"except they dictate every aspect of the transaction" - I think they do it out of necessity, here in India at least. Ferrying passengers is a very risky busin

"except they dictate every aspect of the transaction" - I think they do it out of necessity, here in India at least. Ferrying passengers is a very risky business. So protect the passengers, Uber/Lyft have no other option but to kind of police every aspect of the driver - passenger transaction. Despite all that, there were multiple rapes of women in Uber/Ola cars in India, drivers were ghosting Uber/Ola, they have tried to outsmart the routing algorithms by crowding in hot zones, tried to take cash from passengers without running the trip and what not. While I espouse for drivers being treated fairly, whether as employees or contractors it's not that simple to bring in protections for the drivers without monitoring/scrutiny. The contractors/employees of McDonalds are in a very different setting, and their customers are almost at no risk and there is little to no scope for embezzling cash, short of robbing the joint. So the comparison doesn't really hold true.