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Comment by xiphias2 | Hacker News Reader

The main problem is that when the drivers accept work from Uber, they plan ahead to have the same pay years later, often buying car from mortgage. At that point the drivers have no choice but to work their ass off to be able to pay back the mortgage for lower and lower hourly net rates.

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Okay, that is a fair point and perhaps there should be regulations to require Uber to disclose prominently to prospective drivers that their rate is not guaranteed. (Certainly it's already in fine print somewhere, but I'm not sure how clearly it's made to people).

However, that is not the point being made by the people quoted in this article, who are instead framing it in much more general terms that I might sum up as "any company not paying their employees a 'living wage' is unethical".

Requiring a living wage can benefit employees a lot more than it hurts employers. Stopping a race to the bottom does not leave everyone unemployed. But it takes collective action to do so, because yes on an individual basis it would leave that individual unemployed. Group dynamics are different from one-on-one dynamics between one entity with power and one without.

My personal belief is that the most unethical thing is the banks driving up asset prices with freely printed money. With sound money workers wouldn't have to work so much to be able to afford rent.

Huh? For most people the delay from paycheck to rent payment is weeks to months, and the inflation suffered on that money is less than one percent. How would locking the amount of money affect that in any notable way?

And a housing bubble can still happen in a deflationary economy. Money can still move from the workers to the rich. The effective price goes up even if the dollar amount doesn't.

Inflation was not the point, cheap loans = cheap mortgages = expensive houses.

You don't need to print money to have cheap loans. And isn't a very large amount of the pressure behind property prices people trying to invest?

People sometimes take a loan to purchase a restaurant, only to have regulations change and make the business non-profitable.

Life is full of disappointment.

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