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Comment by jp0d | Hacker News Reader

My brother in law works for a local Schnitzel chain (Schnitz) and it's hard to believe what people are ready to pay for convenience. They've a few regular customers who order fresh hot chips twice or thrice a day. Just a regular size box of hot chips that probably costs less than $5 and they're happy to pay another $4 or more for delivery!

Some of them order just a can of soft drink. If they went to the grocery store and bought a pack of six cans, it'd cost them the same as just one can from the restaurant. Not to mention another $4 delivery fee!

It's not a bad business to be in. Personally, I dislike them all as I like getting my own food and mostly eat at home. But there are heaps of people who're happy to pay exorbitant prices to have things delivered to them. I can't imagine how much it adds to our carbon footprint!

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> But there are heaps of people who're happy to pay exorbitant prices to have things delivered to them.

What's "exorbitant" is relative. Back when I was making not a lot of money, I'd go to the farmer's market and pick some of the nicest looking cheap tomatoes.

A few years afterwards, as my income grew, I just started going to the supermarket and picking what I liked. Someone asked me at home: "What was the price of those tomatoes?" and I didn't remember because I stopped checking.

> I can't imagine how much it adds to our carbon footprint!

And this is why we need systemic measures (i.e. regulation, national and international), not "personal responsibility". Either due to financial pressure or convenience, people's revealed preferences say that individually they don't really care about the environment. They say they do, because talk is cheap, but when they find out what they're about to lose to save it, everyone (99.999%) chooses what's cheaper or more convenient for them, personally.

> everyone (99.999%) chooses what's cheaper or more convenient for them, personally.

Don’t know about 99% but I also vote for those who support cheaper and convenient policies. If, as you say, 99% prefer such policies too - how would you get the votes?

On the other hand: I've had times where I simply couldn't cook for myself much. Broken elbow, sickness, and whatnot. I would have benefitted if I lived by myself: Folks in this situation permanently can actually order more than pizza now, and I'm pretty sure that's a good thing.

I'm not always sure it adds to the footprint, though. While I'd take public transport now, it hasn't always been the case. Each of those folks ordering delivery would likely take their private vehicles to the eatery - each order = 1 vehicle. On the other hand, you can deliver more than one thing per trip. 1 vehicle = multiple orders. And it gets even weirder when you consider that some of the folks delivering are using bicycles instead of cars - I certainly wouldn't be able to bike. I simply don't have the leg strength to get up the mountainy inclines here. And then everything changes if they are using electric bikes, too (I don't have access to this one).

> But there are heaps of people who're happy to pay exorbitant prices to have things delivered to them.

It's not always convenience; how much will it cost those people to leave their working place? Imagine you are a trader or a doctor. Now suddenly, leaving your workplace for a bag of nice hot chips means not saving someone's life or losing a good trade that could earn you a yearly bonus. Those $4 sounds cheap to me in those cases.

$4 is not exorbitant it's barely something to notice.

4$ three times a working day is 240$ a month on average, that’s not a barely noticeable sum.

It really is.

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