Excellent.
this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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The sad thing is that they're probably just gonna shut down shop there and hurt these workers. Not justifying their low payment at all. Just fuck. Capitalism is fucked up.
If they leave, people are still going to want food delivered. The job still exists. Uber just isn't there to skim their money and squeeze drivers dry
Restaurants used to just have their own delivery drivers. Crazy, right? Like Phillip J. Fry.
I delivered pizza and later Chinese food for years, working directly for a restaurant. I get the sense you got a way better level of service from that arrangement, as well, versus the Uber Eats randos you get these days. You sure as shit did from places where I was a driver.
My wife and I have gone back to when we order food, like our pizza night, ordering directly from the place. I know the drivers are getting paid a decent wage and without all the extra fees it's more reasonably priced. Plus the food actually arrives in a timely fashion and is still hot rather than the driver doing a bunch or other deliveries before us and the food being cold.
Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it – we're talking trade balances here – once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwaves in Tadzhikistan and selling them here – once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel – once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would consider to be prosperity – y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode
high-speed pizza delivery
I haven't read Snow Crash in decades. I think I'll revisit it.
I was blown away the first time. Only had the audio book but sat there, ok he's describing the internet, vr, and a country ruled by corporate interests.... Big Whooop. Wait, published in 1992? There's some interesting predictions, and ideas surrounding technology but still grounded in reality. A bit of Alt-history.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
As soon as I read the word Deliverator a smile came across my face. An actual Snow Crash reference.
Doubt it. NYC is an enormous market, 10 million people (20 mil if you count people that commute to NYC for work). They might add extra fees, though.
I get the legal distinction between 1099 and W-2 worker but it's pretty crazy that it's allowed to pay someone below minimum wage because of that distinction.
Like, SOMEONE is doing an hour of labor, and it's allowed that they get paid less than the minimum wage? Is there actually any reason we as a society should be OK with that, or is it just a legal technicality we can't get rid of without making a bunch of plumbers making $80/hr fill out paperwork ensuring they make more than the minimum?
How will they prioritize volume? Or can everyone join and make 18/hr all at once?
Delivery services are trash.