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Comment by mushufasa | Hacker News Reader

>> There's just too many drivers I think.

That's fascinating. Seems like the free market really would drive the wage to 0. DoorDash's "innovation" is the black box to obscure the fact. If they paid more fairly like their competitors, they wouldn't be growing as fast.

Seems kindof like a cyberpunk future, with corporations negating regulations through advanced technology. Also in those cyberpunk futures, society breaks down into a lonely free-for-all, where the poor masses escape drudgery by playing with high-tech entertainment fantasies like games and VR and ...

oh wait...

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Wages can't drop to zero unless there's an infinite supply of labor. As time has gone by fewer and fewer of the gig economy drivers I see speak English, and fewer of them are the person whose name/face is on the account, so I suspect the pseudo-infinite labor supply is working as intended.

There isn't infinite labor on a global scale but there sure is infinite labor willing to work for what first worlders consider a pittance. This basically highlights why I consider open borders immigration to be worse for everyone overall. The first world gets dragged down the societal ladder while the rest of the world is robbed of everyone with initiative plus the lost productivity they'd glean from uncompromised first world economies.

I’ve always wondered what was going on when the driver didn’t match the person listed in the app. Doesn’t seem like there would be any benefit? (For me it’s often a male driver who is displayed as female in the app)

It's categories like illegal immigrants, DUIs or otherwise lost drivers license, can't pass the background check, etc.

The person doing the actual driving is likely in the country illegaly or driving with a suspended license/no insurance.

And then in the cyberpunk dystopian future, the illegals in turn build a nano-market by contracting to children, on top of their micro-market under the GrubHub level consumer market.

It's grey commerce all the way down!

i stopped using doordash when my 'drivers' started being 12 year olds on bikes

> DoorDash's "innovation" is the black box to obscure the fact.

Classic information asymmetry exploitation, only in this case, they're the ones that created the asymmetry.

It's fascinating that the pay is dismal and yet there are too many drivers.

I'm guessing partly because few understand their expenses and net pay.

And some really do value the ability to work whenever.

And people are desperate - as benmanns put it, it's a "line of credit out against depreciation on your vehicle. Sure you lost money, but you get cash today."

If their competitors pay better, why aren't their drivers leaving for the competitors' platforms?

If it’s at all like driving for Uber/Lyft, they likely do both.

Yeah, it’s basically Snow Crash.

taxi medallions were invented to prevent this exact thing.

Hopefully universal income will kick in before that happens, as most of the dull work gets automated.

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