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Why not enforce regulations that prevent bad actors from pursing anti-competitive behavior? It's harder, and much less flashier than mandating a cap, but it retains much more of the free market integrity. Pricing is a genuinely hard problem, and mandating it from above is an exercise in pure folly.

> I would argue against this point that we would be assuming perfect competition, and given the anti competitive behavior of gig economy companies in this space (such as buying restaurant domain names, making fake websites with phone numbers they own to trick people into thinking they’re ordering directly) and lack of competition, this seems appropriate for now.

I agree that the ideal solution would be hitting the anti-competitive behaviors directly, rather than an rate cap. The overall issue is the pressure that a large delivery company can exert on individual small business restaurants, with the solution being coordination between restaurants to ensure they all get a good deal, or strong competition between the delivery services.

> In China, if I recall correctly, they have a food economy such that it’s cheaper to order take out, and have the food delivered, than actually cooking.

Is this true?

Here in London, a typical delivered meal would cost ~$20, whereas a weekly shop and cooking probably takes 5 hours/week, but costs only ~$2 per meal.

I believe so in some areas, but only because they are using kitchens/ingredients that cost less than restaurants or stores, IE located in bad areas, conditions/treatment worse for cooks, payment less for cooks, etc. Not something that should be supported but something that technology unfortunately makes possible and convenient

This is just reflective of inequality. I don't know about China specifically but in other asian countries that I know, most locals buy their ingredients at the market, and grocery stores target richer less price-conscious consumers. So it's certainly possible that the markup that the grocery store applies is greater than the cost of cooking and delivering the food, but that doesn't mean that it's cheaper than buying the ingredients at a market and cooking it yourself.

How is that in the US there are always monopolies everywhere? Where I live, there are at least 10 different car sharing apps, and there is an app that lets you see which app offers better rates for a given destination. I think it has something to do with regulatory culture.

In this case, it's that the parent comment is just wrong. There are at least five different food delivery apps in Portland that I'm aware of.