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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

Have you eaten in at a take out place lately? It's literally nothing but ageing, disheveled looking people who could barely operate a smartphone running in and out desperately, working either Uber Eats, Doordash, etc. stacking orders, getting stressed out over maybe making $3. It's the most depressing fucking thing I have ever seen.

Maybe there's an argument to be made that these people are better off than they would be otherwise. But I'm not so sure it's that simple. You have this zero sum game where the health and well being of humanity is being arbitraged for VC profits and increased efficiency for the restaurant owner.

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> But I'm not so sure it's that simple.

At this point I was expecting an explanation of how an similar number of low-skilled people would have jobs if these services didn't exist.

Instead you give the unexplained assertion

> You have this zero sum game ...

Which game is it? Who are the players? What is zero-sum about it?

>Which game is it? Who are the players? What is zero-sum about it?

It's the same game they're playing with AirBnB, Uber, etc. Just openly break the law and subvert centuries of built up labor laws and protections we've created to make America into a livable society, just to profit a small minority of shareholders. The players are the American people, with no choice left but live with this system because more equitable uses of this capital aren't perceived to give investors "10x returns". There used to be an agreement in the US between Capital and Labor that struck a fair deal, and this agreement has fundamentally eroded. What benefits and rights that did still exist in jobs up to this point are gone for most people. The result is a zero sum game, where human suffering is converted to shareholder profits.

Tell me about taxi drivers and labor law. I used to drive a taxi and I paid $110 per day to rent the taxi, paid the gas, if I damaged the car, I paid for that out of my pocket and then I get to try and hustle rides from the airport where I had to pay for ticket for the right to pick up a passenger — then, due to airport fixed rates, I might drive that person to the other side of town and make $65.

Driving a taxi was horrible. Anyone that laments Uber has never driven a taxi.

Look at my last post (-4). Youre not allowed to criticize the almighty dollar, vulture...err venture capitalists, employment arbitrage firms, quasi-legal companies, or other horrendously unethical behavior. Why? Because there's a company doing it, and others making money on humans' suffering.

But hey, I got that hamburger faster and $1 off the delivery.

You seem to be arguing that, in balance, there are more low-paying jobs where the government can convince employers to increase wages, rather than the employers closing down and looking for another enterprise to pursue. Otherwise, even on aggregate, you are actively harming low-skilled or desperate workers who are looking for a job.

Let's assume, for argument's sake, that this is true - labor laws and protections increase wages in aggregate enough to account for all the jobs that are abandoned because they are not profitable enough to pay the required wages. There's one more thing to consider in Uber's case - the regional availability for jobs. Can we assume that the low-skilled adequate-income jobs you create through labor laws would be concentrated in richer towns, richer neighbourhoods, where the industry and market can afford the higher wages? What about the poorer neighbourhoods/towns? Uber(well, taxi service) allows people there to take a job which might not be available to them otherwise, without moving to a different town/neighbourhood.

Are you joking that the low wages are flowing through to VCs?

Some people wonder whether the VCs will even make out their invested money in Uber/Doordash cases. I've heard that in many cities Uber/Doordash/friends are subsidizing the marginal order in order to grow.

Make no mistake, currently the marginal gains are flowing through to customers. We like to blame faceless large corporations, the "others" for the fall of liveable, stable, wages. But the fault in some sense is in our selves. We, the individual customer, are driving this dynamic by being huge sticklers for the lowest price possible.

We individuals talk a good game about a fair livable society, until it comes around to saving $1 on your next Uber / Doordash fare.

Totally agree- have seen the vibe you describe above at numerous restaurants lately. The part that saddens me is the food recipient tends to take it out on the delivery person, "Food was cold!! ZERO STARS, NO TIP!!" when in actuality that person was given an impossible task- to deliver more food per hour than the laws of physics over time and distance would allow without teleportation.

I work in property development and also see this happening more and more frequently for contractor and appliance delivery people... instead of showing up to deliver your appliance, they mark you as "not home" or "unavailable" and skip attempting delivery or install altogether- that way they get to bring the stuff back to the warehouse, don't have to bother wasting time attempting to delivery it and the guy on the next shift has to deal with it.

Sssshhhh, or you'll come up with another very real factor: the utter inability of people to accept the slightest compromise on anything. Quality, nope. Price, nope. Even just taking the delivery person's job into account a bit, nope.

Perhaps I should stop being surprised when hearing about people going into the emergency room because they have a scratch on their leg, then yelling and even attacking medical personnel to the point they get arrested when prompt treatment is not provided.

And then apply that attitude to actual people. Needless to say, they complain about that too, yet do nothing.

Not only that but as a consumer the experience doesn't feel that much better. Sure there are lots more places that deliver but I now feel like I pay more after delivery fee+ service fee + tip.

The real cost of 'disruption'

The wait staff at the restaurants usually don't get tipped on those kinds of orders either. And in most of the US the wait staff are only making $2.13 an hour or something like that.

Dude. CA minimum wage was more than that in the 1970s.

The $2.13 number is the minimum an employer has to pay to tipped employees. If the amount of tips plus $2.13 is less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25, the employer must make up the difference:

https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/posters/minwage.pdf

I don't believe the California minimum wage law has tip credit.

In Australia, the people who look to be doing deliveries of this sort (by bike, etc) seem to be students. Actually, I can't recall ever (20 years+) having had takeaway delivered by anyone who looks over about 30-35yo.

Waitstaff in restaurants are typically younger here too. In visiting the US, it's seemed that there are a lot more "career" waitstaff whereas in Australia that happens more in small owner-operator establishments, or very premium restaurants.

As an aside, on the subject of waitstaff in restaurants, when I was in Oz visiting family, I noticed that while in the coastal cities I saw a broad range of faces in a broad range of situations, but once I was a few hundred miles inland, the only non-white faces I saw were serving me food; they certainly weren't students. It very much felt like there were two Australias.

I expect that's true everywhere, really, in various ways.

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