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.
Right. One’s a business and one’s a service the government provides.
The government provides
Except USPS is completely self funded, and does NOT use any of your tax dollars.
That’s an excellent point, but it is still a government service.
Being administered by the government, self sufficient, and mandated to not make excess revenue just makes it a remarkably easy to justify service.
There’s nothing inherently stopping us from crowdfunding services with a similar “business model” separate from the government. Can’t wait for that light bulb to flicker on for most of us.
I actually live in a city where the public works is a publicly owned utility, and it’s pretty great. Rates are reasonable, excess revenue goes to infrastructure improvements rather than shareholders, and leadership is paid reasonably ($300k+benefits for CEO equivalent), and key decisions are voted on by the city council.
I’m curious why you want something separate from the government. To me, a crowd funded publicly controlled service is a government service in all but name and accountability.
The city/state level is much more likely to achieve things like this and that’s great but it’s not always the case. Regulatory capture and complex relationships with industry players make the government an imperfect vehicle for doing what’s best for communities. Sometimes a downright impediment to it.
My point is that there’s nothing inherently stopping us from doing it for ourselves in any situation where the state is not optimally stewarding the public trust on our behalf, and the sooner we figure that out the sooner we start solving up-til-now rather intractable problems.
I suppose my point was more that publicly owned funded and managed is functionally what government is.
Any issues with government management of a utility is just as applicable to a crowd funded publicly managed one.There’s nothing stopping us from altering the state to optimally steward the public trust. It’s probably easier because the state already exists, and has mechanics for dealing with the types of civil issues that arise from community organization on complex projects.
The government isn’t something that’s apart from us, it’s made of us.
What, to you, is the actual difference between a community working together and organizing their resources for the common benefit, and a government?
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
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.
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.
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.
Except you would be very upset if your Uber eats took 3-5 days to arrive, as a postal system does. The cost is because it’s an entirely different product, an on-demand courier system. It’s closer to comparing universal healthcare with having a doctor on retainer (if such a thing exists).
I 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?
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
You could always order the food when you’re leaving work, then pick it up on your way home.
For what, 10 euro less? I’d rather go directly at home earlier and wait in my underwears, money is meant to be spent
Why use Uber eats why not just call the place directly and have them deliver it? Uber eats takes a large chunk of their profits or they over charge you.
Some places still do their own deliveries, but most in my area ONLY do UberEats, to the extent that they’ve cut their delivery staff. The only consistent holdouts seem to be the Chinese places.
Because Uber Eats delivers all over the place, and a lot of the restaurants I would order delivery from usually have delivery areas that I’m outside of. All the one way roads and the shit parking basically put me off of going anywhere downtown.
When I know I’ll be too exhausted to go out and grab food, I make sure to get it on the way home so there’s no extra drive or leaving the house.
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.
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
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
Everyone survived. We all survived before the internet too. But the world changes. If I’m injured or disabled it’s a great option. If I’m sick, maybe I don’t want to expose everyone to what I have.
There are a lot of valid reasons to use it beyond “lazy”.
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 just have no idea what life was like in the before time. All these poor souls
They suffered more. Now they don’t have to.
Some of us only have one car and their wife used it to get to work.
Some of us don’t have a car and don’t want the food to be cold when I get home with it.
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Are you sure you are not working on a pre-civil-war cotton farm?
12+ hour days with no lunch break does not sound feasible in the long term.
Long term.
Thanks!
If you are an office worker just take your whole lunch. By not taking it your just helping enforce the informal rule of not taking lunch.
Fuck Uber Eats and all that, too expensive, but, buddy, you need a different job.
Do you work for Elon Musk? If so get a different job. Are you making a shitload of money? Is not, get a different job. If yes, spare us your crying about delivery fees. Are you Elon Musk? If yes, fuck you. If no, get a different job. I mean you sound miserable and have no life. I’d rather be homeless than live like that.
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I’m so sorry man. I hope you find some happiness or at least less misery sooner rather than later. I’m about your age, closed my business a little over a year ago (covid stuff) and while I spent most of the “free” time working on renovating our house I’m at a point where I’ll need to start looking for a job. I’m not thrilled with (or perhaps dreading) the idea.
No offense man because it sounds like you were conditioned into this over years, but you sound like a massive bitch for putting up with that.
I felt a better question is why so many people with transportation don’t get their own food.
I am fine with driving anywhere so I think in the past 7 years we only had delivery once. But we try to cook mostly at home nowadays
So, a few use cases, but it tends to boil down to convenience.
Some people work from home, and don’t have time to go get food, nor cook anything significant between meetings, and they’re just tired of cold sandwiches and microwave soup.
Spending however long traveling to and from the restaurant isn’t always a valuable use of time compared to whatever else you were doing.
If I’m playing games alone or with friends, I’d rather do that than drive around for half an hour.If you’ve got kids, loading and unloading them into the car can be a chore.
Or just plain “comfy, don’t wanna leave”.
Delivery is a convenience that people like. Companies switching to a service with more fees that drive the cost up so high is annoying.
All what I was thinking 😊
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”.
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.
I got delivery from the restaurant. They do not do deliveries anymore. To ignore the fact that the landscape has changed significantly and just blame the people ordering is to miss a majority of the picture. Turns out life has nuance.
Apparently some people love getting their food held hostage for more tips, and not knowing if someone finger banged their food.
Especially city dwellers. There must be easily a dozen takeaways within half a mile of your house.
Thought about doing Uber eats/grubhub one time when I had a meeting early in the morning, and I was out of coffee and breakfast items. Went to order my food. Food cost was 6.50, total bill was 20.50, and then it asked for a tip.
Fuck that. I went hungry.
Before that I ordered online from the restaurant. Before that by calling them.
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.
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).
Those people are doing that to make money, if I see a trip that’s 20-30 minutes total of driving but only get $4-5 for it, I’m declining it. If you think that makes me greedy, then I’m glad you’ve had such a privileged life.
That’s placing your anger and low pay on the customers, not the corporation that’s holding 50% of your profits. You want to be mad, be mad at them, refuse to drive for them, demand a better share.
My last meal from door dash breaks down as:
Food: $58.80 "Delivery Fee": $3.99 "Service Fee": $8.82 Tax: $7.34 Tip: $8So sorry I didn’t want to tack on any more to my $85 dollar order for 2 people. “Recommended tip” would have put me over $95 dollars. Let me put it this way, if I paid $85 dollars for a delivery order and you only made $8, we’re both getting screwed.
The fun thing, I’d be willing to tip more if they didn’t ask for it up front. If I received my order in a timely manner and it’s still hot, I’d gladly tip 20%. But being forced to choose ahead of time? No way I know how it’s going to get there, that’s why I call it a bribe. The driver isn’t doing their job and I’m tipping them on a job well done, I’m bribing them to get my food quickly.
Granted that was the last time and I was disgusted with how much I paid, so I go and pick it up myself now, so I guess no money for anyone except the restaurant.
If you’re only getting $4-5 dollars for 30 minutes, I’d suggest going to McDonald’s. They’re paying better than doordash.
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
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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.
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???
I don’t recall any socialized courier or food delivery services.
Republicans helped the couriers prevent USPS from competing. The 2006 law they passed mandated that USPS had to pre-cover healthcare and retirements for the next 75 years, which no other organization does, and has put USPS in financial trouble.
All those moron Boomers relying on the USPS for their medicine delivery were suddenly shocked service to bumfuck Alabama would have to be reduced. Yet they keep voting republican…
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.
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???
Delivery guy here! Don’t forget that the driver only gets $5 out of those $30. So fuck uber. And I take my bike when I want to eat, obviously.
Usually it’s 3$ of those 30$
Wait is it only delivery or delivery plus food in those 30 dolars?
Uber Eats fee to deliver my food
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
Of that $30.50, the person delivering the food got $3 and the person making the food got $2.
Not only that but they’re also inflating the actual meal prices. I’ve noticed that the same item at the same place costs different when I go in. They also don’t care if it’s ann Uber order and you’re gonna get a half assed attempt
Yeah, it’s way higher because they take a big chunk of the meal cost too.
Plus there’s all the shady “takeaways” that are just somebody’s house. I’m sure some of them are very nice, but I’m not playing rat shit roulette…
That’s because they charge the restaurant as well, so the restaurant puts a higher cost on the food to cover it.
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?
It’s a combination of economy of scale and flexibility around time. The USPS sorts massive volumes of mail and packages, then delivers by the truck load. With food delivery, you get a piping hot meal delivered by a dedicated driver. That said, still overpriced by the companies.
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UPS didn’t treat my lasagna too well on that conveyor.
Public vs private
If this was alway true UPS and FedEx wouldn’t exist
Ups and fedex still frequently use USPS for last mile in many areas. USPS has a mandate to serve and maintain infrastructure in the whole US, and the corporations use that. So does Amazon of course.
It’s because of the greedy USPS unions. You are paying for their inflated salaries (which just stuff the pockets of their union leaders), theirs golden pensions, and Cadillac health cares. If we could just privatize it, the market will push the prices down because of competition.
/s btw
Don’t forget wasteful government intervention limiting what the USPS can charge, and making it so it can take days for packages to make the trek across the continent, without even having the decency to amass stupendous profit margins.
While I don’t think Uber eats is worth it, and I love the USPS, there’s a major difference between the two: time. No one is having the USPS delivery their lunch.
Kept hot by friction doing 100 miles a minute.
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.
