I would rather have companies be forced to pay a reasonable minimum wage and compete by improving the service or efficiency, not just pushing the employees to work for less and less.

Not very ethical, but rational, profitable, and prevalent. Cost is a large area to compete in, and people are expensive.

It would be nice if companies acted ethically, but that isn't their reason for existence (especially in fast growing or large companies). If it's not surprising to me when companies act unethically, can I honestly say that I expect them to act ethically? Not if expect means "assign high probability to".

I agree that regulation is needed. It seems that often basic economics (people want to move around as cheaply as possible) lead to unethical situations (paying people as little as possible to move people around). I'm far from an expert of economics, but it seems like regulation is a way to change the rules of the game to have more ethical/fair/uniformly distributed equilibriums at some cost in net efficiency.

This is a bit ambiguous, and perhaps it's a different reading of it that's the contention.

Expect can either mean I think it's likely, as in I expect the sun to rise tomorrow, or a requirement.

I am not surprised that uber try and pay their drivers so little, but I am disappointed and want better from them.

> I'm far from an expert of economics, but it seems like regulation is a way to change the rules of the game to have more ethical/fair/uniformly distributed equilibriums at some cost in net efficiency.

I agree. Safety regulations are a good example of this.

I assume these drivers are all cutting checks to the IRS?

The 'Premium' image was black cars, inspected cars, and no need to tip.