The opportunity to work well below the poverty line.
If the previous prices really were bad wages, then Uber and Lyft would be having a hard time finding drivers.
The existence of a job doesn’t imply that said job is unexploitative. People are attracted to (or left with) exploitative jobs for all kinds of reasons.
These Uber and Lyft drivers picked this job out of all their options. They arrived at the conclusion that it was the best job that they could get out of all their options. Why do you think you know better than they do?
Edit: “out of all their options” reveals the point here: the minimum wage exists so that, in theory, there is a cap on the things that people have to do to put food in their mouths.
But the reality is Uber and Lyft drivers aren't idiots and do indeed realize that depreciation exists. This strikes me a quite a condescending take, that Uber and Lyft drivers aren't smart enough to o take wear and tear on their vehicles into account.
This is a long-standing point of public messaging around rideshares. It's not a secret; the reality is that the people who care about it aren't the ones with hundreds of millions allocated for advertising.
None of this assumes that Uber or Lyft drivers are stupid. Everybody discounts long-term externalities; it's a universal human trait, and it's why we have entire society-level issues that boil down to long-term discounting. The only thing that sets rideshare drivers apart in this particular case is that a company is actively exploiting that human weakness, and can do so in part because we allow economic privation as a fulcrum.
The fact that you're allowed to expense your car's deprecation indicates that this is not a long-term externality for you. Of course people take advantage of reimbursements available to them; the fact that none applies here is the thing being discussed.
Again: being "worth his or her salt" reveals the point here: the point of a minimum wage is to ensure that people who aren't financially literate are, in theory, afforded a baseline quality of life. It's fine if we don't agree about the civic value of that, but that's what it boils down to: not punishing people with a life of privation for not having the skills, means, or anything else that others have.
I stand by my point: the idea that a significant portion of ride share drivers are failing to account for depreciation is ridiculous.
There are clearly many people who both want to drive for these companies and want to rules in place to ensure fair pay and working conditions. It is not an either/or.
Nor have you. You have made the assumption that accepting the terms of employment implies that drivers accept/support the companies position in this conflict. I see no evidence for that.
This, too, is baseless. Plenty of people who aren't drivers support legislation like this. Neither the claim that most drivers support this legislation, nor the claim that this legislation has been mostly supported by drivers is substantiated.