131–140 of 293 posts
There’s an even better way to send an actual letter for free. Simply switch the destination address on the envelope with the sender address, and drop it in the mailbox. When then post office returns the letter to sender because of insufficient postage it will have delivered the letter for you.
Ah, luckily the climate doesn't mind that oil was extracted, a phone case was produced out of it, shipped from China, to end up not even being used but just as a "greeting card". Why yes, I am fun at parties.
The oil used for shipping from Shenzhen to Long Beach is completely trivial compared to what the truck used getting it from Long Beach to Pasadena.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note: the Verge article links to this blog post, describing the situation in more detail: https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage
They could have made another $5 per 10 pizzas after order #1 by just delivering the pizza to themselves and sending the same boxes back out in the next delivery, and so on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note: the Verge article links to this blog post, describing the situation in more detail: https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage
They could have made another $5 per 10 pizzas after order #1 by just delivering the pizza to themselves and sending the same boxes back out in the next delivery, and so on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note: the Verge article links to this blog post, describing the situation in more detail: https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage
They could have made another $5 per 10 pizzas after order #1 by just delivering the pizza to themselves and sending the same boxes back out in the next delivery, and so on.
But they also could have just raised prices on everything but the cheap one DoorDash was using for pricing.
Somewhat off-topic, but when I click on "Case-Mate - Case for 2009 LG Xenon - Marsala"[1], the "About this item" section simply states: About this item - Do - Not - Buy - This - Product What on earth is going on here? [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09D51KNQM
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is a totally valid reason to hate USPS. The USPS is a government-run spam delivery service that there is no way to opt out of. Those of us who do banking and other administrative tasks online would be better off if the government shut it down completely, or better yet subsidized it slightly so it doesn't have to deliver spam to survive. But as it is, I don't see any good reason to have any more respect for USPS…
Doesn't seem like USPS is the spammer. They're Gmail. People send spam and USPS/Gmail delivers it.
On the other hand, spam delivery is the business model of USPS. They actively and intentionally market and sell their services to spammers, and not surprisingly, give normal users no way to opt out.
Don't give money to amazon that is better spent on an amazingly efficient postal service. Amazon is subsidized by imaginary money until they put all their competition out of business(including USPS).
Can you explain? Amazon is wildly profitable, and while AWS is far higher margin than their retail businesses, everything I can find suggests their retail segment also has a healthy operating margin.
It's the difference in 1990s billionaires and 2020s billionaires. Bill Gates was so rich because he owned a lot of Microsoft shares and received profits from those shares as dividends. Jeff Bezos is so rich because he owns a lot of Amazon shares and people keep being willing to pay more and more for those shares so his notional net worth increases (AMZN has never paid a dividend).
This story comes to my mind. A pizzeria owner made money buying his own $24 pizzas from DoorDash for $16 https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262316/doordash-pizza-p...
If you want to fight the VCs, you have to pull stunts like this. If they want to destroy local infrastructure because "free market", in an attempt to secure monopolies for themselves, then let them operate in a free market.
Early on they stopped prohibiting restaurants from upcharging, so restaurants all did. They ended up with some extra sales and profits. The customer got VC funded free delivery.
Enough alternatives kept the market place efficient. DoorDash can’t get too abusive when UberEats and Instacart are competing, restaurants have no switching cost.
The whole thing worked for basically everyone involved except maybe the investors (DoorDash has significantly underperformed the S&P since it debuted on the market.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain? Amazon is wildly profitable, and while AWS is far higher margin than their retail businesses, everything I can find suggests their retail segment also has a healthy operating margin.
If you put all of the money Amazon as a whole has taken since it was founded in 1994 in a stack on the left, and all of the money Amazon as a whole has spent since then in a stack on the right, the stack on the left is slightly larger, but this has only been true for a couple of years now. It's the difference in 1990s billionaires and 2020s billionaires. Bill Gates was so rich because he owned a lot of Microsoft shar…