This is true. it also hurts the public, as the drivers are dependent on the number of deliveries the succeed making, thus hurrying up and constantly stressed. This hurts not only their health and quality of delivery, but also increases the risk for traffic accidents.

It is in the best of interest of everyone that these people would get a normal salary.

In CA at least, Uber effectively bought the protection through an effective ad campaign to pass by popular vote an effectively unrecoverable law to protect themselves.

I recently learned that a courier in Panama can earn around $1,400 a month. Yes, you likely have to work six days a week, but that's well above the average salary in the country.

I'm not sure how the sentiment is in developed countries like the US and the UK. Still, here in Latin America, this presents an opportunity for poorer communities to provide dinner for a family.

Because it provides an extremely convenient service that has made life better for most people? People seem to forgot that this class of job used to not exist in our lifetimes. Was it better to be a low-skill worker on the job market in 2010 when these apps didn't exist?

If there are specific labor violations you think are taking place, the appropriate remedy is regulation, not banning.

> I really do not understand why governments aren't working hard to make this kind of gig-economy illegal.

Because there's a large number of people who take the writings of Ayan Rand and the policies of Ronald Regan as the best way to run government.

Workers' rights are being eroded because we've slowly dismantled and privatized as much of the government as possible.

Workers' rights are incompatible with small government and or libertarian ideals. Much like other rights such as civil rights. Or rights to clean water, air, and food.

Big government isn't perfect, but for its flaws there are benefits having a large organization with a bigger stick to beat in line robber barons whose entire goal is to undermine rights as much as possible to leach maximum profit from society.

> I really do not understand why governments aren't working hard to make this kind of gig-economy illegal.

It makes money and the current governing/legal doctrine says the government should give a lot of leeway to that. Biden has been touted as the most pro-labor president since about LBJ, but a lot of this is just letting the NLRB mediate every individual starbucks that unionized.

Not sure if Uber Eats falls under gig work (think so) but I'm glad to have it, I can just turn it on and go. Granted in my case it's not my only job. I usually get $20/hr I know I'm destroying my own car in the process, get in a car crash I'm on my own. But again it's extra money on demand.

Why someone other than me and my employers should decide whether my job is allowed to exist?

Gig workers are a perfect example of how inhumanly ruthless our capitalistic overlords are.

>These "jobs" should not be allowed to exist, at all.

Piece work is nothing new in the economic landscape of history. I'm not saying I absolutely defend it or think it shouldn't be subject to some sorts of protective rules for workers, but you saying it shouldn't exist at all begs the question of what exactly these many, many workers should do instead to make extra, necessary money instead.

If you're of a mind to answer, don't mention something from some neat ideal you have in your mind, describe something practical and accessible in the real world of the present, right now, that could replace their gig wages under existing market dynamics.

It's easy to dislike something and say it should be made to go away, but it helps to know how that will affect those who depend on it, and also to ask what they think of its disappearance in their practical lives.

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