Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

Lobbyists muddy the incentive waters a bit when it comes to politics.

But I agree with your conclusion. I don't think there are many truly net negative companies/sectors/ideas that aren't either dead or on their way out -- but I'm sure you'd agree we should still hold tech accountable and optimize for our own benefit.

Btw, as a lifelong Carlin fan, I find myself asking what he would think pretty often :)

There's no reason this software has to be expensive. I'd rather fix the software in this case.

And phones in particular suck when you involve real-world connection quality and accents.

I certainly don't know anything about the space, but by "matters more", I was thinking about caring more about what I am eating as opposed to how it was distributed. I suppose both are important, though.

> My theory is that if you're extremely pessimistic about technology or politics, you probably won't like anything that happens when large groups of humans make collective decisions. There's an air of let's go back to the good old days when we were hunter gatherers to the whole thing.

Hunter gatherer is the only alternative to a society under total dominance by mega-corps? This reminds me of individual stories from life under communism and brutal dictatorships where the dystopia is so omnipresent you don’t even remember what was before, nor could imagine anything meaningfully different. Instead, you take joy in the little things, like (today) the scraps left over after another market war – ”at least now we have a search engine”, ”I can order a taxi from an app”. I understand it, because it has been such a dominant force in the kind of second reincarnation of neoliberalism since ~80s in the US in particular. This apathy is the perfect wet blanket to prevent systemic change and perpetuate the status quo – no suppression of dissent is needed if there is no imagination or expectation of a better society. A lot of powerful interests are spending a lot of effort trying to convince us that any meaningful change would make things even worse, not better.

In my opinion, the best way to break these cycles is to study the past, other countries and many times smaller local communities. There are countless examples of well functioning systems if you pay attention. And new ones being established all the time. I’ve seen local markets completely flourish in just a decade, because of good policy. Once you see these things, and know in your heart it’s possible, there’s no going back.

I’m intentionally a bit vague here, because what’s meaningful to one person can be inconsequential to another. Which is why it’s so important to discover these things on your own. That’s the way to turn complacency into hope, and hope into organized action.

Here's the bit on Youtube (I couldn't find an Archive link): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrSAxtIYM08

This is the right conclusion, and I love sharing that video for that reason.

As of 2025 everyone globally has everything they need to make the world a great place for everyone. Instead, people continue to take the lowest energy route for their personal actions, which means they do not even think about the externalities of that purchase from Amazon, the Latte from Starbucks, continuing living in (insert your broken system here), working for some billionaire etc...They just shrug and think "its out of my control, besides I don't have any impact and why should I suffer unnecessarily"

There are millions of examples of individual people who had no education, being actively oppressed and violently attacked changing their situation by either moving or overthrowing their oppressors. Harriet Tubman comes to mind.

It's never been easier to do that, but people would rather not.

The entire "illegal immigrant" concept proves it, people literally spending their entire life savings ($5000) to pay coyotes to smuggle them in horrific conditions so they can be slaves picking strawberries. I know a Houston restaurant owner who did that trek twice from Guatemala, getting deported the first time and he just saved up and did it again. While speaking no english. Tell me again about how it's not possible to do something. Meanwhile the citizens can't be bothered to learn about their own history or you know, do anything.

I've tried to start multiple non-heirarchical anarchist cooperative organizations and the number one challenge is finding people who will put the group ahead of the individual. It just doesn't happen. There are no organizations where that's true. No church, no government, no state, no charity, nothing, nowhere actually meets the test of holistic globally aligned "good."

I read the Medicins Sans Frotiers book long ago, even they were terrible and continue to fight internally [1]. Unions now make most of their money from capital investments [2], which is directly in opposition to their anticapitalist philosophical roots. All of this is because the members don't care and don't have any desire to have less, they all want more forever.

At this point in history, everyone has access to the information they need to make globally holistic decisions. It's not possible to claim ignorance, ignorance is strictly a choice and ultimately a existential personal limitation.

There are no organizations that exist for the benefit of society and they cannot exist because humans fundamentally lack the cognitive ability to think beyond Dunbar's number but their actions have global consequences.

Self elimination is the only possible arc for humanity.

[1] https://healthpolicy-watch.news/inward-technocratic-msf-lead...

[2] https://jacobin.com/2023/02/finance-unionism-union-density-d...