Re: <nettime> California passes Prop 22

[Gary Hall <mail@garyhall.info>]

Yes, it's not just workers in the gig economy who lose out. It's all of us. After all, why should the public continue to pay tax if it’s privately owned firms that are increasingly providing their utilities such as indeed mass transit. Especially if many of those companies are aggressively finding ways of paying as little tax as possible themselves.

Not only does it help  make them very valuable for their owners and investors, such a policy around tax has the additional benefit for platform capitalist companies of further reducing the financial resources that are available to local authorities/governments that are already crippled by cuts - thus denying the latter alternative means of raising finances to invest in things like decarbonised public transportation. Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash and co are thus able to argue that market-oriented solutions are necessary to resolve the problems left unaddressed by an (apparently) ineffective and inefficient public system.

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