duxut_staglatz's comments

What's the new category? Currently in France there is:

- employment where you trade liberty (i.e. subordination) against protection (can't be fired at will, minimum wage, guaranteed income set in the contract...) from a company

- being an independent worker where you keep your liberty and do not get protection

If there is a third category like what Uber is currently doing, you trade your liberty (subordination) against no protection. It is not a new category, it is lowering the protection of employment. Which may or may not be a good thing, that's not my point, but I fail to see where's the new category of work.

You are conflating Uber and the Uber driver.

The driver does not quote anything, Uber does and both the driver and the customer accept or not.

They have a very limited way to choose the ride they take: they have to make the decision in a couple of seconds, they may not know the destination and they are punished for declining too many rides by Uber. Does not scream free choice of what ride to take.

It is possible to bypass Uber and exchange numbers, yes. But the Uber platform itself does not let you build your own clientele, such as letting you look for the clients you want or the other way around. The question is not whether drivers can build their clientele outside of Uber but inside of Uber.

They do indeed have flexible hours, something that is apparently - reading the comments of this thread - impossible as an employee in the US and thus a feature of being an independent worker, but in France you can be an employee and have flexible hours, so that does not make Uber drivers independent.

Only if Uber chooses to, it does not have to.

Yes. Changing the itinerary as well.

There is nothing that prevents Uber from providing flexibility. The court has not ruled that Uber contracts were illegal, but that they were employment contracts (obviously, with the flexible hours Uber is known for) rather than (Uber) company to (the driver's) company business contracts.

Are you implying that French courts change their rulings to benefit the government policies (hurting foreign companies in this case) rather than simply basing them on the law?

While it is possible to argue against it on a philosophical ground, in French law contracts are not the most basic construct, and they have to comply with higher legal norms such as law or the constitution. Hence a contact must be "reinterpreted" (i.e. is void) if it does not follow the law.

> On ne peut déroger, par des conventions particulières, aux lois qui intéressent l'ordre public et les bonnes moeurs.

> Le contrat ne peut déroger à l'ordre public ni par ses stipulations, ni par son but, que ce dernier ait été connu ou non par toutes les parties.

> Chacun est libre de contracter ou de ne pas contracter, de choisir son cocontractant et de déterminer le contenu et la forme du contrat dans les limites fixées par la loi.

Labour law (in France at least, I do not know about the US) is based on - for the lack of a better expression - reals over feelz: what matters is the actual relationship between the driver and Uber, not whether either party felt surprise at some point.

The court merely implements "French labour laws", as it should.

My plumber is an actual independent worker, setting his own rates, having his own clientele and free to organize his work as he sees fit.

This is a different point that the one I made.

Indeed, now they can (but do not have to) require regular shifts.

They cannot force French drivers to work certain hours (under their current contracts), but this is not relevant to their work status:

> The fact that the driver is not obliged to connect to the platform and that this absence of connection, irrespective of its duration, does not expose the driver to any penalty, are not taken into consideration when characterising the relationship of subordination.

> The criteria for self-employment include the possibility of building up one's own clientele, the freedom to set one's own rates, and the freedom to set the terms and conditions for providing one's services.

Do they work with limited supervision? The company imposes the itinerary and the driver’s fare is adjusted if this itinerary is not followed. The monitoring is automatic instead of having a boss peering over your shoulder.

A significant part of health care expenses are covered by _mutuelles_, (now mandatory) employer-provided, non-profit health insurance 'companies'. According to wikipedia [0], about 75% of health spending goes through the government[1], 15% through mutuelles and 10% paid directly by households. So being reclassified as an employee means:

- your employer will pay a large part of your public health contributions ; unless your gross wage is much lower as an employee than your income as an independent worker, this results in higher after-tax after-social-contributions income.

- you have access to a mutuelle, and the employer must pay at least 50% of its cost by law

In the end, the difference in health coverage between being an employee vs an independent worker is not life-or-death like in the US, but it's quite stark still.

[0] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutuelle_de_sant%C3%A9_en_Fran...

[1] Technically, the "social security", which include pensions, healthcare, work injuries, most family and child benefits, is not part of the government and has its own budget.

It is called Guyane in French. Given that the locals are not English native speakers, I fail to see how the English name influences their national identity.

This is not a lie if these changes do not do anything but later ones will.

Growth can come both from using more inputs (capital, energy, labor) or using the same input more efficiently (i.e. technological progress). There is no reason to claim that only technological progress induced growth counts as growth but when the GDP increases because we use more inputs it is not somehow growth.

This is especially at the world stage. In a zero-sum economy, either some countries are left in an awful state of poverty for ever (no growth, same distribution of income) or people from rich countries must significantly decrease their consumption (no growth, equalization of income).

For reference, the average world GDP is about US$17,300.

At the OECD tax-to-GDP average rate, about $6000 would be spent through public institutions (i.e. taxes and public services). So that leaves about $11500 for both consumption and maintaining the capital stock.

The consumption of fixed capital is about 15% of GDP per year, so that leaves about $9775 a year, or $815 per month to consume stuff.

Ok, so you are agreeing with the comment you said you were disagreeing with (zero sum economy means if someone increases their amount of stuff, someone else must have less stuff, otherwise the amount of stuff would not stay constant).

You are making a different point, which is that more stuff does not equal happiness, so we should not care about it.

Durable goods obfuscate the issue, but let's take your example.

Let's say I want to have both an all-terrain car for the weekend and my regular car on the weekdays. I now consume two new cars very ten years instead of one. The same number of car has been produced in those ten years (no growth). Where does my extra car come from?