I spent two weeks delivering for Uber Eats and made $4.40 per hour

"Gig/Contract economy" is the analogue of outsourcing, except for the cheap workers being drawn from local population. Its a logical consequence from corporations wanting to reduce wages and legal trickery to avoid work liabilities and benefits for the workers. Its exploitative and ruthless example of what "capitalism" becomes when law doesn't hold the punch, companies just figured out the necessary mix of legal and tech means to avoid the system being labeled as "work" and pay fair wages/expenses per worker. Expect this type of "work" to increase and subsume new sectors of economy as they figure out how to transform them into uber model.

"Cheap" is extremely misleading here. The gig economy has known data points where it has worked extremely well for a large number of people working within the rules defined by the companies who created these services. I heavily recommend Brad Stone's The Upstarts[1] as proof of this idea. There are Uber drivers and Airbnb hosts who did all types of incredible things because of the freedom that was a direct consequence of the gig economy. Sure, Uber Eats may be a raw deal, but let's not castigate a huge sweeping idea that has changed the face of humankind probably for the better.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HZFB3X0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

Thats corporate PR fluff. All the freedom in the world is worth very little on near starvation wages and total disposability of workers. The goal of "gig economy" is not independent free-thinking freelancers, its large pool of easily replaceable drones working for fraction of real wages. You can't support a family with being bound to such a labor scheme, nor you can't afford to be sick, less productive or unavailable/deficient in some productivity metric - as any change in productivity immediately reduces your income. If all economy was based on such cheap, disposable labor there would be fierce competition for basically slave wages. Corporate propaganda attempts like this shitty book hide its basically robbing the workers of their fair wages and benefits. In 10 years these "incredible things" uber drivers "did"(realistically a fraction of them) will not amount to nothing significant, while real jobs allow one to accumulate enough savings to be financially stable: gig economy hyper-exploitative nature means you are paid the minimum possible, that you have no financial stability, no fixed income, no insurance and zero employer responsibility(you really can't even try fight it legally on below-minimum wage). Gig economy replacing real jobs will lead to drastic drop in lower and middle class income, it will destroy whats left of outsourcing/offshoring and whatever union jobs remaining. How you can't understand "Sure, Uber Eats may be a raw deal" will become the norm very fast, with competition driving down wages and ethical race to the bottom. Gig economy subverts ethics and laws with clear economic benefit to corporations: they don't give a rats ass about flexibility, employer "freedom" and "independence". Thats all PR fiction, they just want their cheap labor that could be replaced at will and paid as little as possible.

So were people who currently drive for gig economy companies better off when Uber and Lyft did not exist?

These people are destroying real jobs. You have to see the entire market: where Uber gives a "job"(with no liabilities of a real job), it(by competing on same sector) reduces wages/jobs of other people, driving down average quality of life and median income. Gig economy only benefits corporations long-term: for them you are just "disposable human resource" not worker paid wages. While you can imagine some bottom-tier income being preferable to no income, its a bargain with the devil, allowing the companies to pay below minimum wage and remove all external expenses - the independent worker has now to absorb them. It creates a norm, where you don't really have a choice between this bottom-tier income and nothing, as real jobs are replaced with gig/contract schemes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uberisation https://www.recode.net/2016/10/26/13349498/gig-economy-profi...

Their claim is they're opening up new markets of their own, e.g. prior to Uber taxis weren't as widely used for bar-hopping or casual trips, prior to Airbnb people would not travel as much as they would look at the hotel prices, decide it was too much, and just not attempt a trip, prior to Taskrabbit someone who bought a new item from Ikea would assemble it themselves instead of finding a rando to do it for them.

Is their assessment incorrect? Are there examples of (a) gig economy company entering a market (b) average income and quality of life driven down and (c) a causal link between the two?

To me it seems like bad economy is the reason those companies came to be in the first place - as soon as sectors like construction or energy or manufacturing start growing and hiring, who's going to consider an offer to drive for UberEats?

It makes products cheaper because it exploits workers more ruthlessly, "who's going to consider an offer to drive for UberEats?" isn't a choice where industry is destroyed and only a UberEats-level job is available(companies which had fair wages(taxi drivers) were driven out of the market).

see this post for example with programmers : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14334469

I don't really buy such a maximalist view.

Service economy differentiates itself on a multitude of dimensions, of which price is just one. By that notion McDonald's should've driven everyone out of business because who's going to buy a $5 or $7 or $10 burger when a $1 cheeseburger is available? Gas station coffee or vending machine coffee should've destroyed all other coffee businesses, as what fool would pay $4.50 for a cup of coffee when a 50c cup is available at the corner 7-11?