Option 3 - You hire enough people to cover general demand, have surge prices to lower demand when there's not enough drivers, and charge prices for normal/lower demand that allows you to make sure everyone you have on duty makes at least minimum wage.
And if you _can't_ find a solution that allows you to pay everyone minimum wage, then you don't get to do business. I can think of plenty of businesses I could set up that would make me money and allow me to pay the people that work for me below minimum wage. But, see, we don't allow that; and we created a minimum wage law to make it very clear that we don't allow that.
Not every business model is viable given the rules society has setup (to protext society as a whole)
> Option 3 - You hire enough people to cover general demand, have surge prices to lower demand when there's not enough drivers, and charge prices for normal/lower demand that allows you to make sure everyone you have on duty makes at least minimum wage.
This is just a rehash of Option 1. The point of surge pricing is to get more drivers to drive during peak times. If you're instead using that money to pay other people to be idle then the average driver makes less money because part of what would have been their compensation is now going to pay someone else to sit around idle, and they lose the ability to make a higher hourly rate by working only during peak demand. Which in turn reduces the number of drivers available during surge pricing and there goes your funding source for hiring more drivers, so you're back to laying off lots of drivers who would otherwise have part-time work, but now also reducing the median driver's hourly rate.
> Not every business model is viable given the rules society has setup (to protext society as a whole)
Minimum wage laws in general have never protected anyone. If there is another job available to you that pays more than minimum wage and is otherwise on equally favorable terms, you would have taken that one regardless of whether a lower paying job is available. If the lower paying job is better, e.g. because it pays slightly less but you also have lower costs in terms of commuting distance or greater flexibility in hours etc., taking away that option "for your own protection" is patronizing BS.
This is why minimum wages are set at the level that only ~1% of people make minimum wage, because it minimizes the damage done by the law while still allowing opportunistic politicians to claim they've done something. Actually doing something is creating opportunities for people that have better conditions or pay higher wages so that it doesn't matter if someone is offering low wages because people aren't desperate to accept them for lack of alternatives.
Notice also that taking away alternatives can do more than just force you to take a worse one. It can make the worse alternative worse. Suppose there is a job with low pay but it's across the street from where you live, and another one with an hour commute each way, costing you $40 and two hours/day. You take the first one unless the second one pays significantly better, at least several dollars/hour more to compensate you for the gas and the time. Unless the first one is banned and goes away because it was $1/hour below the "minimum". Then not only are you stuck with the second one, they can lower their pay to the minimum when they would otherwise have had to pay more to compensate for the commute because you no longer have an alternative.
> Minimum wage laws in general have never protected anyone. If there is another job available to you that pays more than minimum wage and is otherwise on equally favorable terms, you would have taken that one regardless of whether a lower paying job is available.
That "if" there is doing a lot of work. I think you underestimate how many people out there are in a situation where it's the job they have or the street. Not everyone has the option to just go pick another job, and the people that don't is heavily skewed towards the people with the worst jobs.
> That "if" there is doing a lot of work. I think you underestimate how many people out there are in a situation where it's the job they have or the street.
That's making the opposite case from the one you want. You take away the lower paying job when it was the only one available and now they're on the street because there is no alternative.
"Fortunately", in more cases than not the "if" was the actual. This is geometry: If there is one viable employer within 50 miles of where you live then statistically there are four within 100 miles, 9 within 150 miles and 16 within 200 miles, because area is pi r^2. So if you take away the first job there is a large chance that there is a second one with a much worse commute. But the commute is going to more than eliminate any value from getting paid slightly more, which is why they didn't take that job to begin with.
And if you _can't_ find a solution that allows you to pay everyone minimum wage, then you don't get to do business. I can think of plenty of businesses I could set up that would make me money and allow me to pay the people that work for me below minimum wage. But, see, we don't allow that; and we created a minimum wage law to make it very clear that we don't allow that.
Not every business model is viable given the rules society has setup (to protext society as a whole)