The Lowest Bid Wins.America Loses.

Across the United States, technology is transforming how people work, how businesses operate, and how corporations purchase services.

We have developed extraordinary tools capable of connecting millions of people, coordinating transportation, processing transactions, and making entire industries more efficient.

These advancements should be improving human life.

They should be reducing unnecessary labor, increasing productivity, creating opportunity, and allowing more people to participate in our economy.

But something troubling is happening.

In certain digital marketplaces, technology is being used to create an environment where independent workers and small businesses compete against one another to offer increasingly lower prices for their labor and services.

1. 1A corporation needs a delivery completed.
2. 2A digital platform publishes the opportunity.
3. 3Independent contractors and transportation businesses submit competing bids.
4. 4The company selects an offer, often with price playing a central role.
5. 5The winning contractor may receive the work.

But what happens when the amount paid is insufficient to cover the actual cost of performing it?

What happens when the winning bidder is not the most efficient business, but simply the person least familiar with their expenses—or the person under the greatest financial pressure?

And what happens when this model spreads beyond transportation into construction, home services, freelance work, healthcare staffing, and other industries?

We must ask whether these systems are advancing our economy or creating new mechanisms for economic exploitation.

A nation cannot build lasting prosperity by continuously reducing the value of the people whose work makes prosperity possible.

This is not simply a transportation issue.

It is a question about the kind of economy we are choosing to build.

There is nothing inherently wrong with independent contracting.

Many Americans choose to operate their own businesses because they value flexibility, autonomy, entrepreneurship, and the opportunity to build something of their own.

Those choices deserve respect.

But independence should mean more than accepting responsibility for expenses that another company does not want to carry.

An independent contractor may be responsible for purchasing a vehicle, maintaining equipment, securing insurance, paying taxes, and absorbing fluctuations in demand.

They may have no guaranteed income, paid leave, or employer-provided benefits.

In return, they should have genuine opportunities to negotiate compensation, establish business relationships, and build financially sustainable enterprises.

But when a platform controls access to customers, determines how opportunities are displayed, influences bidding behavior, and reserves the power to suspend participation, we must examine how much independence the contractor actually possesses.

If the available alternatives are accepting financially unsustainable work or having no income, we must examine the economic conditions creating that choice.

We must also distinguish legitimate independent businesses from workers who have been improperly classified as contractors.

The legal label attached to a worker should never be used to deny protections that the law otherwise requires.

A fair economy must support genuine entrepreneurship while enforcing appropriate worker protections.

When corporations purchase services at lower prices, those savings may appear beneficial.

Customers may pay less.

Businesses may improve their margins.

Investors may receive stronger returns.

But we must examine the entire economic transaction.

If the person performing the work cannot afford housing, healthcare, transportation, food, or the maintenance of the equipment required for their job, society has not eliminated those costs.

The consequences may appear elsewhere.

These outcomes are not inevitable for every independent contractor. Many operate successful businesses.

But when compensation repeatedly falls below the cost of providing services, financial instability becomes a predictable risk.

We must stop examining economic transactions exclusively through the financial statements of the largest corporations involved.

The financial health of workers, families, and small businesses matters too.

An economy is not healthy simply because its largest participants are profitable.

It is healthy when the people contributing to its success have meaningful opportunities to live securely and prosper.

For decades, public economic discussions have placed enormous emphasis on corporate earnings, stock market performance, productivity, and economic growth.

These measurements provide useful information.

But they do not tell us everything we need to know.

A corporation can report strong earnings while workers struggle to pay rent.

A technology company can achieve rapid growth while participating contractors absorb increasing operating costs.

An economy can expand while the benefits of that expansion remain concentrated among a relatively small number of participants.

We should measure more than aggregate output.

We should examine whether people can afford housing, healthcare, education, transportation, and the basic conditions necessary to participate in society.

We should measure whether small businesses can survive.

We should measure whether productivity improvements are translating into greater financial security for workers.

And we should examine whether the structure of our markets supports long-term economic stability.

A nation of financially insecure workers cannot become truly prosperous simply by increasing the wealth of those who purchase their labor.

The success of the American economy must include the success of the American people.

One of the most important changes I want to bring to government is how we develop policy.

For too long, decisions affecting millions of people have been made without meaningful participation from the people who experience their consequences.

Workers should not have to wait for a corporation to explain what their working conditions are.

Independent contractors should not have to depend exclusively on industry representatives to explain their financial realities.

Small businesses should not be excluded from discussions dominated by large corporations and well-funded lobbying organizations.

We must ask the people directly affected.

• ?What challenges are they experiencing?
• ?What opportunities are these platforms providing?
• ?What practices are harmful?
• ?What changes would help them succeed?
• ?And what unintended consequences might arise from proposed reforms?

We should also listen to businesses and customers who benefit from digital marketplaces.

Their experiences can help us preserve useful innovations while addressing harmful practices.

The objective is not to replace one system designed without public participation with another.

It is to create policy through meaningful collaboration.

The people affected by a policy must have a voice in shaping that policy.

That is how government begins to work for everyone.

There is a larger principle behind this discussion.

Our economic circumstances do not change that worth.

We have created extraordinary technological capabilities.

We can communicate across continents instantly.

We can coordinate complex transportation networks.

We can use artificial intelligence to analyze enormous amounts of information.

And yet we continue to tolerate economic arrangements in which people performing necessary work may struggle to afford the conditions required to live.

That contradiction should concern us.

The purpose of technological progress should be to improve the human condition.

The purpose of economic development should be to expand opportunity.

And the responsibility of government should include protecting the public from unlawful and harmful practices while supporting the freedom to innovate, compete, and build successful businesses.

We should not measure human progress by how efficiently we can make people compete against one another for less.

We should measure it by how effectively we use our knowledge, technology, and collective resources to improve life.

When a digital platform awards work to the lowest bidder, it may appear that the marketplace has functioned successfully.

But those facts alone do not tell us whether the transaction created sustainable economic value.

We must ask what happened to the person performing the work.

• Did they earn enough to cover their costs?
• Could they maintain their equipment?
• Could they support their family?
• Could they continue operating their business?
• Did the marketplace reward genuine efficiency, or did it reward financial desperation?

These questions should matter to every American.

Because the same economic pressures affecting an independent delivery driver can affect a construction contractor, a freelance worker, a home-service provider, or a small business competing for corporate contracts.

The industries may differ.

The technology may differ.

But the underlying question remains:

Are we creating economic systems that help people succeed, or systems that become more profitable when people have fewer alternatives?

We have the knowledge to recognize the difference.

We have the technological ability to build something better.

And we have the collective responsibility to ensure that progress benefits the people who make it possible.

The future of America should not be determined by how little we can pay one another.

It should be determined by how much opportunity, security, knowledge, and prosperity we can create together.

And we can choose a better future.

Read more: Why Small Businesses Keep Getting Held Back and One Flat Tire Away.