Posts by BenWilson
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Polity: Labour and the Greens in a tree..., in reply to Sam Bradford,
Jeez, if they committed solidly to something bold (that would be criticised!) like UBI I’d probably join the Labour Party.
If they committed to a UBI I would probably join too. Until then, I'll probably continue to vote Green. We are in the middle of a poverty crisis, and only a bold plan is going to do a damned thing to alleviate things for the bottom 5%. To lift the entire bottom half would go a long way further.
I see this MOU as probably a good thing. Everyone knows they're natural bedfellows anyway, so claiming not to be was just silly, easy points for Key. Beyond that, we'll have to wait and see what substance is behind the U part of the MOU.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
It is still beyond me why the NZTA hasn’t enforced the act
I think their powers don't extend to taking on multinational corporations. So they are left with busting drivers that Uber induced into a fully non-compliant contractual agreement with. They advise any driver signing up that they will be breaking the law, and they have gone so far as to pre-emptively warn the drivers off. I think they're doing what they can within their mandate. Unfortunately, that mandate was not set up to deal with this kind of problem.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Sacha,
Though I’m not sure they’d ever agree
I wonder if they're really prepared to die in a ditch over it. I think not, and we pretty much have to act on the presumption that if it has to be a ditch, then a ditch it will be.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
Well, certainly the fact that a number of drivers have already suffered the harsh consequences of their inducement into contract with Uber has done nothing to slow their recruitment of more uncompliant drivers down. And there has been an increase in market share, certainly, due to the price drop. But the question of how well drivers are doing before and after is one that takes some time to answer. I’ve only got detailed data back from 5 drivers so far, although I expect more will contribute soon, and will explore other sources very soon, when I get a moment’s breathing space, at which point I can really get into it.
Anyone expecting immediate action is going to be disappointed, though. This is a massive multinational corporation we are talking about here, and it’s fallen on the below-minimum-wage exploited workers to organize any legal consequences to the massive scale campaign of making clowns out of NZ’s powers-that-be. We don’t seem to have any built in response to it beyond busting those workers on the street.
Consequently the organization is being done by part timers like myself, on low budgets. In the long run, we can’t lose, because the case is totally prima facie. It’s going to be extremely interesting to hear Uber’s lawyers trying to convince a judge that the laws of the Netherlands apply here, and that they need not comply to any NZ transport laws, practices, or taxation processes. However, pro bono legal work is low priority, and our job in the meantime is simply to build numbers, and collect evidence, which is exactly what we’ve been doing.
Naturally there are many champing at the bit to see action, but, as always happens in such circumstances, far, far fewer people are prepared to put in serious time required to make things happen much faster. So the build is slow. And there are many calls for strike actions, from which I’ve disassociated as much as possible, because I think they’re way too premature and the people calling for that kind of action have very, very nebulous motives and commitment. It’s the kind of thing that could easily be strongly agitated for by direct competition to Uber with the sole purpose of gaining market share, at whatever cost to the drivers themselves. I know for a fact that this is going on.
I don’t see such moves as being in driver interests, except where they contribute to the pathway of making this kind of illegal exploitation more difficult in future. A competitor coming in and undercutting Uber isn’t going to be the great white savior that they think it will be. It’s likely just to be a new master.
We do have other avenues that are being pursued at the same time. Direct contact with corporate users, direct dialogue with the regulators, early conversations to politicians (I’m giving the government a very small window of opportunity to be seen as the ones who finally did something, before this becomes yet another albatross for them), and of course media exposure.
To be honest, on the media, I’m happy to get a lot more momentum going before blowing any more capital on that. Drivers being bitter on their wages is not a story that’s going to have much legs, in a country where everyone is bitter on their wages, most especially those without any wages at all. It’s enough for me to know that quite a few journalist are interested in telling this story the moment they get real news. I only quite reluctantly did this particular blog post at all – I did it for the drivers themselves, not because it is part of my strategy. They certainly appreciated it.
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Access: The Universal Basic Income and…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
It's definitely not just women faking that one.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
Topic for another post, but in short, it's going well enough. If you want to follow it a bit closer, email me. Link is the envelope icon at the top of every post.
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Legal Beagle: Geoffrey Palmer has…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I guess a referendum is the safety valve there, then. And that would definitely need a good strong process of ensuring strong public debate.
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Speaker: I am a Really Useful Engine, in reply to Emma Hart,
Are you me?
Word, sister. This is a fantastic post. I have so much to say on it, but unfortunately it will have to wait a week, while I work my way through the literal mountain of unpaid work I'm doing. I've got an assessment a day, data to mine, letters to proof, people to wrangle, mentors to consult, constitutions to write, kids to care for, lifts to give, food to cook, sites to moderate, deals to cut, payments to process, books to keep, taxes to pay, and entire house to move. By next Friday. I can only make this post because I've got in the habit of writing almost as fast as I can talk. Because I have to.
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Sir Geoffrey isn’t expecting change soon. He suggests the adoption of a Constitution might not happen for 20 years, which, if we are to have one, seems like a reasonable time scale
Yes. It's an important enough thing that 20 years might well be how long it takes to forge a consensus on it, and it would not be a wasted 20 years. It's important to get it right.
Personally I'm rather undecided on the necessity. The concept of "super rights" seems to me to have considerable moral dangers, particularly since rights themselves can often be a shaky moral framework. Ultimately the problems occur when they compete with each other. I do accept that they're the most practical invention so far, at least as far as laws go, but I'm not sure that taking them to the level of enshrinement is that wise. We can put things in place that might be unshakeable for centuries. That's exerting a tremendous arrogance about our ability to predict the future.
In short, there are advantages and disadvantages to national constitutions, and these may each rise and fall depending on circumstances. I find the idea of needing supermajorities to change things particularly problematic, because that literally entrenches that a constitutional feature could remain very unpopular in near perpetuity, so long as it advantages 25% of the people. There are other ways to make changes slower and more considered than requiring supermajorities. For example, you can just...make them slower. Make changes to the constitution take a bloody long time and a whole lot of debate before they are put to the vote. But my feeling has always been that after all of that, it should be based on majoritarianism, not entrenched privilege.
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Hard News: This. Is. Crazy., in reply to Carol Stewart,
There’s no doubt that the various flammable, corrosive, explosive etc chemicals used in the manufacture pose immediate hazards
Yes, I'm pretty much saying that those are real and known hazards. The possibility of getting some meth on you, when it doesn't actually kill people who directly ingest it straight into their lungs in high concentrated doses, seems to be a lot less than known chances of various toxic manufacturing chemicals killing you directly. Not that the meth is a healthy thing, of course.
most of these folks don’t exactly have chemistry degrees
What? Breaking Bad wasn't true?