"A Driver's Suicide Reveals the Dark Side of the Gig Economy", 6 Feb 2018

...The economic hardship that Uber and its competitors had inflicted on conventional drivers in New York and London and other cities had become overwhelming...While Uber has sold that “disruption” as positive for riders, for many taxi workers, it has been devastating. Between 2013 and 2016, the gross annual bookings of full-time yellow-taxi drivers in New York, working during the day when fares are typically highest, fell from $88,000 a year to just over $69,000. Medallions, which grant the right to operate a taxi in New York City, were now depreciating assets and drivers who had borrowed money to pay for them, once a sound investment strategy, were deeply in debt...

...Doug Schifter, a livery driver in his early 60s, killed himself with a shotgun in front of City Hall in Lower Manhattan, having written a lengthy Facebook post several hours earlier laying out the structural cruelties that had left him in such dire circumstance...Implicit in his testament was the anger he felt over the de-professionalization of his life’s work...Uber did not respond to a request for comment...[also refers to Via]