But while there are poorer people driving for Uber, etc., the existence of dilettante drivers is very much a problem for those poorer drivers.

It's like special offers in shops; for someone like me who has spare money and plenty of storage space they are great, but for someone genuinely poor they are often unusable either because they don't have the cash at that moment or because they have nowhere to store it.

It's expensive to be poor. See https://wiki.lspace.org/Vimes_Boots_Index

You are right of course that fixing the poverty is the right thing to do.

This line of argument reminds me of the news stories encouraging retirees to come back to work during the "labour shortage". The problem isn't that bored people are helping out, it's that by doing so they negatively affect the people that are reliant on carrying out that labour to keep themselves fed and sheltered.

For perspective, try imagining that some well off retired ex-$your_job walks up to your boss and offers to replace you for free, working the same hours because they're bored.

I’m not at all saying bored people should not be allowed to drive for Uber for fun.

I’m saying the marketing to drivers needs to change. Uber pretend it’s some great paying gig and markets hard like this. It deceives people who have no idea how to do depreciation calculations