> It does! But it takes more work to build an entire successful business from the ground up—one that will withstand well-established competition, by the way—just so it can operate as a de facto “guild.”

I disagree, especially when you take into account that it’s not just a matter of starting a union, but having the…

Agreed, but they still don’t compare to guilds, in part because they represent all of the people in a trade. Tell me, what happens if someone who belongs to the trade screws up? Does the trade union fix the problem?

It would be nice if it was just a story.

> Because it takes time, money, and organization to build a competitor to Uber, and we’re largely talking about people who are just trying to work a bit on the side to make ends meet?

It takes time, money, and organization to build a union too!

> I mean, I guess that’s a valid course of action ... but it doesn’t really answer the question of what Uber/Lyft/etc drivers can or should do right now, short of trying to utterly upend the entire system.

Well, I think that’s actually the best course of action. If you’re going to try to unionize, just “guildize.”…

After many discussions on here, in part because it seems to be impossible to edit a comment, I’ve come to the conclusion that guilds are still the answer, but not in the way I was originally thinking. Uber is almost a guild, but not quite. So why not just go all the way?

http://gizmodo.com/seattle-city-c…

The main point is that the drivers are still independent contractors rather than employers. But as I was trying to say in my last reply is that Uber is almost taking the place of a guild, except for the fact that it is not in any way owned by the drivers. So we should really just ditch Uber and start a true guild.…

Nope. The Guild Association is new. Hopefully it will take off though.

I know. What I am saying is that, after the collapse of the original guilds and the rise of unions during the industrial revolution, we lost a bit of knowledge on the distinction between the two, and we now have “unions” trying to handle the job of guilds, but acting more like unions than guilds.

Again, any class of institution, which lasts for a long enough period of time, is going to end up having some of its members corrupted, especially by government. Try not to judge the class as a whole based on that.

> If Uber were merely a payment processing system and a “hub for finding customers,” they’d have no interest in whether or not you had insurance or whether or not your car was a junker or that you have to submit to a background check.

You’re thinking of bloated “domesticated” unions which live off of government support (as tends to happen with entities over time). This is not the general nature of unions or guilds.

What kind of stupid comment is this?

Because modern guilds are modeled after unions, not real guilds. They’ve lost their purpose.

It’s a shift in the mentality of what constitutes the two. And that’s actually a problem. Guilds do not provide the services that they once did because modern guilds are modeled after unions, not true guilds.

Not all working people, only employees.

There is no functional difference between modern guilds and unions because modern guilds are modeled more off of unions than original guilds. Actual guilds provide a lot more than unions do, and really provide very different things.

Absolutely not. I should have posted this link right in the initial comment, but unfortunately it’s impossible to edit comments on here.

> Only in a very strict legal sense. In essence, they’re workers.

That was not the purpose or the function of guilds, for the most part. Guilds were associations of skilled craftspeople. They provided trade education, legal support, advertising, etc. They also stood up for the quality of work, unlike modern “guilds.”