The Gig Economy

[Dill]

(05-10-2019, 10:36 AM)Au165 Wrote: Do you own your house if the government can tell you how to build it (Building codes) or live in it (blighted property ordinances)? Do you own your own car if the government can tell you how to drive it (Driving laws)? If we head down this road then no one owns anything, which may be true but I like to think that isn't really the case.

In my mind safe working conditions are a right, preferred working conditions are not. 

I think I only "own" anything because I live in a society which can create regulations to record and protect what I own as property as "property." Otherwise I just "have" stuff. From this perspective building codes are a condition of ownership, as labor regulations and rights are conditions for owning a business.

When people first argued against child labor and for safety, no one considered safe working conditions a "right."

And a one-hour lunch break looked like a "preferred working condition" in 1800, as did the demand to keep children from working below ground. (There were other children ready to go down in the mine if the ones you had were not ready to stick to their agreement.)

I do think that idea "businesses should never have to change their whole structure" certainly can be an evil concept in circumstances when "free choice" really means "no alternative." In 1800, that was the kind of choice children with poor or no parents had. 

Fast forward to the present, and "freedom" of any choice still depends on a range of economic conditions around workers. It is how we assess those conditions that determines whether labor demands can be "rights" or dismissed as "preferences." If you are on board with building codes and driving laws, then you can surely understand that those codes and laws must keep up with new technology and other conditions.  Same for how we understand labor relations--e.g., in the present discussion of Ueber, where labor is regulated by software, and the savings created destroy others livelihoods and opportunities.