Before Lyft and Uber, if you did not have a vehicle, the options were limited. Public transportation or taxi services. Outside urban plantations, taxis are uncommon. Lyft and Uber turned anyone with interest into a local livery service. California hates that and is destroying it.
Ride-Sharing solved two problems without any help from the government. It allowed people to turn the empty car they already owned and whatever time they wanted to dedicate into income.
Riders, just about anywhere and anytime, without a vehicle, absent theirs, or in cases where driving would be a bad idea (drinking) or bothersome (traffic), could use an app on their phone to get some A to B.
Related: Massachusetts Taxes Ride-Sharing to Pay Off Taxi Companies
Taxi companies, especially in large cities, forced to spend a fortune for medallions or livery privileges were bent, and why not. The corrupt system had used the monopoly to enrich itself, but now some upstart peasants were making them obsolete. The grinding stone of progress was about to reduce them to dust.
Any entity (run almost exclusively by Democrats) moved in to regulate the “problem” of people making decisions about their own time and money without their regulators in between them.
In California, where getting in the way is not just an obligation but an obsession (ask any gig worker), rideshare regulatory evolution may have reached its zenith. “The California Air Resources Board just unanimously voted to mandate that Uber and Lyft rides must almost entirely switch to electric vehicles.”
Ninety percent of all ride-sharing vehicles must be electric by 2030.
What is an opportunity to turn an existing resource into some revenue for the driver, and the state (at great benefit to many people) would be destroyed.
If I had to guess, I’d bet that 90% of the people trying to improve their incomes by driving for rideshare operations can’t afford a 30,000 dollar electric vehicle. The “job” will become a flight of fancy for people who don’t actually need the money.
Ride-sharing might disappear from more rural areas altogether where range and electricity costs make it impractical or impossible.
Regardless, the initial genius of Uber was connecting idle car owners with those who need transportation. When you ban most existing cars from being used, you undercut the very system that made ride-sharing such a significant societal and economic advancement.
This will harm those most likely to benefit. People in need of extra income won’t pursue it. Anyone who needs a ride because they drank too much might not get one. Large sums of voluntary exchange will cease along with the commerce they create.
Well, you might say, bah – it’s California. Why would I care? Because California is the Left’s mad-scientists regulatory lair, and oh, we warned you that Joe Biden wanted to follow their lead with a national gig-worker law like California’s AB5.
AB5 was a sop to unions who opposed non-union freelance or gig-work. But a growing number of occupations and workers have gone freelance. They work from home and ply their trade as piecework on their schedule. Turning every occupation into the job force equivalent of a ride-share driver.
You pick the work and the hours and maybe even the fee. In exchange for this versatility of resource, you assume responsibility for your insurance, office space, supplies and manage your own payroll and taxes.
AB5 forced anyone who contracted such work to hire them as employees (at least for the duration of the work) with all the paperwork and regulatory interference that comes with that. Factors that would cut into the margins on both sides.
Californians rebelled against AB5 but not the idea. They picked Biden and continue to elect Democrats in large numbers, and while it’s not come up yet, Sleepy Joe promised to pursue it nationally. Another sop to unions who funnel billions in donations and in-kind contributions to keep Democrats in office.
Biden’s AB5 may never see the light of day, but that’s not stopping California from taking another step in the wrong direction.
Forcing people who are just trying to supplement their income to buy electric vehicles (built predominantly by donors to Democrat campaigns, by the way) will make ride-share a boutique hobby among a select few who probably don’t need the extra money while pricing people most likely to need the service out of the market.
Talk about describing Democrat policy in a nutshell.