Barbara Ann Berwick drove for Uber for eight weeks in 2014. She, and two others, then brought suit against the company. On June 16, the California Labor Commission ruled that she as a driver\u00a0should have been classified as an employee<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 not an independent contractor \u2013 and that she was due over $4 million in expenses and penalties. As expected, Uber filed its rebuttal on July 9, bolstered with written statements from more than 400 drivers supporting the company.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Are Uber drivers being exploited or fairly compensated? Should governments, consumers, and voters support or suppress the movement towards increasingly freelance labor? It depends.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The 150-year history of industrial capitalism has led the US (and others) to tie benefits and workplace rules to full-time employment. \u201cChoose the full-time job with benefits!\u201d parents urge their children.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yet, in countries with national health benefits, free childcare, low-cost higher education, and robust social safety nets, working as an independent freelancer is great, and it is easier than ever with new, Internet-enabled platforms.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jamie, who lives in France, sells\u00a0handmade stationery on\u00a0Etsy<\/a>\u00a0while working part-time as a family therapist. \u201cI cannot imagine working for someone else. Being my own boss affords me the independence and flexibility I need to express my creative processes, be they typically artistic or intellectually creative. I am not tied down to other people\u2019s wants and expectations and can choose the paths I want or need to focus on at any particular stage in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sidney, who was working as an Uber driver in New York City when we met, told me that he loved being able to control the amount of money he\u2019d earn in a week. If he needed $400 to cover rent, then he\u2019d work the necessary hours to earn it. He told me if you were smart and hardworking, working for yourself was the only way to go. Yet I worried that his calculus didn\u2019t include the full costs of the car, or factor in sick and vacation days, health insurance, or the inevitable retirement that stretched ahead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This new way of working also rewards the ambitious, the hardworking, and the entrepreneurial, and it moves us closer to a real meritocracy. Our r\u00e9sum\u00e9s become irrelevant, and we can try our hands at many things and more quickly figure out what we want to do more of. In the famous\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>cartoon, a dog seated at a computer says to another one looking on,\u00a0\u201cOn the Internet, nobody knows you\u2019re a dog.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0We\u2019ve moved beyond that. With the rise of social networks (and expectation of NSA-level spying), it\u2019s become more true that \u201ceveryone knows you\u2019re a dog, and nobody cares.\u201d It\u2019s your work product and your reputation that matter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n