what evidence do you have that the politicians have been bought off?

I'm glad you asked, as that gives me a great reason to post a link to Simon Garber. As Wikipedia says, "While in Russia in 2001, Garber became friends with Patrick Daley, the son of long-time Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley. City officials tightly regulate all aspects of medallions ownership, granting permission to purchase medallions on an individual basis. Within a year of meeting Patrick, Garber quickly acquired over 300 Chicago taxi medallions. Garber also hired Mayor Daley's former chief of staff Gery Chico as a City Hall lobbyist. In 2003, Garber used this political capital to start the Chicago Carriage Cab Company and was granted permission to operate the taxi business in Chicago. Within six years, the Chicago Carriage Cab Company had amassed over 800 medallions, making it the largest taxi company in the city."

This is but one example, from one city. A little Googling will easily reveal many more examples.

And yet, tens of millions of people around the world think it's safe enough that they use rideshare apps over and over, every day. And tens of millions more think that they make enough money doing it that they choose to keep driving for Uber, and Lyft, and the other rideshares. Why? Because to them, it's better, cheaper, and more convenient than regular taxis.

Call Uber all the names that you want, but the taxi companies better figure out that they've got to compete with the rideshare services or they'll soon be obsolete. You can't litigate away technological advances, nor can you prop up a dying business model forever. The rideshare genie is out of the bottle and he's not going back in.

Because medallions create an artificial scarcity of taxis. And in any market, artificial scarcity creates cartels, which reduce competition and benefit no one but a tiny, well-connected minority of owners (and their paid-off politicians) at the expense of pretty much everyone else, including the consumers as well as the labor. NY and Chicago taxi companies are doing the same thing that DeBeers does mining diamonds, or that OPEC does with oil -- and like DeBeers et al, they've protected their cartel and kept it perfectly legal by buying off elected officials. I have no problem with common-sense taxi regulation related to safety and insurance -- but medallions are the biggest scam on the planet.

This 1,000 times over. Follow the money and you'll find the real reason why there's so much manufactured outrage against Uber and other rideshare companies.

Will California now say that anyone renting out their spare bedroom is an Airbnb employee? Why stop there? Aren't full-time eBay sellers doing the same thing, and shouldn't eBay have to make them employees too?

It's pretty much universally frowned upon by management, and if the relationship doesn't work out, both of you are stuck being around each other all day every day for the foreseeable future, which can be pretty horrible. OTOH, I met my wife at my first job out of school (but wisely, she refused to date me while we still worked together).

Nope, my 10 person small business is based in deep blue MD, which is currently contemplating the same dramatic minimum wage increases that LA and others have implemented. We're not in fast food or janitorial work -- we pay about $3-6 above the state's current minimum wage -- and we directly compete with companies in states whose minimum wages are less than ours. So yeah, when state and local politicians do this stuff, it absolutely fucks with small business' ability to compete with other states and jurisdictions that don't do this arbitrary crap. It also increases our payroll taxes, work comp insurance payments, and a lot of other costs. If you want to increase the minimum wage, then do it at the national (Federal) level, or just give people a Scandinavian-style cost-of-living stipend and be done with it -- and / or quit putting in regressive tax increases like sales tax, payroll tax, gas tax, etc. that make the cost of living so unlivable for the working poor. But equating burger flippers with people with 4 year degrees making $13-16 / hour is fucking insulting, to me and to my employees.

Easy to say when it's not your small business that's the subject of some politician's "experiment."

presently the younger generation is less vanilla than the older generation and the older generation isn't being very welcoming to people who aren't like them and never will be.

Ahhh, you youngsters. Do you seriously think that you're the first generation who thinks this? Aren't they teaching history anymore? EVERY generation grows up thinking THEY'RE the cool non-vanilla kids while resenting their elders and mocking everything about them. And then one day (if you're lucky), you wake up and look in the mirror, and you look like your Dad (or grandfather). And you won't even realize it, but you'll make a lot of the same decisions that Dad did too -- decisions that many would consider "safe" or even (gasp!) "conservative" (in a non-political way).

I know -- not you, 'cuz you're different, right?

Look no further than California, Maryland, and Illinois. The 3rd District of MD is an absolute abomination. Hell, the term "gerrymandering" itself is named after Governor Gerry of Massachusetts who was lampooned for signing odd-shaped state senate districts into law. But yeah, fuck all of the Republicans in those deep blue states -- as long as your team wins, right?

. . . people tend to become more conservative once they start paying taxes and have personal responsibilities like families and a mortgage.

Those southern states draw more federal dollars because of the 10s of millions of elderly who have retired down there -- in the warm sun and away from the northeast and west coast's insane taxes and traffic. Damn those burdensome old people!

Shouting lecturers down is yet another form of the whole free speech paradigm you hold so highly.

By definition, free speech doesn't mean anything near what you claim it does. I truly feel sorry for you if you really believe anything that you wrote here.

The trend is to attempt to censor "damaging" or "distressing" (read: conservative / libertarian / right-leaning) speakers and provide "safe spaces" free of any opposing view points, literally in a room supplied with with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets, a video of frolicking puppies, etc. And unfortunately, I'm not exaggerating in the least bit. The NY Times had a great profile on this last month (and from the comment section, its readership, to their credit, was generally appalled by this phenomenon). It's truly frightening when you think that the people advocating this type of crap are supposed to become America's next leaders. How on earth will they deal with difficult situations in the real world, where they can't run away or simply ban those who disagree with them?

Do you really think that people who think Kim Kardashian is interesting and like the NFL are really going to give this any serious thought?

Whoa . . . don't conflate the enjoyment of professional sports with contrived, superficial, reality TV bullshit. There are plenty of us geeks out there who follow both the NFL closely (the draft is a week from tonight and I'm hoping my team lands Bud Dupree!) *and* are interested and aware enough to carefully analyze what Snowden did and form our own opinions. :-)