> would just get traditional minimum wage jobs instead which are plentiful at the moment. in which case they would not be Uber/lyft drivers and you would not h

> would just get traditional minimum wage jobs instead which are plentiful at the moment. in which case they would not be Uber/lyft drivers and you would not have the convenience of these services available to you, back into the "dark ages of taxis" . > Yet people are still taking these jobs over more traditional ones. yes, and they are living below the poverty level by doing so. The fact remains that your experience of convenient uber/lyft rides depends upon people who willingly or not place themselves into poverty-level wages. For the moment, your convenience requires that people suffer in poverty. OTOH, if regulations were imposed such that Uber/Lyft had to raise their prices, then you can have the convenience of these services, at a higher cost (more likely though, it would be simply be a regular low-margin business like taxis and supermarkets and no longer profitable to investors), and it would not require poverty-level workers in order to achieve it. This is the purpose of the minimum wage - so that the job market isn't crowded with jobs that do not provide a living wage.