| I think this is a perspective you can only really take with a fair bit of privilege since you continue to state that all of these are choices individual drivers are making. For what its worth I share that privilege to a certain extent in my response here. The reality is these choices are not as transparent as you are illustrating them. Say you lose your job and your pension and all the things that make your life comfortable tomorrow. You have a choice to wait it out, maybe take some time to learn an advanced skill and find a new line of work. However, you need money now to take care of a sick family member. So you start driving Uber... Yes the mechanics of the rideshare platforms are such that you can start earning money now, but the cost is as you pointed out, to you in the future. So then the question is this like a regular loan, or is it more exploitative like payday loan. I think the lack of transparency and the circumstances one has to be in to even consider these choices are such that make it appear, at least to me, more like the latter than the former. I think what the person responding to you wants, I know what I would want, is for Uber/Lyft to pay a bit more to take these costs into account. However this would raise the cost to riders, which have already been artificially subsidized for some time [0]. Uber won't do this because it would, to your first point, cause the company to become insolvent. The assumption that poor people are not making rational choices is just plain wrong. I think the reality is closer to - people are trying to make the best choice they can, but often have a limited number of really bad choices to chose from. Sure some drivers drive an SUV instead of a Prius, but that may have been a function of the incentives presented by the app itself (i.e. qualifying for more exclusive rides, the appearance of making more money from this vehicle, its the only car you have now, etc. etc.). A company that takes advantage of limited choices, and then offers you an option that appears to temporarily solve your problem now, at great personal expense to you later is in my view acting in bad faith because they are to some effect misrepresenting the service they are providing to their drivers. it is this point, in my view, that makes it look more like the payday loan than a "regular" loan. [0] https://slate.com/business/2022/05/uber-subsidy-lyft-cheap-r... |