I assume most people aren’t getting dropped off on the side of the highway. They’re being moved between more dense points that are otherwise underserved or not served by mass transit.
The existence of a job doesn’t imply that said job is unexploitative. People are attracted to (or left with) exploitative jobs for all kinds of reasons.
What is exploitation? Working a service job for minimum wage is not what I'd call a good job, but it's not exploitation as long as the employer did not cheat employees out of wages, put them at undisclosed risk, or some other dishonest practice. Exploitation is more than just "I think the wage is too low".
These Uber and Lyft drivers picked this job out of all their options. They arrived at the conclusion that it was the best job that they could get out of all their options. Why do you think you know better than they do?
I think that using peoples’ inability to factor in the depreciation of their cars is a form of exploitation in this case. Uber and Lyft are profitable in part because they assume no maintenance or repair risk.
Edit: “out of all their options” reveals the point here: the minimum wage exists so that, in theory, there is a cap on the things that people have to do to put food in their mouths.
If this were the case, then the remediation is to promote better awareness about depreciation and factoring it into net profit calculation. Then, once drivers realize that depreciation is a thing, Uber and Lyft would see drivers quitting en masse when they realize they're not making as much money as they thought - if what you are saying is true, that is.
But the reality is Uber and Lyft drivers aren't idiots and do indeed realize that depreciation exists. This strikes me a quite a condescending take, that Uber and Lyft drivers aren't smart enough to o take wear and tear on their vehicles into account.
Have they? The linked article did not make this claim. I'd be very interested in sources studying what percentage of ride share driver's supported this law.
There's some truth to this. A minimum wage is a blunt instrument that can end up causing more harm than good. If the goal is to raise wages, I think there's better ways of doing it. Maybe with some kind of tax code reform.
Well, look at the history of workplace safety laws (removing the option to work in dangerous conditions), minimum wage laws (removing the optin to work below a certain amount of money), and union protection laws. I haven't done a study, but I'm pretty sure we'd find that each of those laws resulted in less exploitation.
EDIT: There are also loads of limitations on what contracts are valid. The government removes the option to contract yourself into slavery, as well as a host of other things. All these laws removing these options were written in response to exploitation, and I'm pretty sure you'd find that they actually reduced exploitation.
> I'm pretty sure you'd find that they actually reduced exploitation
Correlation is not causation. It would be illogical to remove options and have less exploitation. When luck and free markets compensate for the removed options - great. A strong labor market with lots of employers is the best tool against exploitation. But here we are talking about a corrupted, monopolistic government-controlled market where there weren't many choices to begin with. New entrants should be encouraged and celebrated, not shunned and punished.
Minimum wage laws are incredibly damaging as well. For example, the unpaid part-time "job" that launched me in the IT field would be illegal now. And I would be much poorer for it. But, hey, I wouldn't have been "exploited".
> It would be illogical to remove options and have less exploitation.
It may be somewhat counterintuitive, but it's certainly not illogical.
> Minimum wage laws are incredibly damaging as well. For example, the unpaid part-time "job" that launched me in the IT field would be illegal now. And I would be much poorer for it. But, hey, I wouldn't have been "exploited".
First of all, are you sure it wouldn't have existed? Just because you're willing to get something for free doesn't mean you're not also willing to pay for it; and minimum wage is a lot cheaper than a properly trained full-time IT person.
Secondly, having skilled workers available is a public good [1] that benefits all companies, so it makes economic sense for the government to invest (on behalf of all companies) in developing those skills. If these sorts of apprenticeships are generally useful, then having the government sponsor or subsidize them also makes sense.
I know it ended since I am still friends with the owner: the labor regulations become so onerous he gave up on having a couple overly-enthusiastic pain-in-the-butt kids around to train every year.
> having the government sponsor or subsidise them also makes sense
Of course government intervention begets ever more government intervention - it's the only one that can fix the messes it creates. But I lived under a regime where the government controlled everything - and we were starving.
The government is the most incompetent, slow and corrupt organization built by man. It makes sense, as it has no competition to push it to be otherwise - it's the ultimate monopoly. Boggles the mind that somebody would voluntarily rely on it.
No. Semi-slavery is no "opportunity" in any real sense of the word, it is a trap. Very few people advance out of sub-poverty wages (and the few who do are no "proof" that it is an "opportunity").
There is a massive difference between people of equal power making arms-lencgh transactions, vs people of virtually unlimited power coercing others to work for sub-poverty wages when their only other option is starvation.
Minimum Wage and Unions work against the tendency for capital, owners, and management to exploit workers for their own gain. History shows societies with a large middle class are far better off and more resilient than societies with a thin upper class and mostly impoverished workers.
Whenever workers for a company are disproportionately reliant on public assistance, as was found in MN, it means that the management has figured out a scam to get rest of the taxpayers to subsidize their business.
The taxpayers make up the difference between what is paid vs a living wage which would be required for those workers to sustainably work for the corp, and the management/shareholders pocket the difference. So, Uber and Lyft are literally scamming the rest of the taxpayers for their profits. Do you enjoy paying taxes to support the executives and shareholders of Uber and Lyft (also WalMart, etc.).
There are several solutions, including:
Solution 1: Reset the minimum wage the way it was originally designed (by 1950s Republicans), so that it pays a livable wage for one person working 40 hours to support a family of 4 above the poverty line. This is what built the middle class.
Solution 2: Tax any and all automation sufficiently to pay a Universal Basic Income above the poverty level so that people have options and do not need to work unless an employer makes it worth their while to undertake the commute, etc. Actual minimum wages may be lower, but the corp taxes will be higher.
Either way, we are the wealthiest society in the history of the planet. We CAN afford to treat everyone with dignity, which includes providing for their basic needs of food, housing, healthcare when they work a full-time job.
Allowing some to exploit others in a coercive semi-slavery arrangement should not be an option in the most wealthy society in history.
Arguing with such a broad statement usually isn't worth the time but I'll bite anyways.
First:
If all minimum wage did was remove opportunities, we wouldn't have one in most of the civilized world. It's plainly obvious that isn't all it does, regardless how you feel about it's effectiveness.
Second:
Minimum wage does remove opportunities - and so what? There's nothing inherently bad about that. If a business can't afford a minimum wage, then they aren't a viable business. Businesses don't deserve to exist in the same sense that jobs don't deserve to exist. A business that can only survive by trapping employees in wage-slavery isn't to the happiness and health of it's society.