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Comment by inverse_pi | Hacker News Reader

What do you expect Uber/Lyft to do differently? Minimum wage for drivers? We have capitalism. If you think the drivers don't get a lot of money, why don't all of them quit after the first paycheck? It's capitalism, no one forces anyone to do anything. People are free to do what's best for them. Many of these drivers would be unemployed if not for Uber/Lyft. I'm not saying they're well compensated, I'm saying there must be a reason why they're still doing what they're doing.

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I don't particularly expect Uber to do anything different. I do expect someone praising how Uber treats their drivers to be able to answer the question (if they don't know how much a driver in a busy city takes home per hour they have no useful idea how Uber treats drivers).

I don't personally know anything about Uber, but I would be very surprised if it wasn't against company policy to provide such a figure (if it's even internally available) given the divisive and intense political climate that Uber operates in.

Sure, but an Uber policy against disclosing such information doesn't make the question unfair to ask.

We don't have unrestricted capitalism though, far from it. We do have lots of laws that protect workers' rights, including minimum wage laws, which Uber skirts around by classifying their workers as contractors.

Saying "It's capitalism" isn't a justification for anything; it's overly reductive, and we do not live in a purely capitalistic society.

but if the laws that protect workers' rights are so good, why do they even stay with Uber? You yourself said Uber doesn't follow minimum wage law or protect the workers' rights. Doesn't that mean the ride-sharing market, at equilibrium, sets the wage higher than whatever the driver's alternatives might be?

Your argument that minimum wage should be reduced or abolished has some merit. But that doesn't give Uber the right to gain an unfair advantage over other companies.

If you feel tax rates are generally too high does that make it OK to cheat on your tax return?

Capitalism doesn't work when you ignore the law. Or do you really believe Uber would be where they are at now if they followed the law to the letter?

Capitalism works best without the laws (not all but most of them). Capitalism relies on the fact that producers and consumers are free to choose whatever the best options presented to them. The market should make the decisions, not the government.

Would capitalism work better if people were free to smoke crack?

Would it work better if people could choose not to educate their children and instead spend the money on other things?

Can you enumerate which current laws capitalism would be better off without?

Occupational licensing laws, for starters. Even the Obama administration agreed: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/0...

You think competition law is needless nonsense? That a pure free market does not end up with a handful of people owning all of the marbles?

Or without factories full of workers burning down, or without pollutants getting dumped into streams, or without company towns locking workers down into slavery-in-all-but-name, etc., etc.

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