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In my experience this kind of argument is usually given by people who don’t understand what does it mean to be poor. Poverty incapacitates the rational mind; economic reason is replaced by survival instinct. There was a paper not that long ago that said that people are only rational when they’re concentrating on the decision at hand. If you live paycheck to paycheck and have to make decisions like food or medicine daily, your mental reserves are depleted.
Whether Uber drivers are this poor is an open question; I’d wager some are.
I find arguments such as that put forth as deeply disingenuous, that most people are rational, exceptionally educated economic actors (if you can convince someone to give you an auto loan and a drivers license, which are extremely low bars, than you can clearly determine if gig economy work is in your best interests), when overwhelming evidence proves otherwise. To me, it comes off as justifying exploitation (ie "the gig economy"), which clearly has no place in first world countries or this century. But, with the number of tech workers who are employed at highly compensated at exploitative entities, I am not surprised in the least.