It's not just about them. These drivers are effectively working for 50% of what other drivers are making. This drives down the median wage for all other drivers, because more middle men will be able to step in and outcompete independent drivers. Overall, you get more people working longer hours for less compensation.
To what end? Who really benefits from this trend?
So then the solution to increasing wages is simply to ban hard-working, willing people from taking jobs! Brilliant. Let's force them to be unemployed just so that those who are allowed to work can make a bit more money.
The biggest flaw in your argument is that it completely leaves out the value of experience. Those lower-wage drivers are not signing up for a lifetime of low-wage driving, they are taking a job that they can leave after a few months after gaining useful/valuable experience.
The beauty of Uber is that it offers the opportunity of part-time commitment work to many people who have not had the option before.
Now, instead of pouring a stiff drink to reduce the stress of personal debt (for example) someone can hop in their car and make a few hundred dollars and actually do something about it. The impact of this on people's sense of being in control of their destiny is profound.
Yes, when the job is a systemic arbitrage of labor that externalizes costs and consequences in a way that's bad for society.
You might as well say 'so the solution to increasing wealth is simply to ban enterprising, daring people from robbing houses, stores and banks!' We're talking about the ways capital is exchanged in a dynamic with a labor and an owner class. To blindly assume the owner class cannot arbitrage labor is… kind of unobservant, when we've already got what they call a 'precariat'.
I get that some people want to believe a job as a fry cook (or Uber driver) is a step towards being a CEO, but there's already a CEO. These are not 'ladders of opportunity'. Most likely being unemployed or a dropout has higher odds of ending up the CEO.
edit: what makes you so sure about what's good for society?