Although it may be true that 80% of drivers are working part time, it is still reasonable to assume that a disproportionate number of miles driven, and therefore wages paid, are being done by the full time drivers.

As an extension, there is a utilitarian argument that says a full time driver will benefit substantially more from the minimum wage than a part time driver will suffer.

Regardless, I think appealing to the proportion of drivers is misplaced. It would be unsurprising to me if more than 80% of trips were completed by full time drivers.

I disagree. If the intent is to help the 20% of drivers who don't have another job (unclear if they're all full time or not but they seem to be the group that you're most concerned with), then it would be better to see regulation that targets them specifically.

Making it unviable for 80% or more of the drivers to benefit the 20% is a tradeoff that one doesn't have to make. There's nothing in the rulebook for creating regulation that says you have to be so heavy handed. All it shows us is that these are lazy regulators who didn't bother to write decent regulations.

Then you'd be encouraging migration from every other industry into Uber/Lyft because, as you say, no other job offers the same flexibility. So why would I work anywhere else if my minimum is the same? Mostly benefits & inertia of life inhibiting trying new things will prevent some of it but there will still be meaningful migration. The de facto wage would probably raise a bit as competition for workers ripples & Uber/Lyft would start implementing caps on how many drivers there can be (because a lot more will still value the flexibility highly) to better control their prices since the demand pricing has a legal floor above the market rate.

This is all obviously assuming there's about a stable mix of minimum wage jobs available in the market to people who need them. Remember that this job needs a new car every few years so there's a bit of capital investment required to maintain this job. There are financing options available but now suddenly this minimum wage work is further costing you even more to pay the financing. Then you're left trying to address that.

Every legal change to the market can have unintended consequences and infinite imagined ones in advance. Some times it's better to just stick to simple tweaks/changes that have a pretty well trodden path of study by economists. It is also important for cities to explore different things too though so that we can collect the data but which city really wants to do that with its citizens, especially how hard it is to pass helpful reforms for which the market response is well-studied and the law easy to explain to people.

Maybe this depends on the locale, but in Houston 90% of the uber drivers that have driven me worked for Uber because of the flexibility.

It was a guy who just started an insurance company with his wife and they were taking turns ubering when they could to help pay the bills until their company got off the ground.

It was a wife who was saving up for a kitchen remodel she wanted.

Several people who were retired.

Several people with waxing/waning medical issues.

In my experience there weren't a lot of people who were using uber/lyft for their long-term income, which make sense because the pay isn't very high, there aren't any promotions, and many of the individuals who would be interested in a that type of job don't have a nice enough car or have other issues that prevent them from driving for Uber.

How often is the other job driving for the other company? (only half joking...)

IMO the first 8 hours of someone's time is worth a living wage, and any time beyond that is worth even more. Because time is the only non renewable resource; it's literally a person's life. So to hire someone at less than a living wage to do any task is equivalent to saying their life is worth less than the job you're hiring them to do. Which is dehumanizing at best, and approaches slavery at worst.

It's better for someone who needs money to get $0 than to get what they're willing to work for? They don't get a choice in what they find dehumanizing or what they're willing to do?

80% of the drivers have jobs elsewhere. So presumably this is to make extra money for things like a vacation, a new TV, or being able to go out for dinner a few more times. Those all seem to be good and worthwhile for people who want a flexible earning opportunity. I guess I don't understand why a government would tell those people they can't do what they're currently doing because they don't think the current process meets an arbitrary cutoff.

If someone is willing to work extra hours, I contend that fact won't change regardless of whether they're allowed to work for less than they're worth. If they can't find any work to do, then they'll make some. That's how we got to where we are today. But from a government/society's POV, there's no difference between a citizen not making enough money to survive (aka a "living wage") and making $0. Both are roads to failure.

A free market without consideration for the value of a citizen is a race to the bottom. It's a responsibility of a society to ensure its fellow citizens aren't killing themselves.

Also, the "doesn't the person get a say in what's dehumanizing" argument is just so fucked up. I guarantee you it was used 200 years ago by plantations lobbying against emancipation. It conveniently benefits the person already in power while slowly exploiting and destroying their victim.

> A free market without consideration for the value of a citizen is a race to the bottom.

This doesn't explain while the vast majority of free market jobs pay far more than minimum wage.

The minimum wage is an example of "consideration for the value of a citizen". If you remove the minimum wage, what do you expect will happen? Nothing? Wages will go up? Then why do we have it?

No, wages go down: https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-...

Pure unchecked free market capitalism is nothing if not efficient. Where a company can't win by innovation (most companies), they'll gladly win by extracting and selling the wellbeing of their workers. Eventually the worker dies, and they get another. And the whole time they say "don't tell these people what's dehumanizing, let them make that decision for themselves!"

> If you remove the minimum wage, what do you expect will happen?

Some people who were previously unemployed will make $7 instead of $0. Some people who were previously making $7.25 may make $7 too. But then everyone will pay lower prices for things. On net that turns into an overall gain.

> No, wages go down: https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-...

I don't see anything in that link that actually says that. And if all you're saying is that some people who used to make $0 start making $7 which then brings down the average, how is that actually bad? $7 is more than $0, it's just an artifact of not including in the unemployed/underemployed in the average.

Meanwhile eliminating price controls can increase wages by increasing competition for labor. Right now Alice makes $8/hour but loses the equivalent of $2/hour to commuting expenses. You let an employer across the street from Alice pay her $6/hour and she takes that job instead, ends up with the same amount of spending money because she doesn't have to pay to commute anymore, doesn't have to waste an hour a day sitting in traffic, and her former employer has to pay $8.50/hour to get someone to replace her (or to convince Alice to stay given that she now has another alternative).

> from a government/society's POV, there's no difference between a citizen not making enough money to survive (aka a "living wage") and making $0.

From a free citizen's who wants to eat point of view, there's a huge difference between making $50 one evening when you have free time and making $0.