Vons, Pavilions to Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors
&gt;  California voters seem happy to keep voting themselves destructive legislation. Vote with your feet.<p>I did, and I left in the the early 2010&#x27;s as the writing on the wall could not be ignored. But, this already happened with Kroger (King Soopers), Safeway affiliate chains and CVS in Colorado as I saw several advertisements on the stores for home delivery being done by cars and drivers with Doordash decals, these were seemingly outsourced via partnerships with Doordash, as Ubereats and Grubhub failed to obtain that Maketshare.<p>The logistics capability at the small scale home delivery model is actually very expensive&#x2F;costly in an already low margin business model, especially when contrasted to its more common large scale volume based counterpart that has decades&#x2F;centuries of iteration via economies of scale refinement, and this mainly because of <i>last mile</i> hindrances. It&#x27;s pragmatic, albeit concerning, none the less but I can understand the reasoning behind it.<p>&gt;  These companies effectively bought a law and are already repeating the benefits at the expense of the workers of California. Expect other industries to follow this path in coming elections.<p>Agreed.<p>Especially as Doordash has lobbied to not classify its drivers as workers and removed a large amount of the liability and costs associated with the well compensated FT drivers whose associated employment benefits are often seen as liabilities to the an eager bean counter wanting to reduce overhead from operations to justify their own position.<p>Big tech&#x27;s version of the gig economy is actually pitting itself with people to choose between low, unstable government based benefits that can be precarious at best as they often come too little too late (if at all) or choose a more accessible route at gamble on taking a significant health risk and being in a perpetual underclass with no social mobility: Big tech and VCs are the new Wall Street and Bank predators of the 21st century, and are making full use of Naomi&#x27;s outlined Disaster Capitalism model.<p>I can only hope those of you who choose to work there have a very deep introspective moment and ask yourself what exactly it is you are bringing into the World. Because Big Tech has made it clear it has aspirations to eventually get rid of its well compensated <i>useful idiots</i> (software developers) model, too. Which is probably why you see Google wanting to unionize while it still can while Amazon and Tesla will openly go to great lengths to quell any and all who even remotely suggest it.<p>Just to be clear, I don&#x27;t like the notions of collective bargaining, non terminable labour, and ultimately a system that forces someone into what is essentially a legal form of racketeering (unions) with overbearing social peer pressure and ostracization as its main selling point.<p>I was asked to help get involved in creating one its early stages due to my anarchist ideology (perhaps a failure to understand that Anarchism does not necessarily mean syndicalist which is often more in line with socialist&#x2F;communist&#x2F;Marxits variants of anarchism), but I couldn&#x27;t do so in good conscious.<p>I&#x27;ve seen its presence be in tandem with the darkest period of the Automotive Industry in the US in my lifetime, and seen how workers (directly or indirectly because of unions is not entirely clear) become complacent and quality control and quality assurance suffered significantly, as innovation lagged behind all other concerns as everything become a perpetual and existential struggle by the &#x27;proles&#x27; against the &#x27;Bourgeois&#x27; in respect to most other Countries... but as seen in German Auto manufacturing (which tends to have low wages for non-union, lower skill work) it can &#x27;work&#x27; and must be said that in certain circumstances it is the only real deterrent to these kind of heavy handed overreaches in power. But it can also be horrible, as seen in the French Auto Industry. Especially as Unions then get to have far more power which eventually leads to influence in local and national political matters and elections, too: so its a double edged sword.<p>Context: I use the phrase &#x27;useful idiot&#x27; in a colloquial way that in no way seeks to undermine the intelligence of any individual software developer fictional or otherwise, but merely as one that illustrates the POV that management, board members and executives are likely to have when evaluating what and where to cut costs next in order to further maximize profits and increase stock price all in the name of <i>efficiency.</i><p>Sidenote: I wonder what the US&#x27; version of Battle Royale (a very acute depiction of the youth in a post bubble era Japan told via allusion in a superficially based gore story telling format) will be, because if it was the Hunger Games franchise, I was woefully dissapointed as it failed to hit the mark. It would have to be something that would do justice to most Rage Against the Machine and Run The Jewels tracks. CDPR&#x27;s Cyberpunk 2077 franchise was a very attempt (No Save Point by Yankee and the Brave is on point) but sadly due to its rushed release impacted its likelihood. So was the Watchdogs franchise.