{"id":2185,"date":"2018-12-07T09:36:03","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T05:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=2185"},"modified":"2018-12-07T09:36:03","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T05:36:03","slug":"its-not-rocket-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=2185","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s not rocket science&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Wednesday&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Washington Post<\/em>: &#8220;New York City&#8217;s Taxi and Limousine Service Commission voted Tuesday to set a minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers, marking the first time a government in the United States has imposed wage rules on ride-hailing companies.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Concern for the downtrodden this is not.<\/p>\n<p>Government-backed monopolies (is that redundant?) have always supported legal wage increases and price floors in every industry for hundreds of years. Why? Fear of low-wage competition. Competition that, in this case, seems to be doing it cheaper and better than the existing vendors.<\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t politics. This is science.<\/p>\n<p>Nevermind the &#8220;unruly gig economy,&#8221; as described by one &#8220;executive director&#8221; in the article (apparently no actual economist was available for comment), this is thinly-veiled protectionism. Not of the worker, but of an inefficient industry.<\/p>\n<p>Noting this and stepping away is reason number 5,747 why being a scientist is a million times better than being an activist politician.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Wednesday&#8217;s\u00a0Washington Post: &#8220;New York City&#8217;s Taxi and Limousine Service Commission voted Tuesday to set a minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers, marking the first time a government in the United States has imposed wage rules on ride-hailing companies.&#8221; &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=2185\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2186,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions\/2186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}