Sure, but a lot of these drivers are marginal members of the workforce in some way. I have a friend who is on disability. Lyft is the only job he’s ever been able to hold down, because he can’t show up for work reliably. I think this “abject poverty” framing is very misleading, it assumes the worker is trying to live on their own with the driving gig as their sole source of income, when they are probably living with family or roommates, and/or have another job.
I think Uber and similar have a valuable role in matching a latent supply of labor, an unmet demand for transportation, and wasted resources in the form of cars sitting parked 95% of the time.
It’s not like we were going around paying people $20/hr to drive us home from the bar ten years ago and those jobs went away - that activity simply wasn’t happening (excluding some very rare areas where taxis exist). It would be nice if we could cause Uber drivers to get paid $20/hr with benefits now, but if we passed laws requiring that, the economic activity would probably just go away because most people wouldn’t be willing to pay high enough fares. The driver would be sitting at home on Friday night instead of getting paid to drive the drunk kids around.