> Ultimately there is no such thing as driver protections. Either they bring in more money than they are paid or they are going to be out of work (either by being fired, or the company going under).
If we’re starting off with that as a belief why have any regulations at all?
> A company isn't going to let people just do whatever if the company is assuming risks.
Companies routinely do that. Hell sometimes that is the entire reason for employing a specific person, is to let them do what they want and then reap the economic benefit from owning the outcome.
Regulations or no regulations, that's just a fact. You can't have a company paying out more than it intakes, that's just basic math.
People are so quick to say "oh just raise wages" as if Uber/etc never contemplated the idea (recall we're talking about the company that popularized the idea of surge pricing for rides), but I don't think many of the armchair analysts have put an ounce of thought into what actually happens when you dictate monetary factors (let alone the gradient of effects relative to different degrees of change). Uber/Lyft were fairly clear about potential impact of employment mandates on service reliability when prop 22 was making the rounds, and I find it curious that there's simultaneously a sentiment that pre-uber service availability was crap and a sentiment that one just ought to raise prices and somehow people will get to eat their cake and have it too.
> Companies routinely do that
You're giving an apples-to-oranges example and you know it. Hiring Rob Pike vs letting unskilled drivers sit idly on company dime are completely different scenarios. The latter group doesn't even generate leads (unlike cabs being hailed off the street).
If we’re starting off with that as a belief why have any regulations at all?
> A company isn't going to let people just do whatever if the company is assuming risks.
Companies routinely do that. Hell sometimes that is the entire reason for employing a specific person, is to let them do what they want and then reap the economic benefit from owning the outcome.