Scott Alexander, the psychiatrist who helms the blog and writes under his first and middle name, said that he did not want to reveal his full name because of past death threats made against him, as well as fear that it would put his psychiatric clinic and patients at risk. Instead, he asked his readers to spam The New York Times demanding the paper not publish his full name. “After considering my options, I decided on the one you see now,” he wrote in the only post now atop the scrubbed website. “If there’s no blog, there’s no story. Or at least the story will have to include some discussion of NYT’s strategy of doxxing random bloggers for clicks.”
On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill 5, which is intended to reduce worker misclassification by turning “independent contractors,” like rideshare drivers, into employees of the companies they work with. The new law would force giants like Lyft and Uber to do things like pay a minimum wage, provide health insurance benefits and paid sick days off.
As well-meaning as the change may have been intended, the consensus among the rideshare drivers waiting for pings from an LAX holding lot on a recent Friday said, thanks but no thanks.
Despite all of the complaints, protests and anger from drivers about their treatment from their so-called partners at Uber and Lyft, the top reason people endure the traffic and headaches of driving rideshare professionally in and around L.A. is that the hours are flexible. If you only want to drive after dropping off your kids at school, you can simply turn off the app when you’re done. If you want to take a month, two months, six months off from driving you won’t even get so much as an email from the companies inquiring your status. I should know. After being an Uber/Lyft driver for over five years, I stopped using the apps almost a year ago and have not heard a peep from either company asking me to return.
Other gigs might say they have flexible hours, but for all its faults, driving for Lyft and Uber is truly a side hustle with few peers. Thus, the proposition of losing that freedom in order to be an employee of a company that has rarely shown it cares about anything, including its bottom line, is something these drivers would rather quit over than embark into.
California’s AB 5 looks more like the Taxicab Medallion Protection Act.
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