Just like workers in sweatshops and factories in countries like Indonesia and China have a choice to not work for a few dollars per day in dangerous conditions producing textiles for your $200 sneakers and smartphone components for your $1000 iPhone or Android device? The people working in those deplorable conditions are doing so voluntarily, right? Just like the homeless guy digging through the trash on Market St in San Francisco has the choice to not be homeless even though his area is being gentrified and even people on six figure salaries cannot afford to live in a lot of areas of San Francisco. I cannot get on-board with the view that everyone has a choice.
> The people working in those deplorable conditions are doing so voluntarily, right?
They actually are, and if you ask them then can explain why they chose it. These factory jobs are usually very sought after, and has lifted millions from extreme poverty. I suspect you have little idea how harsh third world poverty actually is.
> Just like the homeless guy digging through the trash on Market St in San Francisco has the choice to not be homeless
That's very different. He can choose whether to dig for trash, but not directly whether to be homeless. You can choose your actions, but not end results.
He is also fairly likely to be mentally incapable to make rational decisions. Meanwhile, the Asian factory workers you mention are quite capable and responsible adults. As are the vast majority of American Uber drivers.
It includes quite a bit about the lives of people working in the garment factories in Bangladesh. Sweatshops are a major step up from the alternatives - especially for women.
The frying pan/fire metaphor implies choosing between equally awful options, but the factory work is substantially better than the alternatives.
Of course, to rich westerners like you and me they are both unfathomably awful, but to the people concerned going from living on the streets to a modest bed indoors can be a huge life changing event.
I disagree. Uber employs extremely deceptive advertising to recruit drivers and encourages them to do things like buy new cars then turns around and cuts the amount drivers get paid. This has the effect of totally screwing them over. It's a pretty exploitative situation for people who actually rely on it for income to pay their living expenses.
I think people need to ask themselves - if it's half the price of a regular cab how can this be?
Either tax drivers are being exploited by their employers who are pocketing most of the wealth generated, or uber drivers are underpaid. Or taxi firms are insanely inefficient and uber has undercut them with their web 3.0 brilliance.
Most people have no business training, and don't know about how to look for hidden costs. It's easy enough to think that taxis are that expensive solely due to the overpriced medallion system, which crops up in newspapers every now and again. Most people wouldn't understand that Uber's profit largely comes from shifting the risk from themselves to the drivers.
The idea of "choice" is significantly more complex than you present it to be, particularly within the context of people providing for themselves and their families, and the information asymmetry Uber leverages in order to convince people to work for them.
So what, some people have urgent needs, different parties in economic transactions have access to different information. Welcome to the free market. They're still choosing to work for Uber. No one is forcing them. Uber isn't forcing them. Uber is just offering an opportunity that they are deciding to accept.
It's not really voluntary if you can either accept a crappy, abusive job or starve to death. People purposefully creating such conditions are doing something incredibly evil to other human beings. Having to "choose" at a gunpoint would probably be more humane.