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> People are not agents of free will, and any sub-utopic framework they have to participate in is immoral?

This is so fallacious that it almost doesn't parse as English (largely imo because it's been fluffed up to hide the utterly commonplace "so you're saying everything is wrong unless it's perfect?" strawman.)



It's intended to be a steelman and is a rephrasing of an argument said to me in the past; you could dig it up in my comment history from a previous uber discussion should you be so inclined.

Regardless, feel free to ignore my strawman and tell me the real argument.


The real argument is that gig employers have found a way to skirt regulations protecting “real” employees. And that the people who suffer from this are primarily in an economic position such that they don’t have much of a choice but to accept those conditions.

That doesn’t mean “any sub-utopic framework they have to participate in is immoral”, it just means this particular one is.


"Real employees" have not historically done these jobs. Your assertion is simply not true.


Uber replaced taxi cabs, which had some of the most historic Union protections in American history.


Sorry, no. These exact same complaints have been swirling around for decades before Uber came on the scene: https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2017/12/12/taxi-drivers-emplo...

The only change is that Uber grew the market and popularized hiring cars, and the state of California decided to start attacking its own tech industry.

There's a lot of hypocrisy here. If the state truly had worker's interests at heart it would be looking at the farming industry, not ridesharing.


Not sure what you think that has to do with my point?


“Real humans have not historically done these jobs”.

A tragically myopic argument to make.


>It's intended to be a steelman

I think maybe you've misunderstood steelmanning. It's not about taking an argument to the absolute extreme, it's about constructing the most convincing and effective form of the argument.




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