Uber was saying drivers could make 90k a year back in 2014 see: https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-drivers-salary-90000-20...
Which lead to this https://www.vox.com/2017/2/28/14766964/video-uber-travis-kal...
The free market will almost always devolve into worker exploitation unless there are rules.
It was a measure aimed at preventing Uber from externalizing their costs on society.
The only ones who lose here are Taxi drivers who are being undercut. Taxi drivers don't represent "society", they represent the taxi lobby.
So what does a post Uber/post VC ad hoc transit market look like?
Once the VC dries up the market will start to show it's true colors and it may be that the model isn't sustainable, although I think it probably should be once rates rise.
Uber is basically a legal Ponzi scheme.
We shouldn't put bubble wrap around everything in the hopes that no one can ever do anything that might harm themselves. This kind of mindset restricts the freedom of everybody.
Anyway the point I was making is that the bagholders are the little people.
The idea is that while it is nice to enjoy subsidized rides at the moment, as a consumer you may suffer in the future due to Uber establishing a monopoly.
Even if Uber gained 100% share of car rides in an area, if they decided to exploit that by increasing their prices it would be relatively easy to create a competing company and undercut them.
Uber offered a rate that was subsidized by investors. That is not true supply and demand.
Subsidies just increase the supply at the lower prices on the curve.
See, on party here has a lot more data on said expenses, and all the incentives in the world to be misleading about them.
The existing demand was not "true" under the reasonable assumption that nobody wants to work for less than minimum wage after expenses.
That's an unreasonable assumption, especially when that "minimum wage" is 17$.
Yes, and there are also people willing to work in unsafe conditions, work in illegal industries, and trade with the country's enemies. The "free market", as implemented almost anywhere, has never been synonymous with trading with whoever you want on whatever terms.
It's certainly not a nice analytic function, but clearly the higher the minimum wage, the fewer jobs make economic sense.
If I could pay someone a couple of bucks a day to open and close my garage door, I could afford that. But the minimum wage is far beyond that, so I got an electric door opener instead.
If it allows more people to buy iPhones then most of the jobs created by that is made in China, which doesn't help local economy much.
>If it allows more people to buy iPhones then most of the jobs created by that is made in China
Only a small part of the value of an iPhone is captured by China. Not much of it goes to the local economy either, but luxury electronics are also a small fraction of the economy.
Dining out, groceries, retail, housing, transportation, entertainment, travel, child care, home repair, cell phone repair, medical care etc... the local economy captures a large percentage of all of those.
People definitely are willing to work below minimum wage; that's exactly why we need minimum wage!
"Want" is a complicated term in this context, but there are plenty of non-gig employees earning minimum wage or above, but less than minimum wage after subtracting expenses like commuting.