That shit is going to backfire on them, spectacularly.

Which is to say - the harm to falsely accused men and the harm to legitimately raped or harassed women are on totally different scales.

I’m not comparing the two. I’m addressing only the point that I quoted above:

A male victim and a female victim have equal rights to justice but a woman and a man do not have equal chances of experiencing sexual assault.

Your link says 1 in 5 women (20%) experience rape, and 24.8% of men experience “sexual violence”. That seems to indicate that men and women experience SA at about the same rate. This is consistent with my understanding.

Your “2:1” claim seems to arise from “Nationwide, 81% of women and 43% of men reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime.”

I will focus on the word “reported”: It is my understanding that male victims of SA report their assault at much lower rates than female victims.

I would note that your overall thesis does not seem to rely on this particular point. You can abandon this point without detracting from your main argument.

They are getting screwed over pretty hard, yeah. It’s really only lucrative if you’re using a cheap EV, but there are no cheap EVs.

Thank you.

The reality is that every job that requires a human to perform it, if worked “full time”, should fully support a human’s basic needs, including housing, and medical coverage. Every full-time worker should be earning gainful wages.

That isn’t happening here.

These services should either be paying workers adequately, or they should not exist.

Customers should recognize that they are the beneficiaries of these exploitative conditions. Pretending that they are not complicit is simply unethical and immoral.

but a woman and a man do not have equal chances of experiencing sexual assault.

On what evidence do you base this claim? I was under the impression that the actual rates are similar, but male-victims very rarely report SA.

I’m seeing a 14-year gap between the time they initially met and the time they married. The first three of those years would have been criminal, but I haven’t actually seen anything saying the relationship commenced within that time period.

This is untrue. Margins for restaurants

We aren’t talking about restaurants. We are talking about delivery services.

I did. I’m a blacksmith. I found a niche where customers are appreciative of labor, and I fill that niche. The two seasons I relied on DD for flexible income are well in the past.

You don’t have to convince me. I agree with you. These services are profoundly scummy and exploitative. They are almost as greedy as employers have become with your time.

They make money… When a customer tips. The tip is, effectively, the only money they actually make. It’s not how it should be, but it is how it actually is.

When every customer tips well, and nobody introduces delays to slow your hustle, it’s a fairly lucrative job. When customers think tips are “optional” and stores don’t actually start working on an order until you arrive, it’s a shit job.

It’s pretty much the same for our employed waitstaff. Your tips are paid out to you on the day you earn them. Your base wages are paid out weekly or biweekly. You keep 100% of your tips, but your employer is required to withhold income taxes from your base pay. If you make enough in tips, withholding is all of your base pay. You receive a pay stub where nearly 100% of your pay has been withheld and sent to the IRS for income taxes. Tips are, effectively, the only money you actually take home.

A client is the person a contractor works for. The only client involved is the service itself, as the driver is a contractor.

The person making the purchase is a customer, not a client.

Ideally, you would be right. The customer should not be involved in the business relationship between the driver and the service. However, this is quite obviously not an ideal situation.

With employed waitstaff, tips are, technically, a bonus. A waitress who does not receive enough tips to put herself over minimum wage is entitled to extra pay to reach that point. Legally, this waitress is “adequately” compensated for her time, regardless of tips.

Unlike employed waitstaff, there is no provision to ensure this driver is compensated for their labor. There is no provision to ensure they are reimbursed for their actual expenses. The driver is often asked to subsidize certain customers, by accepting compensation that is less than minimum wage, and even at less than actual cost. They are often asked to pay to work.

Employees are protected by labor laws. When a group of employees decides to demand better pay, their collective action is explicitly protected.

When contractors do the same, their collective action violates anti-trust laws. They are guilty of collusion and price fixing.

The services have found a legal loophole to evade minimum wage and labor protections, and they are using it to exploit drivers.

The customer benefits from this. The customer is complicit in the exploitation. Ignorance does not negate their complicity.

(You should also know that if you do tip well, the services reduce their base pay further, effectively capturing part of your tip to the driver. They are exploiting you, too.)

Again, nobody should be using these services. They are bad for everyone. The only ethical way to use them is to tip sufficiently to ensure the driver’s pay exceeds minimum wage.

This. And at best, they can get about 6 orders per hour. That’s about 12-24 miles on their odometer, which is $3-6 worth of gasoline in city traffic. At best, they net $6 to $9/hr before tips.

Oh, and remember: Contractors, not employees. They are paid per job, not per hour. There is no requirement for the service to ensure they receive at least minimum wage. On some shifts, drivers can expend more in gas than they earn.

They can afford it. But the make more when they completely shaft both the customer and the driver.

Correct me if I’m wrong but the job is basically:

You’re wrong, but it’s understandable. The key point you’re getting wrong is: You make money from a job.

The pay for most of the assignments you get from DD or UE is usually not enough to cover fuel, let alone maintenance on your vehicle. Certainly less than minimum wage for your time. Which is legal for them to do, because you are a contractor, paid per job and not per hour. If the customer doesn’t tip, you are earning less than minimum wage at best. In many cases, you’re actually paying to work, but you’re forced to take these unprofitable orders just to maintain your rating and keep getting assignments. (In my area, drivers call this “eating shit”)

At best, you can take about 6 assignments an hour. To net minimum wage, you need at least three of them to tip well. When a restaurant doesn’t bother to start preparing the order until you arrive, the time you waste waiting is 2-3 orders. If any of the remaining orders that hour don’t tip, you’re below minimum wage.

It is a shitty, exploitative service that nobody should be using. If you are going to use it, be aware that the service is taking everything you’re paying, and completely shafting your driver.

Oh, I don’t mean to give them any credit whatsoever. I’m just saying that it’s very likely that there is “false information” included this set. That doesn’t mean they actually have a significant case, just that the claims may need to be adjusted to the generic “Camera” or “ALPR” rather than “Flock” specifically.

Flock isn’t the only entity operating security cameras and plate readers. How many non-Flock devices are being reported as Flock units?

The problem is that they don’t just read the plates. They look at everything on the vehicle. Window stickers, license plate frames, cleanliness, scratches/dents, etc. Trying to disguise your plate will just make your vehicle more readily recognizable, and notify authorities that you have something to hide.

Absolutely not: Trump, Trump, Bush, Bush, Bush, Reagan, Reagan, Ford, Nixon, Nixon.

We’ve seen what these bastards did to the postal service and everything else they’ve touched. We’re not putting every major industry in the country under the direct control of men like these. The idea of government-run commercial entities is simply a non-starter. That’s one of the few qualms I have about the IRS holding these shares for any length of time. I would strip control and voting rights from these taxed shares, restoring them only once they have been transferred to a market buyer.

I agree that ownership of production needs to be in the hands of the people, but that ownership needs to be directly in the hands of the people, not through a stake in a government that is, more often than not, overtly hostile and malicious to the interests of the people.

The tax would apply to ALL stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments. Natural US persons can exempt up to $10 million worth from their portfolio, but they will owe an equal proportion of every issue in their portfolio: They don’t get to pick and choose what issues they will keep and what they transfer to the IRS: The IRS gets the same percentage of everything.

The artificial persons owe the full tax: no exemptions. If you own $100 million in stocks, you can’t split it up among 10 companies. You can split it up among friends and family to avoid the tax, but they each control their own shares.

To the working class, securities remain a valuable asset. To the ultra-rich, a sufficiently-high tax converts these same securities into an expensive liability. With these conditions, an ownership stake in a worker’s company will become a significant component of their compensation. Ownership of production will be driven away from the ultra-wealthy and to the people.

What?

It is only under the Laws of Armed Conflict (“LOAC”) that the “combatant” distinction arises, but you clearly do not understand LOAC.

For LOAC to apply, there would have to be an enemy state involved, and Hasan would have to be an overt officer of that state. But there was no enemy state, and Hasan was an officer of the US.

Without LOAC to give his victims the status of “combatant”, they are innocent. Their status as military members is irrelevant; there is no relevant distinction between them and “civilians”.

That’s not actually true. For it to be true and relevant, Hasan would have to have been an overt agent or officer of an enemy nation. To justifiably kill American service members, he would have to be an enemy combatant. If he were an enemy combatant, the service members he killed would also be considered combatants, and his attack would simply be an act of war. He could not be held or tried as a criminal. He would be entitled to all privileges and protections afforded to Prisoners of War. He could be held without trial until the cessation of hostilities between the belligerent countries, and then repatriated. He could not face charge or punishment for having killed combatants.

But he was not an overt enemy officer. He was an officer of the United States, acting on his own and not as an overt agent of a hostile state. His status was not “enemy combatant”. The personnel he killed would not be considered “combatants” in this act; they would be considered innocent victims of a criminal act. No different than civilian victims. Hasan was not a combatant, and could take no actions as a combatant, lawful or otherwise.

Enemy states can lawfully kill military service members as an act of war. Random individuals cannot. The random individual cannot claim that his victims were combatants. The random individual cannot claim the protections of POW status. To that individual, his victims are innocent adults.