Comment by malfist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by malfist | Hacker News Reader

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> literally built on a concept of a sucker pays more

Or they're built on the idea that they can sell convenience to people and make a lot of money doing so.

It's not so different from a lot of other businesses. First class and main cabin in a flight gets you the same airplane, the same destination the same travel, but slightly different chairs and some food. Is anyone paying for first class suckers? What about if I buy a skip the line pass at a theme park? Am I a sucker because I paid more than the base admission price? Or is it a trade that I'm willing to make because I have excess income and want to actually ride the rides instead of standing in line all day in the heat?

Why do executives have executive assistants? Are businesses all suckers?

I know I'm getting ripped off by doordash, but I'm hungry and I'm busy and the harm of getting ripped off just a bit is way lesser than the time it'd take me to get or prepare food myself. That $10 hamburger that I just paid $25 for is outrageous, but the 30 minutes I saved is worth the $15. If you make mid-six figure income like most of big tech, that's a small small price to pay for time.

Skip the line passes are an obvious sucker play; they oversell tickets to the park so that people can go on like 1 ride every 4 hours, then charge again to actually be able to use the ticket you already bought (and simply don't deliver service to the others). Do you think they are unaware of the capacity at which reasonable latencies can be maintained?

In case you, or anyone else, actually care or are interested, there's a great deep dive video on the history of "FASTPASS" by the youtube channel Defunctland.

The Shapeland reveal made me jump out of my chair.

"It's not so different from a lot of other businesses. "

It's quite different and that's the point.

The issues beyond 'apparent value creation are':

1) asymmetries in power between different actors that induces some to make ill advised actions - passing off hidden costs and especially risks

2) externalisations - aka damaging the environment, labour regs (which exist due to 1)

3) misrepresntations in value to end customer - dark patterns, hidden fees, risks not apparent in the transaction.

Entire industries would not work if we had to properly account for a lot of things.

"I know I'm getting ripped off by doordash, but I'm hungry and I'm busy and the harm of getting ri" <- it's not just the 'price' that is high and you're 'willing to pay' - that's fine.

That's definitely not 'rip off' because you're not coerced in any way for that - that's just 'high prices.

The $10 bottle of water at an event <- that is a 'rip off'.

It's all the other things in the system that make it problematic.

Last mile delivery by poor people almost should not exist as a business because it depends on externalizing too many things.

If they provided healthcare, vacation, job security, didn't force people to run around, all that stuff that removes the 'power and information asymmetry' - and then - it still works as a business, fine but it generally wont.

Some businesses are structurally unsound, and people invest in them to take advantage of broken systems (social, regulatory) at the margins. Gambling, day trading. A lot of zero-sum stuff.

Now 'Robot Delivery' - that's an entirely different prospect.

That's an attempt at real value creation. If we got our act together, everything could be delivered by little robots - today - already in 2026. It would reuire a lot of coordination.

I wonder how quickly businesses would advocate for better land use and city planning if these externalities were more apparent and properly accounted for instead of providing “convenience” in a system that has been designed to be inconvenient.

> That $10 hamburger

fast-rise sugar infested bun, non-organic antibiotic infested horrendous animal welfare beef, etc. - the BOM is well under $5, i'd think $3 at best. So, you pay $25 for sub-$5 bill of low quality materials (not good to your health with thus additional expenses down the road). Who is the sucker?

The guy who buys organic, an obvious marketing gimmick with zero scientific evidence behind it... Sorry, couldn't resist.

Fully understand you. I thought for long that way myself. My cat though for example clearly knew the difference :) With time i learnt it myself.

I think there's a business there, for sure, but the markup is definitely a problem for some. I think below a certain order volume it might be hard to get enough delivery people at the ready. As they ask customers to absorb more of the cost the volume could drop. If they don't have enough delivery people then that adds to the delivery time which makes it less and less worth it, at least to me.

I really dislike the unreliable delivery times. 99% of the time I just use the apps, or more likely the restaurant's site, to place the order and pick it up myself.

I have the time to do this though, so maybe it's more valuable to busier people, like parents.

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