Let's be clear: these websites, and others
like them, are online hubs for what is best described as the emerging
"freelance services industries."
The service providers you find through these websites are most certainly
feelancers, not established corporate
business owners or employees of other peoples' companies.
Uber.Com, a San Francisco-based venture that
matches people who need a ride from one end of a city to another with people
who have cars and are willing to travel, is perhaps the most high profile of
these entities.Visit the company's website, download the app, and search for
people who are ready right now to shuttle you about. If you want to be a
freelance service provider, Uber.Com has a screening process whereby you can
register to deliver transportation services.
This very basic "
seller-hooks-up-with-buyer" type of transaction is happening at an
increasing rate in cities all across the country, all on a freelance
non-professional basis and mostly all via online connections. Need someone in your
area to run errands or perform household chores? TaskRabbit.Com might help you
find a provider who's ready right now. Got an extra room to rent for people
visiting your town? AirBnB.Com connects travelers with in-home accomodations.
If Uber.Com doesn't have the ride you want, their main competitor Lyft.Com
might be helpful.
Be careful to not form an opinion about the
freelance services industry too quickly. And don't decide that it is
irrelevant and choose to ignore it.
Consider these important facts:
1) Freelance service providers are business
owners unto themselves, and not employees: The most egregious examples of
people misunderstanding this generally happen in San Francisco, Los Angeles,
and other large cities where President Barack Obama's economic entitlement
policies are still popular. Indeed, protesters have demonstrated against
Uber.Com in their home turf of San Francisco demanding that Uber drivers be
given membership in a labor union.
But drivers for Uber.Com are independent
contractors, not employees, and as such they are NOT "laborers" in
the organized labor sense. If you don't like the going rates for Uber rides,
then start your own freelance business without Uber.Com's assistance or get out
of the industry altogether. But understand that when you're a business owner
you can't just simply "protest" or "demonstrate" like the
AFL-CIO suggests. Business owners have to be more responsible and mature than
that.
2) The freelance services industry is a huge
disruption to bigger, more powerful interests:
Guess who doesn't like Uber.Com
ride sharing services? The established taxi cab industry. And can you imagine
who might not like AirBnB.Com providers renting a room in their home? The
established hotel and motel industry. And mayors, governors, and elected
officials nationwide are disposed to not liking any of this freelance
enterprise because they don't know how to tax it and regulate it.
To be fair, many taxi service operators have
a legitimate gripe with Uber.Com and Lyft.Com. In most cities across the U.S.
(some far worse than others), owning and operating a taxi business requires
thousands of dollars in training, licensing, permitting, bonding, insuring, and
permitting, just to get government approval to launch the business. And then
there are the recurring expenses of permit renewals and vehicle inspections -
once again, all paid to the government - just to keep the business going.
This
same type of expensive government taxation and regulation applies to just about
every other type of service industry one can Envision. And if private
individuals are undercutting, say, a
hotel owners' revenues by renting out rooms in their houses and apartments,
even after the hotel owner has paid all his or her government fees, then yes,
the hotel owner should be upset.
Politicians share in the outrage over
successful freelancers. Less business at the hotel or the taxi company means,
in most cases, less tax revenue for the politicians to spend. If you're intending to become a freelance
business operator, beware: there are lots of people who have an interest in
your failure.
3) A successful freelance economy requires a
society that respects individual rights: There may be few Americans who are
willing to deny that they support "individual rights." But when
confronted with what "individual rights" entails, many of us begin to
hedge.
The rights of individuals to freely sell
their services on the open market means competition for established industries
-and these established industries often have powerful lobbying capacities than
can pressure politicians to pass laws that squelch the freelancers. Do we
really respect everybody's individual rights in the U.S., even if the exercise
of one's rights means that my immediate financial wellbeing is challenged?
4) Resolving the disparities between
established industries and freelance services providers will require less
government regulation, not more: In New
York City - another region where President Obama's vision of politicians
determining economic winners and losers remains quite popular - Mayor Bill
DeBlasio has determined that individuals who rent-out a room in their house or
apartment are violating city law, and has vowed to run AirBnB.Com out of the
city.
On the other hand, in Spokane, Washington - a
city where American free enterprise is still generally accepted - the city just
crafted new transportation industry regulations that both the taxi cab industry
and Uber.Com seem to like. Despite city council members' threats to run
Uber.Com out of their city, the voices of freelancers managed to be heard and
the result was a compromise that subjects Uber.Com and its service providers to
some new, minimal levels of government regulations, while reducing the
heavy-handed burdens the city has historically placed upon traditional taxi
operators.
Will the USA move to respect and uphold the
rights of freelance service providers? Or will we continue to embrace the
Obama-styled protections and priviledges for large corporations and old-school
traditional groups? Americans have an
important choice to make - and the economic wellbeing of individuals is
weighing in the balance.
Comments are invited!
Send feedback to: WatchDog
.
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