New York City's minimum pay rule for delivery drivers caused a massive 82% collapse in available work hours.
Delivery platforms responded to mandated wage increases by slashing on-call hours and changing user interfaces to discourage tipping. While the hourly rate for drivers went up, their total income often suffered because the apps shifted costs back onto the workers. The platforms used algorithmic and interface tweaks to transfer 554 million dollars away from the labor force. This regulatory substitution game shows how tech companies can bypass new laws by changing the digital environment. A simple wage floor is often defeated by the flexibility of the platform economy.
ssrn | Apr 26
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Forcing people on Medicaid to find jobs caused thousands to lose their health insurance without creating a single new worker.
Pop songs, bird calls, and opera arias all share a hidden mathematical formula designed to hijack the primitive attention centers of the brain.
A political opponent's face triggers a defensive alarm in the human brain within just 150 milliseconds.
A single injection that turns the body into an antibody factory has provided a full year of protection against an HIV-like virus.
Extremist groups across the political spectrum follow a single identical psychological sequence of radicalization regardless of what they actually believe.