft to not lower the “driver wages” variable below X, and their “predictable response” is to tell the rest of the market to go fuck themselves by hamfisting a huge increase to the “fees to consumer” variable. When orders then predictably drop and everyone loses, that’s not the fault of the government/law, they didn’t jack the fees up. That’s on Uber/Lyft.
It’s also completely intentional, they’re not dumb. The most effective solution to maximize profit would be to slowly increase consumer fees to offset the driver wage increase while not shocking the current market trends, thereby keeping order numbers more stable while getting more and more money per order. The reason they’re not doing that is they’re banking on the consumers (and I guess some drivers), who they believe are reliant on their product, to get outraged and blame the government and get the law repealed. They’re willing to take the hit to the profit they’re missing out on in order to maintain that control over the market variables. Pulling out of Minneapolis is done for the same reason, obviously it would be more profitable for them to maintain their business there even if it’s at a loss compared to before. But it’s not worth it if it sets a precedent for other cities that they’ll go along with new rulings like that.
It’s a power struggle between Uber/Lyft and local jurisdictions, and it’s waged with public opinion. Uber/Lyft are banking on the public being reliant on their product, and not being able to live without it, as their method of control. From the perspective of the public though, between Uber/Lyft and the local government, only one of these entities is motivated to act with their best interests in mind. And it’s not Uber/Lyft. The optimal decision by the public would be to tell Uber/Lyft to kick rocks, suffer temporarily the lack of their services, and either wait them out or encourage local entrepreneurs to create a local equivalent.
Unfortunately that probably will not happen though, as the average person does not want their boat rocked and doesn’t like making sacrifices to their established quality of life just to prove a point. It also requires the greatest sacrifice of the drivers, whose livelihood is reliant on Uber/Lyft and would force them to find a different way to make money. It’s better to leave the thorn in and deal with the dull pain then dealing with ripping it out.
On April 11 2024 18:59 BlackJack wrote: Yes there are plenty of seemingly stupid politicians. Another example is the congresswoman talking during the eclipse about how the moon was a planet and made up primarily of gases, then marveled that we might one day live on the moon because the gases were such that we could do that. She was a Yale graduate no less.
We could laugh over the dumb shit they say but I'm always more bothered by the dumb shit they do that impacts people's quality of life. Some recent examples
Seattle passed a law forcing Uber and Lyft to pay their drivers more. The predictable result ensued: Uber/Lyft raised their prices to offset the new labor costs, now ordering out became much more expensive so people stopped paying $25 for their breakfast burrito. The amount of available deliveries plummeted so drivers are now making half of what they normally made in a day. This 2 minute youtube sums it up..
The delivery app companies earn less, the delivery drivers earn less, the restaurants get fewer orders, and the consumers pay more for their orders. They managed to make a lose-lose-lose-lose law for everyone involved.
Apparently the city council changed a lot in the last election and a lot of people responsible for the law are gone and replaced with more pro-business centrist politicians that may repeal or partially repeal it.
Minneapolis Minnesota passed similar laws for Uber and Lyft and now they are scrambling to delay their own law from going into effect as Uber/Lyft have decided to pull out of that area if the law takes effect.
In California we have a US congresswoman running for Senate who's arguing in favor of a $50/hour minimum wage. I guess under the belief that the only thing stopping everyone from being fabulously wealthy is that the government has not yet decreed it so.
It's unfortunate that the collective intelligence of some of our elected bodies would fail even an intro to economics 101 class and as a result people and businesses have to pay the price for it. To the credit of progressive areas like the one I live in, when the shit does predictably hit the fan they are able to acknowledge it instead of doubling down and they allow the pendulum to swing back. Perhaps that's the whole point - try the ideas that may be a little more crazy and risk them not working to find the occasional ones that do. Maybe that's why California is a bastion for innovation and creativity.
As opposed to the government subsidising Uber/Lyft (and so so many other businesses) by allowing their employees to live on government assistance because they don't earn a liveable wage. And since most of these people are not even employees but 'contractors' that have to pay for their own pensions/healthcare/insurance ect that they can't pay and are just hoping to never need because then they are fucked and fall either back into the governmental social safety nets or go broke and live on the street with a ton of medical debt.
The government is subsidizing so many businesses that have no right to exist and would be unable to do so on their own.
you can blame the evil government for wanting people to earn a liveable wage but a 5 dollar delivered breakfast burrito that is driven across town going through 3 different intermediates who all take their cut isn't a viable business.
I’m good with the Uber regulation and object to the idea that paying the drivers for their labour is somehow hurting them. If people order fewer small food delivery orders on a whim that is also a good thing. Those orders were a net loss for society, they cost more to deliver that the purchaser was willing to pay for delivery, they were only able to exist through a subsidy. Once that artificial subsidy is removed and the true cost revealed the demand dropped which is the invisible hand in action, the demand was never really there.
Just for people's information, when you order food through Uber/DoorDash they charge the restaurant 15-30% of your order total, then charge the customer 15-30%. Of that, the driver typically gets $2-3 and about $0.10/mi (in the Seattle market).
So if you order $50 in food from 5 miles away, the restaurant and you are charged ~$7.50 - $15 each. Of that $15-$30 charged for the delivery, ~$2.50-3.50 goes to the driver delivering your food.
If you get paid $30 to deliver $50 worth of food (that someone else, that you charge, buys and makes), then pay the person that actually delivers that food $3, yet "have" to raise your prices to raise their compensation, you're actually just shit at helping and should stop immediately (or be stopped).
Classic left/right on these, and as usual the do-gooding on one side totally ignores that now there are fewer uber/lyft drivers but they are making even less money, with the equally classic "well they were crap jobs anyway." Reminiscent of the ACA kicking people off of their healthcare plans too. Now, presumably, a bunch of former drivers will be on *more* government assistance but providing no service at all. Knowing what's best for others strikes again
On April 11 2024 20:13 WombaT wrote: Isn’t part of the disruptive impact of an Uber/Lyft that venture capital pumps so much money into them that they’re effectively just loss-leading exercises?
Part of the reason certain services had less penetration over this side of the Atlantic were attempts to regulate them as businesses with employees, and not as a loose collective of self-employed workers who you don’t need to extend certain rights to.
I.e uber is a taxi/delivery company and thus playing by the same rules as others in the sector.
In a similar vein most calls to regulate an AirBnB is as a commercial/residential property rental company. Which I’m big in favour of but is taking its sweet time
I’m not particularly familiar with this instance, was it an attempt to regulate in a similar fashion or some kind of arbitrary ‘you must pay x’? thing or what?
Over here in Spain the government passed a rider law, regulating that Glovo, Deliveroo, Uber Eats and whatever else have to employ their "autonomous riders". Glovo complained a LOT, Deliveroo pulled out of Spain, but at the end of the day, it worked. We can still get deliveries. And the riders now get covered by social security, have union protection, etc. Unsurprisingly, the sky hasn't fallen.
Uber already went out of business here when the government told them they needed to operate as a taxi service following taxi laws, or gtfo. Instead we have cabify and it seems to be doing fine.
On April 12 2024 03:36 Introvert wrote: Classic left/right on these, and as usual the do-gooding on one side totally ignores that now there are fewer uber/lyft drivers but they are making even less money, with the equally classic "well they were crap jobs anyway." Reminiscent of the ACA kicking people off of their healthcare plans too. Now, presumably, a bunch of former drivers will be on *more* government assistance but providing no service at all. Knowing what's best for others strikes again
If your business model consists of paying your employees below-living-wage amounts of money, you don't have a real business model. The government shouldn't be subsidizing that. Unless you want to have an honest discussion defending why the government needs to subsidize food delivery services.
On April 12 2024 03:36 Introvert wrote: Classic left/right on these, and as usual the do-gooding on one side totally ignores that now there are fewer uber/lyft drivers but they are making even less money, with the equally classic "well they were crap jobs anyway." Reminiscent of the ACA kicking people off of their healthcare plans too. Now, presumably, a bunch of former drivers will be on *more* government assistance but providing no service at all. Knowing what's best for others strikes again
If your business model consists of paying your employees below-living-wage amounts of money, you don't have a real business model. The government shouldn't be subsidizing that. Unless you want to have an honest discussion defending why the government needs to subsidize food delivery services.
He did.
Classic left/right on these, and as usual the do-gooding on one side totally ignores that now there are fewer uber/lyft drivers but they are making even less money, with the equally classic "well they were crap jobs anyway." Reminiscent of the ACA kicking people off of their healthcare plans too. Now, presumably, a bunch of former drivers will be on *more* government assistance but providing no service at all. Knowing what's best for others strikes again
The government should subsidize them so that they can (not) employ workers and exploit them for profit. Otherwise those workers might not have a job at all and the CEO wouldn't be able to buy a 5th yaght.
On April 12 2024 03:36 Introvert wrote: Classic left/right on these, and as usual the do-gooding on one side totally ignores that now there are fewer uber/lyft drivers but they are making even less money, with the equally classic "well they were crap jobs anyway." Reminiscent of the ACA kicking people off of their healthcare plans too. Now, presumably, a bunch of former drivers will be on *more* government assistance but providing no service at all. Knowing what's best for others strikes again
If your business model consists of paying your employees below-living-wage amounts of money, you don't have a real business model. The government shouldn't be subsidizing that. Unless you want to have an honest discussion defending why the government needs to subsidize food delivery services.
Classic left/right on these, and as usual the do-gooding on one side totally ignores that now there are fewer uber/lyft drivers but they are making even less money, with the equally classic "well they were crap jobs anyway." Reminiscent of the ACA kicking people off of their healthcare plans too. Now, presumably, a bunch of former drivers will be on *more* government assistance but providing no service at all. Knowing what's best for others strikes again
The government should subsidize them so that they can (not) employ workers and exploit them for profit. Otherwise those workers might not have a job at all and the CEO wouldn't be able to buy a 5th yaght.
My understanding is also that these companies haven't actually turned a profit yet, and so I think it's silly that investors keep putting money into them. but I'm waiting for someone to address BlackJack's point that there aren't actually any winners in this scenario. CA tried to implement something like this on a much bigger scale and eventually it was repealed (sort of) by voters with 59%. Most drivers supported the repeal iirc. The law even applied to people who wrote more than a certain number of articles a year for newspapers, which was a huge problem for the newspapers. So I am for businesses that don't make a profit going out of business but all I'm seeing here are losers (and I don't see many people on the left cheering for the end of the newspaper industry).
It certainly isn't helping the people it was advertised to help! And since we know people of a left-leaning persuasion actually aren't that concerned with government throwing cash around, this looks more like "big corporation bad" than a genuine concern for people in a rough spot. Unless you think it's a straight line from "Destroy DoorDash --> Utopia."
at least in ye olden days of left-wing labor agitating you would have fewer workers and more expensive goods, but the fewer workers were actually getting paid more!
The fact that people on the left aren’t intrinsically opposed to all state intervention in the free market does not somehow imply that they’re in favour of distortions in demand from mispricing delivery labour. The fact remains that if people don’t want to order takeout at a delivery cost that covers delivery costs then it is economically inefficient for them to do so. This is simple free market operations. Once costs are accurate and transparent the consumer can make an informed choice.
Yes, I am aware the left doesn't have a problem with subsidy, just who gets it. That's part of my point. Now no one gets anything. But of course a minimum wage is not, strictly speaking, "free market operations" either. Perhaps without either the min wage or the welfare benefits the actual cost of operation would be somewhere between the offered wage and the mandated minimum. But we won't know, because there is no "simple free market" in operation to begin with.
EPT
