Let them use chauffeurs

Back to the future

Uber and Lyft will shut down operation in California this Friday, exactly as the state voters demanded. That will throw a few hundred thousand people out of work, but as Lorena Gonzales, the sponsor of California’s AB5 law said, “they were shitty jobs anyway”. Now they can stay at home on the government dole, just like the millions of other independent (former) workers: free-lance writers, house painters, and musicians among them, all simultaneously protected from exploitation and thrown out of work.

This is not unintentional; the more people dependent on the government for their existence, the easier they are to rule. Witness, say, NY State’s upcoming law to require hair shampooers (!) to endure 500 hours of training (estimated cost, 13-15 thousand dollars) before they’re permitted to be employed washing someone’s hair.

Again: California voters did this to themselves, just as they voted to close natural gas and nuclear power plants and limited purchase of electricity from other states and are now suffering power blackouts. The hell with them, or, more appropriately, take a hike.

Too bad that Biden has promised to impose a national version of AB5 on the rest of us, but we too deserve to get what we ask for.