I would be more inclined to agree with you if there was clear evidence that people really understood all the “responsibility” they’re taking on when picking up gig-economy work.

Responsibilities like the value depreciation of their vehicle, or paying for sick leave and time off.

Full time employment provides strong protection against unexpected illness. The gig-economy doesn’t.

Companies like Uber seem to prey on large pools of semi-innumerate drivers who either don’t realise they’re operating a loss and too desperate to care.

The result is your productivity gains, which only exist because some of the costs simply aren’t accounted for and ignored. These aren’t real productivity gains, that’s just socialising costs and clever accounting to justify it.

- Companies like Uber seem to prey on large pools of semi-innumerate drivers who either don’t realise they’re operating a loss and too desperate to care.

Without hard data this is just a far fetched claim. You are implying that „a large part“ (how large?) people are too dumb to make this decision for themselves. Even though I do not doubt that these people exist, what is the relative threshold where all others should be restricted by rules made for that geoup? Also I would argue that there is a learning effect if someone notices he operates at a loss and can learn from others who are making a profit. This might be very valuable in fighting „learned helplessness“. But as you might notice: I am always in favor of doing things the hard way, with short term pain than obfuscating the price signals for short term ease only compensating the symptoms.

The legacy taxi system, at least in the US, was ripe for disruption. No argument there. However, disruption doesn't necessarily require shafting "employees" out of wages and benefits. Reform to medallion systems (at least in the cities that have them) might have had similar benefits, without the negatives associated with "gig" employment.