Socialized system vs capitalized system: The capitalist comes in and uses their venture capital to undercut the socialized system so that people stop using it. Once the socialized system loses interest and funding or are otherwise out of the picture, they they jack their prices up way higher than the original and because they’re the only game in town, they get to keep those record profits in effective perpetuity.
I don’t recall any socialized courier or food delivery services.
Could you imagine? Food delivery apps nationalized then delivered through the USPS?
I am sickened but intrigued.
Sickened? Why? What did food delivery app companies ever do for you?
You can order food through the mail. You need to plan your meals a little that’s all.
This is just about efficiency. Postal (including UPS / FedEx) can plan the route ahead, stack parcels with as little space as possible, and deliver hundreds of packages in a day. UberEats doesn’t know when will order show up, doesnt know when will order be ready, it can deliver maybe 2 - 3 orders in a row, the route planning is just in time.
Tell me how is this only explainable by socialized system.
You literally explained why that’s the case in your comment, how do you not see it???
Are you trying to imply UPS/FedEx is a socialized system?
USPS is you fucking moron.
Average american. Don’t you know? Capitalism is when good and when not good, that’s
communismsocialism.Socialism is when the workers own the means of production, not when the government does stuff.
Socialism is when the government does stuff and the more it does the more socialist it is, and if you do enough of it, that’s communism.
Boy, in this thread I really can’t tell where the sarcasm ended and the bad faith began.
I’ll give you a hint. The comment you just responded to is a joke made by actual socialists about what liberals think socialism is.
I make it intentionally hard to tell where I line up politically so people get punished for trying to find out if I’m on their side instead of just addressing the point i’m making.
So you didn’t read the meme then? Can’t you see no one specified which postal service vs Uber Eats???
Yeah, no difference whatsoever between those services…
What you don’t want your food cold and stale and delivered in a week and a half?
I love watching people realize private courier services are expensive. It’s kinda gross watching them throw tantrums when they realize they can’t afford it.
It’s kinda like comparing universal healthcare to individual payer for-profit insurance. One rewards everyone as a universal system with consistency (at least in theory) and the other rewards only rich people.
I would argue that a postal service is not structured the same way as an on demand service like uber.
A postal courier who arrives at your door, picks up an important document, and takes it straight to the recipient will cost about the same.
When you write a letter or send a parcel you first take it to a designated pick up point. It is then picked up at an allocated time along with all the other letters and parcels, and at best it is going to arrive the next day having been through a huge sorting routing system at the post depot.
Apples and oranges.
Also fuck uber eats and the gig economy.
Idk, I got a care package in the mail with a cake inside, seems like they can both deliver food lol. 🤷
Also the cake is delicious, and yeah fuck the gig economy.
Did the cake arrive in half an hour? I mean, would they be able to deliver a hot meal because you suddenly decided you couldn’t be bothered to cook that evening.
I’m an Uber driver and it’s a godsend of flexibility and decent, consistent income for me but I’d be so much happier with a collectively-owned alternative that charges less and passes more of the ride fare onto the drivers.
You can actually just put the letter in your mailbox. You don’t have to take it to a dropoff.
If you’re willing to drop it off, they also do same day for $4 for packages under 5 lbs inside a local region. They’ll pick it up and drop it off just about anywhere in the country next day for basically the same cost.
Your point stands, but the USPS is a logistical wonder.
That’s why they oppose universal healthcare here in the US – they wan’t access to special treatment.
What they don’t realize is they can still have Mommy’s Super Special Boy™ access, since even in a system of universal healthcare, there’s still a demand for private practice.
So really, it just boils down to them hating poor people and other marginalized groups
Also universal healthcare can afford specialized equipment because the amount of people they would service is higher than the profit driven hospital
Rather than the current system of specialized equipment still having to make profit so treatment costs increase
Fuck Doordash, fuck Uber Eats, fuck Skip the Dishes. These greedy motherfuckerswant me to pay a delivery fee, a “convinience fee”, AND up charge me on my food, and act like triple dipping into my pocket isn’t a fucking crime. Then they have the gall to tell me that waiting an hour and a half for my food while my driver sits in a random-ass parking lot to receive luke-warm food is acceptable delivery time and service and ask for a fucking tip.
And worse, no one wins! The restaurants hate it because they’re paying fees out the ass and receiving hate for the delivery services failures, the driver’s hate it because they’re not being given a fair wage, and the end consumer hates it because they’re paying literally 1.5x the cost of already inflating food prices! The only winner is corporate of whatever company you’re using, all to save you a, what, 10-15 minute drive?
Fuck em’, I will hop in my car and go pick up my food every single day of the week. I’m never too lazy to tell a bullshit service like those to go fuck itself.
As a former driver I agree. I always feel bad about the tip thing but gas is so expensive and the apps pay like shit despite charging so many fees. And knowing that restaurants also pay a fee meaning the apps get MORE money is even more infuriating.
I wonder if there could exist a solution for services like these, but decentralized, as to cut out the greedy middleman as much as possible. I mean, lemmy sort of is the application of this concept. Sure, there’s still costs with running servers etc., but the protocol regulates much of the interaction.
The company (Uber, Instacart, etc) is basically:
- An app for drivers/shoppers.
- An app for consumers.
- The servers to facilitate communication.
- A subcontracted call center in India for support and customer service.
- A third-party payroll processor.
- A handful of administrative people and techs to keep it running. Plus some shareholders to take the money.
So not counting drivers and contracted services, it’s practically a small business. Seems easy enough to emulate.
maybe just cook a few times a week yourself
Fuck the whole thing, and especially the tipping bit. You want a trip, read the subreddit /r/doordash, (back when I was on reddit that is). Some greedy ass MFs live in there swapping stories about how they’ll gladly turn down jobs because the tip wasn’t high enough.
Like what, am I supposed to tip you 30% just to have my food delivered? Fuck that. Tipping is supposed to be a thank you on top of it, not a bribe to convince you to do your job. Tipping should come after everything where I can decide how well you did. There are horror stories where they’ve texted asking for a higher tip and worse yet holding onto the food demanding a higher tip or the people don’t get their food.
You’re exactly right, I just get my ass in the car and go get it now. It had a purpose during covid, but now they can go pound sand. Last time I did it was exactly the same as yours, I watched my food get assigned to a driver who sat for a parking lot for 10 minutes before deciding he should go pick up my order (which was fast food, and ready immediately, and sitting there getting cold).
Delivery guy here! Don’t forget that the driver only gets $5 out of those $30. So fuck uber. And I take my bike when I want to eat, obviously.
Of that $30.50, the person delivering the food got $3 and the person making the food got $2.
Employee
Independent ContractorI don’t understand why so many people can’t just go get their own damn food. Uber eats hasn’t been around long enough for you all to have forgotten what you did before, has it? How did you survive back then?
I just tossed a coin out the window at the nearest child and told them to fetch me the plumpest turkey in the butcher’s window.
ugh, we used to have a REAL country
Once a month I get home from work so tired that nothing in the world will convince me not to go home, order a pizza and wait for it while laying on the couch. I deserve that and I will do it, no matter how much “back in the days” you people throw at me, I’m busy and tired
If you’d said anything other than pizza I’d give you slack, but you’re a damn fool wasting money doordashing/ubering pizza. Order from them directly, it’s cheaper and the restaurant gets bigger profits.
I think the goalpost moved a bit here. I still order trough their website (if they have it) or call
Thanks to COVID and work from home and smartphones and Teams/Zoom, I’ve gone from an hour commute each way to a constant stream of meetings, texts, emails, IMs, etc. that must be addressed immediately, from 8am to 6pm. I don’t think the “back in my day” folks fully understand how much more people are asked to do now. I once obliterated an older colleague when he complained that youngs these days don’t put in half the hours he used to. I was like “Um, you used to go to the print office and wait four hours for prints to come out, take them back to the office, proof them, then take the documents to the courthouse and file them in person. In the same time, I’m responding to 100 emails, reviewing 20 documents ON MY PHONE, conducting 3 conference calls, listening to 2 coworkers’ breakdowns, and drafting, reviewing, printing, proofing, and submitting the documents you used to sit and wait for.” To his credit, he said I was right and I never had a problem with him again.
All of which is a long way of saying that, sometimes, more often than I would like, I can’t just “go to the restaurant” because of time or because I’m no longer commuting. For all their problems, the apps mean that I’m eating fewer frozen pizzas and more poke bowls and salads.
Except for people without cars and the walk to restaurants is dangerous. Except for invalids. Except for people who work at companies with rules about not leaving your post. Except for people quaranteening. Except for…except for…except for…
I’m curious, do businesses not do their own deliveries anymore? I personally never stopped just ordering directly from the place I’m eating from. Couldn’t tell you how common uber eats and others are in my area, I just know I don’t use them.
A lot of places have, yeah. They viewed the delivery staff as a fixed cost, and thought the services would mean they only paid a fee per delivery, making it a net savings.
Hard to blame them, since that’s what they were told, and it sounds reasonable on the surface.Oh, that’s interesting.
Elaborating further, small businesses here usually contract a delivery business instead of hiring delivery personnel, I think they just arrange the cost of the delivery instead of a fixed cost, so it’s basically no impact to the cost of the business.
Not a perfect system, but at least small places can do cheap delivery without jacking up the prices.
To be clear, I live in a corner of Argentina, even if that sounds good, we have other problems lmao.
Yeah, what ended up happening is that the services increase the cost of the items the customer buys by a percentage, and keeps that cost. Then they add a delivery fee that they keep, a service fee, and a tip that goes to the driver. Then they pay the driver a small portion of the fee and markup. Overall they take about 30% of the total cost of the order.
Then they treat the restaurant like a subsidiary and make them use their pickup app, and sometimes advertise a menu that the restaurant doesn’t actually offer.
They also make it difficult to give feedback on the delivery itself, since they take any negative feedback and forward it to the restaurant.I got a credit for $50 from one of the delivery service, which got me a a normal lunch plate from one of my favorite places (usually $15), and a ~20% tip. Driver tossed the food onto my porch, making most of it spill in the bag, and their system had no way to say “the driver did a bad job”, “give me back the tip”, or anything like that. All I could do was say the restaurant messed up, which they didn’t.
Needless to say, I don’t use them even if it’s free anymore.
As someone who used to be a Doordash driver, I had the opposite experience. I got angry texts because the food I delivered was cold (I received it at nearly room temperature and immediately put it in a quality thermal bag). It’s not too uncommon to be banned as a driver for reasons beyond your control.
One time I got a deactivation warning for attempting to complete an order in a flooded area. It was already an hour late because everyone else was accepting and dropping the order. I got punished for actually trying.
Maybe it’s just GrubHub then, or their UI and customer service is garbage.
Doesn’t surprise me that it’s shitty on all ends, since I think the only people it benefits are “people who see marginally reduced delivery staff costs”.
Some of us only have one car and their wife used it to get to work.
I became further radicalized by the indignation of the petty bourgeoisie getting whipped into a frenzy because their sub minimum wage delivery drivers didn’t jump through hoops enthusiastically enough for them.
Anything short of the delivery driver beating you with the food while calling you a useless lazy slob is exemplary service as far as I’m concerned.
And that’s why I don’t use doordash, maybe if I was rich but, when you were counting every dollar, you can get your ass up.
These days I don’t even have pizza delivered to me, I will get up and get that shit.
The only time I have had it delivered lately, for a few times when I was too sick to get up and make my own soup so I just ordered some pasta from Domino’s instead. App makes it so easy
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And yet the postal worker probably gets paid more despite you paying that much for uber eats.
Not only do they make way more per hour worked but they also get healthcare, paid sick leave, and a retirement plan. A gig worker is precariously teetering on the edge of disaster with no recourse if they are unable to meet their required daily deliveries to pay for living expenses.
USPS workers are paid very well, even beyond the 100k mark.
unions
I provision and ship the iPads we use for trainings at work. Today I shipped two identical boxes, one over 2000 miles to rural California, FedEx 2nd day which cost $8, the other about 1000 miles to a town in southern Saskatchewan. That one cost $45. I know customs is a pain, but that’s a stark difference for whats ultimately a shorter journey with 100% fewer mountains between here and there
Is that reflective of the fact that the largest cost in transportation in the industrial world is labor so less traffiked routes require more labor per package-mile? In this case, its like a 11x economy of scale to California. So maybe not.
No it’s just the cost of cross boarder. FedEx Express shipping for a small package with volume discounts costs $8 to go to an office or $14 to go to a residence, and I’ve yet to make a label for anywhere in the continental US that deviates from those values.
