Postal Arbitrage

So the EPA report is bullshit interpretation of the USDA study: >A recent USDA survey found that in 88% of U.S households, people hop in their car to buy groceries, driving an average of 4 miles to their preferred store.2

USDA study: >Overall, households are, on average, 2.2 miles from the nearest SNAP-authorized supermarket or supercenter, but their usual store is 3.8 miles away.

Based on these questions: >This report presents initial findings from the FoodAPS survey on three key questions:

1. How do shoppers travel to their main store and how far do they travel to get there?

2. In what type of store (eg., supermarket, mass merchandiser, convenience store) do U.S. households typically shop for groceries?

3. Do store and travel mode differ by participation in food assistance programs or food security status?

This can only tell us the distance to the store and does not support "All these car trips result in carbon pollution: over 17 million metric tons of CO2 come from car tailpipes just from driving back and forth to the grocery store."

In order to draw that conclusion, you need to show that the travel to and from grocery store was single purpose. Which is not supported by the data.

Most people I know don't go out of their way to go grocery shopping nor do they take specific trips to do so. It will be done in conjunction with another outing or when returning from work.

This could also! explain the reason that food secure people travel greater distance, as they tend to travel greater distance overall they choose a location closer to their travel route rather than their dwelling.

This is why my AWS bill is so high?

Ah yes the oil that you saved by not doing these got spent by the uber rich going to davos in private jets. Hell in fact even if a million of you saved it still would pale the damage done by private jets.

> calling a delivery place was just easier than using an app

This is so much the polar opposite for me.

First of all: restaurant discovery. With a phone interface you have to somehow out of band learn that there is a place who delivers to you, that they are open and obtain their menu. With an app no matter where you are it gives you a list of places which are open and deliver to you.

Second is that you have all the time to browse the menu, do your research, contemplate, hand a phone around among many people, see your order, check your order, change your order, change your mind mid order. With a phone call a fast talking rushed person who often doesn’t speak the language natively talks to you from a noisy kitchen. And they expect you to get on with it fast because you are holding up the line. You better already know what you are ordering and be ready to make decisions about any substitutions as they come up.

Then comes the payment. With apps I’m only trusting my payment details to a large company who has the engineering resources to make the transaction secure. With a phone order you either pay to the delivery driver (does he accept card? Do i have enough cash if not?) or you read in your card details to the phone. Which is just bonkers unsecure on so many levels.

Then comes the tracking: with the app i see when the food is ready, and where the driver is in the delivery with a continously updated ETA. With a phone? You can call them again if the food does not show up I guess. Good luck.

Then comes the handover. With the phone if the food was pre-paid the delivery driver just gives the food to whomever. If it is paid on delivery they give it to whomever pays them. Hope it reaches you. With the apps i’m using the app displays a one time code which the driver ask for to check that you are who ordered.

Every element of the experience is better with an app in my opinion.

> and they could give you updates on when they were out of something

So can they through the app. But instead of telling every single costumer about what they are out of they just click it once on their admin and the items in question are stricken through in the menu. I see that all the time.

>Can you send a letter thousands of miles for only 61 cents?

Letter, no. 61 cents is the post card rate, so you can send a post card thousands of miles for that. If you introduce an outside envelope its 78 cents to mail that thousands of miles, up to 1oz.