You could have made the information asymmetry arguments perhaps a few years ago. But these days Uber's practices are fairly well known, so no one has to go in blind.

It’s all about edge cases, ie what specifically happens when a customer throws up in your car.

That’s not something the average person off the street is going to ask. But many are going to be pissed learning they will reimburse you for paying someone to clean your car but not the time it takes you to do it yourself, nor the lost wages until it’s clean.

If you take the inside view and look inside Uber, you might find that they handle each specific edge case according to specific rules.

But taking the outside view, you don't need to know all the specifics. You can just check Uber's general reputation (or lack thereof perhaps) for fair dealings with drivers. That general reputation will reflect how they are dealing with those edge cases in general.

Just like in the 2010s you could be reasonable certain that a job at Google meant you got free food, even if you didn't know the exact specific rules about what food would be available when and where.

Reputation is something companies manage, which introduces bias.

If people get a worse impression than reality they can release more information, but if the public has a better impression than reality then they have zero incentives to say anything.

This is not correct. The costs of employing drivers would increase. The driver supply would go down and the price of an Uber ride would therefore increase. This is basic econ.

If uber wants to kill their margins even more by reducing supply and driving up costs, that's their own mistake to make. They instead could keep the service cost that works at the price it's at right now by reducing executive compensation and finding other ways to increase efficiency.

Or they could keep pissing off the people with the monopoly on violence, maybe that'll work long term?

Uber has already lost 35 billion, and somehow still exists. Uber has never been a viable business

So if Uber has lost all that money, aren’t the customers the ones actually exploiting the drivers?

Stop shifting blame from corporations to customers

Real abolitionists didn't wear cotton.

Relevant: https://i.redd.it/whnuvoh4od031.jpg

Uber is a massive wealth redistribution initiative.

Company’s can reduce pay down to minimum wage, the only way it would force them to pay more is if on average people where making less than minimum wage on average.