• 8 Posts
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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2026

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  • New to Lemmy. Is this common from this instance?

    I’m no fan of the dem elite, but I’m still a believer that if we’re OK with incremental change and we’re active at all levels of government that we can motivate others to re-engage and take back what’s ours. That doesn’t mean that we wait till we can vote again and try better next time, it means we start creating the society we want to exist. Building up local politicians, and supporting the hell out of places that support us, hell, even supporting the hell out of places that aren’t supporting us right now but have the structure to support us.






  • The state has the power to suppress what?

    To be clear though, my argument has nothing to do with the feasibility or responsibility of the government to regulate Lyft/Uber into paying living wages.

    My argument is that Mandami is building a movement/coalition through paths of least resistance and sweeping incremental changes as opposed to highly targeted legislative changes.

    Biden did wipe out student debt, but because the courts were packed, his efforts were nullified. Had the groundwork been laid first (replacing the courts) then this life changing legislation would have passed. In order to replace the courts, there would need to be a coalition built supporting the change. It’s great to shoot for the moon, but if our progressive spaceship blows up on the way to the moon, our progressive politicians will have a track record of getting nothing accomplished - just like the lazy sacks of shit that are the true enemies of the state: Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, etc.

    If we want the moon, and we deserve the moon, then we need to be OK with taking the path of least resistance, getting the easy wins, and building a coalition.


  • We are at the mercy of private businesses until we have buy-in of the populace though.

    We don’t get the buy-in by doing everything at once. Incremental change is good change. Following the path of least resistance make things incrementally better, makes people believe in the government again which allows us to pass stricter regulation.

    We can spend our efforts trying to get Uber to pay a living wage. Or we can make an incremental change for rideshare drivers that makes their life better, and move on to make life incrementally better for a bunch of other people (see Mandami’s snow removal policy). The more people that Mandami is able to make life better for, the more people will be bought in.

    For context…NYC’s population is 8.5million. There are an estimated 100k uber/lyft drivers in NYC. That is representative of just over 1% of the population. Mandami claims to have put $104 mil back in the pockets of drivers, that works out to about $1k per driver in NYC per year. That’s representative of a 2% raise. He did that with minimal fight/effort.

    Imagine if he went for broke, what that would take. Who he’d be fighting against. Let’s say he doubled their pay. 1% of the population would have double their pay, 99% of the population wouldn’t have improvement. It feels like we’re seeing an sweeping but incremental change like this every week from Mandami. An Uber/Lyft vs. Mandami showdown would impede that. Let’s say he’s efficient and it only takes 6 months to beat them. After a year he’s raised the total wealth of the population of NYC by 2%. But by the end of his 4 year term, he’d only raise the wealth of 8% of the population.

    Right now he’s raising the wealth of 1% of the population by 2% every week. In a single year, he’ll have raised 50% of the populations wealth by 2%. At the end of his 4 year term, he’ll have raised the wealth of 100% of the population twice. Since people can only vote once, I’d argue it’s better to make life better for as many people as possible. It creates a stronger movement when you lift everyone up together.



  • They’re also large enough that they could pull out of NYC with a note/call to action on their app bashing Mandami, “Mayor Mandami has passed a law that makes operations unsustainable in NYC. This unrealistic expectation jeopardizes the livelihoods of thousands of drivers and their families in NYC. Please write Mayor Mandami and demand that he repeals Law 863 and restore the jobs of thousands of people. Until then we cannot offer you a ride within NYC limits. Good luck!”

    They could simultaneously pay their drivers to protest city hall.

    They have the ability to create a protest that would cause most politicians to cave. I don’t know if Mandami would cave, but it certainly would hurt his image - and thus hurt the image of all Democratic Socialists and similar progressive movements.

    Conservatism cares a lot about people having jobs. Not about whether they are paid living wages.



  • Thank you for this thoughtful response. You sound a lot like a guy at the bar that I talked to last night, wish I asked more questions. I may have been having a little too much fun.

    I think youre absolutely right about imposter syndrome. I’ve been a hermit for a couple years. There was an anxiety of fitting in and being accepted. Even though I felt loved.

    Thanks for standing up for the right thing.

    I’m in the trades adjacently, I don’t think our union is doing a good job of holding people accountable for what they say.

    Hooverism was coalition building between unexpected groups of people - I need to do a better job to help facilitate that and make the union better so that we can get out of this mess. I keep my head down out of self preservation but that’s only short term.




  • I’d see that tweet and say a broken clock is right twice a day.

    Its not a perfect solution, but its a manageable step in the right direction that immediately benefits workers following a path of least resistance.

    The perfect solution is to banish tipping and force employers to pay more. The reality of doing that, in an unguided way, is that Lyft/Uber would either pull out of NYC or find loopholes to stiff the worker. Forcing higher tip options is a quick solution, that’s easily implementable and enforcable, as a greater coalition builds of people believing in the government there will be less resistance to perfect solutions.

    But for now, something that tangibly benefits workers is a good thing, and it certainly isn’t a bad thing.