> a guaranteed minimum wage
A min-wage guarantee implies Uber and Lyft will tell you when and where to drive because it would demolish the fundamental mechanism we drivers use to allocate ourselves. Otherwise we would all clump up in a parking lot somewhere trying to insulate ourselves from the costs of driving people around while collecting $10/hr.
> possibility for unemployment benefits
I haven't had this option in a decade or more. If you increase the cost of firing somebody, which is exactly what this is, you increase the cost of hiring as well. See above: this is a bottom rung job, the most important thing is to be on the ladder. If you make the bottom four rungs of the ladder illegal it doesn't mean people can magically start jumping to the fifth rung, they just get left out.
> health care benefits
Life's rough. Hopefully I solve this problem with a better job in the near future.
Don't get me wrong, I really dislike the Uber/Lyft model, I cringe every time somebody says "Oh but Lyft treats drivers so much better than Uber, right?" and I would love to see a better competitor prove the flaws of the Uber/Lyft model in the marketplace. I just don't think that minimum wage, employee status, and benefits packages are going to be that great for drivers or passengers. It's probably a mixed bag for both, but not a very good mixed bag.
As an aside, there's part of me that wants to figure out what a slide-deck is, make one, and be that competitor. So don't think I've been drinking the company Kool-Aid or anything, because I would love to put both of them out of business largely because I don't like how they treat drivers. But I'm still extremely thankful that I've had this job and I don't want to see it taken away from others who may value it in the way I have.