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Revolt of the Delivery Workers

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Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#111

Post by jakelazaroff »

rightbyte wrote: post #70
InfiniteRand wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should always take these type of articles with a grain of salt. The author seems keen to play up the drama

Drama? Didn't the SF DA stop enforcing laws on theft under some arbitrary but quite large value? I would not call it an exaggeration.

The amount of attention spent on Chesa Boudin and shoplifting is puzzling. Wage theft is by far the biggest form of stealing, and it’s rarely — if ever — prosecuted… but instead we’re worried about a small increase in petty larceny?

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#112

Post by luffapi »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #102
tazjin wrote: post #51

It's always strange to read these reports from American cities that sound like something out of war-torn countries. Delivery workers grouping together to defend themselves against hordes of bandits, in well-known places, with no police protection? What the ...? This sort of thing would be unthinkable in central Moscow and most other large European city centres (the only European city I've ever felt unsafe in is Bruss…

Could it be the attacks are coming from minority groups and it's uncomfortable to do something about it in the current political climate? Even in places like UK and Germany there were cases of police afraid to intervene to avoid being accused of racism whenever minorities were involved.

This is wildly racist. The police are known to openly harass and abuse minority populations. They’re often even rewarded for it by their racist supporters.

Edit: this comment is at -4. Unreal how bad HN’s “community” is. And the site owners do nothing to curb the white supremacy on full display here. Noted.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#113

Post by ThePadawan »

lizknope wrote: post #83
ThePadawan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I cannot tell if you're being sarcastic or genuine). Yes, except (before COVID) if you were at work, and the mail carrier tried to deliver a package to your house unsuccessfully, they would take it with them again. Or they would leave it outside the house, where it could be stolen. Then, starting the next day, you could go to the nearest pickup site (and depending on the carrier, this either means the post office, w…

I live in a pretty safe suburb in the United States so I'm fine with packages left at my front door. In 20 years I have never had a package stolen. For high value packages that require a signature I have them redirected to a UPS or FedEx store 1-2 miles from my house. This can be done by making a UPS or FedEx account which allows you to redirect packages. I can then pick them up after work and the line is never more…

> I can then pick them up after work and the line is never more than 1 or 2 people.

That's the part that really surprises me. In my experience picking up missed packages from the post office, they're completely empty 90% of the day, but after work, the line is out to the street!

And given that my transaction (present a pick-up slip - wait for employee to find package in the back - sign for package) is mostly trivial, I personally also find it a right waste of time for the postal employee.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#114

Post by kragen »

sbacic wrote: post #104
kragen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating a two-sided marketplace is one hell of a moat. Nobody's displacing eBay, Amazon, or the Google Play Store anytime soon; even Craigslist seems to be getting by. Here in Argentina, MercadoLibre established an eBay clone before eBay moved in; the consequence was that eBay just bought shares instead of even trying to compete. The VCs are betting that a similar thing will happen with delivery apps: one of them w…

> Operating a two-sided marketplace is one hell of a moat. Nobody's displacing eBay, Amazon, or the Google Play Store anytime soon; even Craigslist seems to be getting by. Here in Argentina, MercadoLibre established an eBay clone before eBay moved in; the consequence was that eBay just bought shares instead of even trying to compete. That's due to network effects, not because they're operating a two-sided marketplace…

Yes, that's because of network effects, but that doesn't mean it's not because they're operating a two-sided marketplace. Operating a two-sided marketplace often provides extremely strong network effects; for example, listing a one-of-a-kind product for auction on eBay means you can't list it for auction on MercadoLibre. (Though now most MercadoLibre listings are mass merchants, not people cleaning out their storage space.) And I don't think MercadoLibre's survival is an example of where that moat failed; it was just outside eBay's moat.

Two-sided markets are kind of like Willie Sutton's banks. The buyers have to go to, say, Amazon, because that's where the products are. The sellers have to go to Amazon because that's where the buyers are. Amazon does whatever they think they can get away with to keep those relationships exclusive, which is the genius of Fulfilled by Amazon.

I suspect that you're right about the food delivery market. Probably most of the VCs investing in it also suspect you're right. They just aren't sure.

BTW I had to upvote your comment because some dumb fuck downvoted it.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#115

Post by ThePadawan »

nicoburns wrote: post #110
ThePadawan wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do my best to tell sellers this. I recently tried to find out where to buy a new mattress online. Usually I get them IKEA and that's fine, but their shipping is so expensive, it's generally only worth it if you boy a whole lot of large items at once. I talked to the customer repo of another shop to inquire what vendor they used for shipping and what would happen if I wasn't home - and they told me they used DPD. Tu…

My experience has been that DPD has by far the best delivery service. Not only can you reschedule delivery for a specific day, but you can do so in advance, or arrange a new address for the package to be delivered to. Perhaps this varies by location?

Of course it does! It's just that in my experience, rearranging delivery details still requires someone in the chain to give a shit.

The delivery person who wouldn't deliver the package on Monday is not going to give a shit if they're instructed to deliver on Tuesday 9am-11am instead, they're going to show up at 4pm and still act like they're doing me a favor.

What am I gonna do? I've already paid for the service, so the seller won't care. DPD won't care, they already got paid by the seller.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#116

Post by coremoff »

Gaessaki wrote: post #43

We’ve recently started deploying expensive e-cargo bikes for our food delivery coop[1] to try to whittle down our carbon footprint and increase efficiency in urban areas. We have a similar problem of trying to protect our delivery assets (though not nearly as bad as the plight of the gig workers in the article given that our workers can count on the coop and also because Montreal is generally safer than NYC). Our thr…

removable handlebars? (and have a sling or belt or something to sling it over your back temporarily)

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#117

Post by jakelazaroff »

pandaman wrote: post #107
jakelazaroff wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crime is down under de Blasio. Virtually every category has continued decreasing since he took office in 2014: https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm (That link only covers through 2019, but if you look at the official CompStat data the two year trend for 2019–2021 is also negative: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statist... )

I am not sure how is the state stats are relevant in discussing DeBlasio's performance or one week makes a trend though. Here are the annual stats for felonies: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_... https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_... Some crimes are down, some (e.g. murder) are up.

Oops, didn’t notice the first link was for New York State. The CompStat link includes longer-term trends, though, which is what I was referring to.

Crime is down overall, and I suspect that if you controlled for the murder rate increase in all US cities over the past two years it might be flat or down in NYC as well.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#118

Post by irtigor »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #25
d0mr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is, https://coopcycle.org

Interesting, is the client or the server open source? Who finances that?

I also got interested, there's a link to the github page near the bottom of the site: server is source available, commercial use is only allowed to co-ops and a few other entities, the client is opensource (MIT license).

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#119

Post by nerdponx »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #102
tazjin wrote: post #51

It's always strange to read these reports from American cities that sound like something out of war-torn countries. Delivery workers grouping together to defend themselves against hordes of bandits, in well-known places, with no police protection? What the ...? This sort of thing would be unthinkable in central Moscow and most other large European city centres (the only European city I've ever felt unsafe in is Bruss…

Could it be the attacks are coming from minority groups and it's uncomfortable to do something about it in the current political climate? Even in places like UK and Germany there were cases of police afraid to intervene to avoid being accused of racism whenever minorities were involved.

1. No, that isn't a thing in the USA.

2. It's not a case of violent ethnic minority preying on peaceful ethnic majority. There probably isn't a single "white" person involved in any of those crimes, as assailant or victim.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#120

Post by rmah »

Gaessaki wrote: post #43

We’ve recently started deploying expensive e-cargo bikes for our food delivery coop[1] to try to whittle down our carbon footprint and increase efficiency in urban areas. We have a similar problem of trying to protect our delivery assets (though not nearly as bad as the plight of the gig workers in the article given that our workers can count on the coop and also because Montreal is generally safer than NYC). Our thr…

because Montreal is generally safer than NYC

Crime in Montreal is actually quite a bit higher than in NYC. In 2019, with data from Statistics Canada (for Montreal) and the FBI (for NYC)...

Montreal's violent crime rate (1140 per 100k people) is double that of NYC (571 per 100k people). The property crime rate in Montreal (2,222 per 100k people) is similarly higher than NYC (1,460 per 100k people).

Sources: https://www.areavibes.com/montr%C3%A9al-qc/crime/ and https://www.areavibes.com/new+york-ny/crime/

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