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Comment by SMAAART | Hacker News Reader

> A small case study on how inequality ..

Can you please explain this to me?

Inequality of ... what? Opportunity or outcome?

Yeah I'm not sure this is a great example of inequality either. Most independent restaurants fail, I don't recall the exact stats off the top of my head but very very few last >5 years and the majority fail within the first year (this was before DD or any similar services) and yes maybe tech pressures have exacerbated that, but I'm not sure the stats on that are conclusive.

Anecdotally apps are how I and a lot of people I know have come to discover or order from many independent restaurants for the first time. Even with a 25% cut, without knowing the exact numbers of how many new customers these services introduce, its not that easy to say that big tech boogey monsters are destroying independent restaurants, especially since its a fairly risky venture to start with.

Small group of people (investors and early employees) pull in a ton of money while a big group of people (restaurant owners and employees) face worse economic outcomes.

Similarly, private mkt investors get insane outcomes while retail investors end up buying at peak prices and less information.

I'm not saying what DD did was unfair or unethical. We're just moving quickly to a very unequal society and this is a small ex of how that's happening

Thank you for the explanation, so ok inequality of outcomes, but not inequality of opportunity.

2 more questions:

1. How is this a "problem"? 2. How would you go about solving it?

1. When this gets too extreme people start to ignore whether it is fair, logical or right, and respond with rage. People who have to close down, or feel poor, while they see a small group get crazy rich don’t care about economic theory, they just feel that something is wrong. Politicians use that rage to get elected and ‘fight for the people’, often implementing harmful policies to please angry crowds.

2. Australia has minimized this problem pretty well by having a pretty unregulated economy but a robust safety net.

Best.Answer.Ever.

Thank you.

> How is this a "problem"?

"[a] Stanford professor posits that throughout history, economic inequality has only been rectified by one of the 'Four Horsemen of Leveling': warfare, revolution, state collapse and plague."[1]

You can hang on to imaginative phrases like "inequality of opportunity" or an economy that reliably delivers food. I think most people are going to go with the second option.

[1] https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/10/can-inequal...

And here were are in the midst of a plague and it hasn't helped! I was hoping we'd get UBI out of it!

Seems to me that it's both. I don't see VCs pouring billions in investments into new restaurants.

Seems like some people are more interested in using Doordash than getting the food from the restaurants directly. I think that Doordash provides a useful service that was not as present or not as good previously. What do you think?

I do not think Doordash is useful, I'm fine with picking up my own food. I also think that Doordash is an example of a business that is lowering the bar for what's considered entry-level employment and will result in erosion of the consumer base and eventual economic or social crisis. Only time will tell.

> I don't see VCs pouring billions in investments into new restaurants.

Serious investors play in their niche: Restaurant investors don't invest in tech either.

If your statement outlines a problem, how would you go about solving it?

I suspect that the 80th percentile best restaurant investor would be better off becoming a 20th percentile retail investor in tech.

Off the top of my head, Sequoia did back The Melt, there was a time a few years ago when VCs did dabble in restaurants.

Distribution of wealth.

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