What's "free market" and what isn't is subjective, but I don't think labor unions nec are. It's basically a cartel, but from the worker's side. If I had to describe a true free market for the gig economy, it'd be: every driver has full information about their wage, and can take it or leave it. Uber can set the wage at whatever they want, with the full understanding they won't have enough drivers if it's too low.
When you add in union or government mandated benefits I'd argue it's NOT a free market because there very well could be drivers willing to drive at some wage or rate who wouldn't be allowed to per the union or gov rules.
Union bargaining is collective bargaining. It is the antithesis of what you describe. It gets everyone on-board with the same deal, rather then everyone making individual deals.
> What's "free market" and what isn't is subjective, but I don't think labor unions nec are. It's basically a cartel, but from the worker's side.
I guess in my mind, cartels are free market. The government is interfering with the free market when they break up monopolies or cartels. Unions are the government's way of saying "we don't normally allow cartels or monopolies, but this is okay because it results in a net positive on society."
> When you add in union or government mandated benefits I'd argue it's NOT a free market because there very well could be drivers willing to drive at some wage or rate who wouldn't be allowed to per the union or gov rules.
What the union negotiates is just like whatever you negotiate with your boss. Maybe someone would do your job for less, but thats not how it worked out. Thats how markets work sometimes.
We can also agree that these aren't exactly great jobs, and that they provide no benefits.
I don't think your first scenario is likely, where the added costs from driver benefits are passed onto consumers and the business remains successful, given it already isn't successful. I think we can also agree that if uber were to do this they would indeed lose even more money.
So then we're left with your second scenario being most likely, that we add the benefits but that it turns out this simply isn't affordable at all, at which point the company goes under and all these jobs are lost.
At this point, do the drivers somehow find better jobs that they had been passing up this whole time, now that they are relieved of the burden of being forced to work for uber?
I'd contend that the drivers are better off having the option, and that destroying these jobs won't magically create other better jobs that the drivers can then flock to.