Actually, Uber and Lyft contractors are not paid for quite a bit of their working hours. If you don't have a passenger in your car, you're not getting paid. That includes time between passengers as well as however long it takes you to reach the pickup location. That can easily be 15-30% or more.
That is at least consistent with any other taxi/private hire service though, at least in the UK. I'm not aware of any taxi firms that operate on a standard hourly wage. Drivers pay a fee to the base to be registered with them, and in some cases a fee for each fare they are allocated, but the drivers themselves are self employed and the fares they collect are their own. The only difference with Uber is that Uber process the fares for them rather than the driver collecting cash.
True true, I didn't say the model wasn't messed up and that practically the same effect didn't occur, but my comment was primarily on the overt wage theft at Amazon, versus the hidden wage theft that occurs as a contractor at Uber & Lyft. The equivalent there is if you just didn't get paid for quite a few rides at all.
