New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is barely a month into the job, and he's already aggressively seeking to follow through on his campaign pledge to crack down on the gig economy. In recent weeks, his administration has launched several high-profile initiatives against gig companies, seeking to portray them as greedy corporations out to fleece earnest workers.

But behind the flashy press releases and dramatic saber rattling, the reality is that New York City's own past policies are to blame for much of the gig economy drama in the Big Apple. And worse yet, it's every day New Yorkers who will likely suffer most from this regulatory onslaught.

From day one on the job, the Mamdani administration has made its anti-gig bent clear. On inauguration day, Mamdani's pick to head the city's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), Samuel Levine, was already signaling to the press the coming gig economy crackdown. Even prior to Mamdani's official inauguration, Levine's appointment to head DCWP was accompanied by language accusing gig companies of misclassifying workers as independent contractors instead of full-scale employees.

Before serving in the Mamdani administration, Levine worked at the Federal Trade Commission during the Biden administration, where he was known as a key acolyte to Lina Khan during her notorious anti-business reign at the agency. Now, Levine is running point for Mamdani's anti-gig agenda across New York City.

Two weeks into Mamdani's tenure, the mayor, joined by Levine and Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su—another former Biden official, who served as the acting secretary of labor during the 46th president's term—issued a statement declaring a "New Era of Accountability" for gig companies.

The declaration coincided with a DCWP report alleging that gig companies like Uber and DoorDash had "engineered design tricks" in their in-app platforms to reduce worker tips by $550 million. These "design tricks" included moving in-app tipping prompts for food delivery, presenting the option for tipping after an order was complete, rather than before.

This in-app tip reshuffling came in reaction to NYC's prior 2023 decision to impose a minimum wage for food delivery drivers in the city, which sent food delivery costs soaring. The companies appear to have changed the timing of the tip option as a way to reduce the sticker shock for consumers when placing orders.

The New York City Council responded last year by passing a law mandating that gig companies place their tipping prompts before an order was placed, rather than after. Last month, after news arrived that several lawsuits by gig companies seeking to enjoin these (and other) gig-related rules were rejected by federal judges, Levine's DCWP issued a statement reiterating its plan to "vigorously enforce" the city's minimum wage and tipping rules for gig workers.

The city also launched its own lawsuit against the gig company Motoclick, which it argues "blatantly ignored" the minimum wage law and "stole directly from workers' paychecks." While it's impossible to evaluate the claims against Motoclick at this early juncture in the legal proceedings, Mamdani's team also recently announced a $5 million settlement with gig platforms UberEats, Fantuan, and Hungry Panda for violating the minimum wage law.

The UberEats settlement received the most attention since it involved the highest amount of settlement money. But while the top-line numbers received all the press, little attention has been paid to the fine print: Even the city noted that UberEats was "mostly compliant" with the minimum wage law and "incurred the wage debt only in weeks where workers had a delivery canceled" (and therefore the workers involved failed to receive the appropriate compensation from Uber).

Uber clarified that DCWP had originally flagged this pay shortfall to the company in August 2024, one and a half years before Mamdani took office, and Uber immediately agreed at the time to take corrective action to fix the issue and pledged "to pay more than the amount owed" in response.

This nuance didn't stop Levine from triumphantly declaring: "The era of giant corporations juicing profits by underpaying workers is over."

Also being lost in all the media fanfare over Mamdani's gig war is the likely cost to every day New Yorkers. Evidence has repeatedly shown that anti-gig regulations always end up resulting in higher costs for consumers. Just recently Instacart instituted a $5.99 regulatory response fee due to a recent extension of NYC's minimum wage law to grocery deliverers.

It's also unclear how much the regulatory onslaught even helps gig workers. Tips plummeted by nearly 50 percent in the wake of the minimum wage law's passage in NYC, and delivery drivers in Seattle, which implemented its own minimum wage for gig-based delivery, failed to see any sustained higher take-home pay from the city's minimum wage law.

These anti-gig policies have also resulted in more gig companies resorting to "arranged scheduling" models, in which the number of delivery drivers that can be active on the platform at any one time is restricted in order to control labor costs. This locks would-be drivers out of the market altogether and takes away a potential money-earning opportunity that these workers are depending on.

Mamdani's war on gig is getting a lot of press. But beyond the flashy headlines, it's clear that both workers and consumers are likely to suffer.

The post In Mamdani's War on Delivery Apps, New Yorkers Are the Collateral Damage appeared first on Reason.com.

Most hard core liberals, especially in the media, take it as a matter of absolute faith that President Donald Trump is the puppet of Russian president Vladimir Putin. However, an article published in a very surprising source has shattered that myth. The Atlantic magazine, yes that Democrat-loving periodical, published an article on Friday that destroyed that notion. And the two authors of the piece can't be written off as ill informed. Both Thomas Graham and Alan Cullison are members of the Council on Foreign Relations. In addition, Graham is the author of "Getting Russia Right" and Cullison was a former Moscow correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Their article,"Putin Didn’t Know How Good He Had It," sweeps away the sacred liberal belief that Putin somehow controls Trump. In fact, they make a strong case that it was in large part due to Trump that Putin and Russia are currently in a very bad position on the world scene. For decades, Russian President Vladimir Putin railed against the world that the United States built after the Cold War. In his account, an international order run by a single power would hinder Russia and produce needless conflict, especially when that power was as self-serving and duplicitous as America. Now Donald Trump is dismantling the order that Putin had so long abhorred, and a new multipolar world is emerging in its place. Putin had thought he could rise to the top of such a system, in which raw economic and military might outweigh diplomacy and alliances. But he was mistaken: The norms and institutions of the postwar order actually masked Russia’s vulnerabilities. Putin has gotten the world he wished for—and it’s threatening to crush him. And if you are still clinging to the absurd notion that Putin somehow controls a compliant Trump then you (hello, Atlantic readers) have taken a fatal overdose of the thoroughly discredited Steele Dossier as Graham and Cullison continue to reveal the reality of the situation. Putin also assumed that a multipolar world would free him from American interference. And indeed, Trump has accommodated Moscow in some ways. His conciliation does not, however, extend to Russia’s energy sector, the foundation of its economy: Last fall, Trump levied wide-ranging sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, the country’s two largest oil producers. The U.S. has also ramped up enforcement against shadow tankers, threatening a primary channel that Russia has used to sidestep sanctions on its oil sales. Trump’s plans to revive Venezuela’s petroleum sector might likewise hurt Russia. Executing those plans may prove more complicated than Trump anticipates, but they could drive Russia’s oil prices below what its federal budget can sustain. Moscow is at the mercy of an American president who circumvents traditional channels of power and obliterates the constraints that once regulated their use. For example, Trump could attempt to use his recently constituted Board of Peace to bypass the United Nations Security Council—and Russia’s veto—and muscle through his preferred policy in the Middle East, eroding Moscow’s influence in the region. Thanks to decisions by both Trump and Putin, moreover, the two powers no longer have any functional arms-control agreements. Without these, Trump could choose to accelerate his “Golden Dome” missile-defense program, which Russia fears could undermine its own nuclear deterrence. Trump’s disdain for international alliances and norms has also begun to reshape Europe in a way that may exacerbate Russia’s weakness. As U.S. security assurances wane, European countries are developing their hard-power capabilities. Germany has committed 100 billion euros to modernize its military, and Poland is building up its armed forces with a goal of amassing 300,000 troops. Putin has long wanted to split the U.S. and Europe. But he might soon find that the continent—which collectively dwarfs Russia in population and wealth—poses a significant challenge even if it doesn’t belong to a U.S.-dominated alliance. This should dispel the idea that Trump is merely Putin's puppet. However, never underestimate the liberal aptitude for self-deception. The same poor souls fully expected the Mueller Report to prove Trump-Russia collusion, when that report revealed no vast conspiracy, were still unable to let go of their delusions. However, it is refreshing to see cold reality splashed directly on the faces of the Atlantic readers.

U.S. — Customers were helpfully alerted by an Amazon product's 4.2 star rating that it is obviously total crap.

Richard Dawkins coined "meme" in 1976 to describe units of cultural transmission—ideas that replicate like genes.