I think the value of unskilled, marginal time spent is effectively zero at times where the utilization is approaching zero.

What I think this demonstrates is that the issue is very uneven demand. An analogy might be the electric company, which at some points of the day is literally seeing net negative demand in areas with enough renewable generation. They have power plants that can run any time, though, whereas gig workers cannot always pick and choose when they work.

The latter. They are apparently able to find people to work for them at these wages.

The goal of the corporation is to have systems so easy to use that all labor can be unskilled. It depowers the workforce as literally ever laborer is fungible.

In the US, the price of unskilled labour has been deliberately driven down by decades of non-enforcement of immigration laws. Even a year after the election of a President who was supposed to deal with this issue there's been very little action.

In Australia we have control of our borders and the price of unskilled labour is more respectable.