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

I rode for UberEats for two weeks and made roughly £22 an hour.

To be fair, this was when they were just coming into London and offering crazy bonuses to steal market share from Deliveroo, but still, this isn't controversial - if someone pays you bad wages, don't work for them...

That's some solid advice, but for some people, that's simply not an option.

If you can't find work elsewhere, you'd rather work for pennies than for nothing.

So its better that Uber didn't offer this job at all?

It would be better if they offered the job with reasonable wages and conditions. If consumers are not willing to pay enough for Uber to be able to offer this, they have a poor business model or are in the wrong market.

You could say the same about any regulation, if you cannot manufacture something at a reasonable price without polluting more than allowed, you need to change your prices or adjust your business model.

> It would be better if they offered the job with reasonable wages and condition

Out would be better if kfc rained from the sky, but that's not an option.

Why is their business model "poor"? If prices go up, so will what is considered a "reasonable" wage. What's a "reasonable" skillset that an employee must offer to get such a wage.

Difference with pollution, is that its fine to just not pollute. Just not employing makes the situation worse.

A business model that requires paying wages that you can't live on, it seems reasonable to call that business model a net loss for society.

So basically, its better that these workers be unemployed? Or you assume there will be an unlimited supply of alternate jobs available?

Yes, it is better these people are unemployed and receive unemployment benefits until they manage to find a real job.

Because they are making the situation worse for everyone.

so your idea is necessarily tied to the existence of unemployment benefit.

When there exists a social net, isn't it obvious that the existence of poor costs money? Plus, that money disproportionately comes from the lower and middle class in the form of tax.

So in reality all you're doing with an underpaid gig economy is allowing corps to indirectly make money off of taxpayers instead of just the customers / companies involved in the service.

TLDR; You're paying a tax for someone else to get their food delivered.

Suppose one day gig economy companies all go out of business, and all their current workforce files for unemployment benefits.

Is my tax burden as a taxpayer going up or down?

Hard to say. What are they going to spend their unemployment benefits on? What is replacing the gig economy companies?