Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

marketsaintefficient.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 350 posts

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

#311

Post by itake »

andrepd wrote: post #230
itake wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name them which countries this impacts? China (basically) only has didi. Not much the USA can say here. Southeast has Grab, and within each country there are at least 2 local competitors (Be, GoJek, Bolt, Line Man, Bluebird, etc). I believe Doordash just bought Deliveroo, making it the only American competitor in SEA. In Europe, the main players are local food panda / Delivery hero and Just Eat. India's winni…

> What countries have both the talent to build a food delivery app It's not about "talent" these are utterly pedestrian apps that anyone mediocre team can fart out in a quick amount of time. It's about capital for massive scale, massive advertising, literal VC-subsidised dumping, takeovers of the competition, etc.

Someone should let the CTO of uber know they they could be paying new grads instead of hiring staff engineers. The could save a lot of money.

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

#312

Post by _DeadFred_ »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #11

This is essentially the story of tech companies across nearly every industry where they have come to dominate. This is one reason that I see most tech companies as essentially a net negative for society at large, as the goal is nearly always to control a large monopoly (and this is fully admitted by many tech leaders, e.g. Thiel) which the Internet makes possible. Pre-Internet you would see the same dynamics, but usu…

Tech has also reached into EVERY aspect/detail of our lives 24/7 to try and extract value from it.

Tech originally preached that it's going to improve/simplify/enrich our lives. Instead tech is farming us like we have never been farmed before while giving us none of the original promise/deal. There is no peace. There is no escape. The improvements in our life are normally marginal and short term. There is no just existing, just constant, continuous farming of you for whatever value can be extracted. And because of how tech scales any extraction is never too small to not be worth going after. At least in the Matrix you weren’t expected to curate your own enslavement and smile and post about it daily.

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

#313

Post by jrm4 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #11

This is essentially the story of tech companies across nearly every industry where they have come to dominate. This is one reason that I see most tech companies as essentially a net negative for society at large, as the goal is nearly always to control a large monopoly (and this is fully admitted by many tech leaders, e.g. Thiel) which the Internet makes possible. Pre-Internet you would see the same dynamics, but usu…

Yup. I would 100% support aggressive localism here, given that the actual service is very easy to replicate. I'd absolutely support an absurdly high tax on any "out-of-town" food delivery service in order to -- maybe "artificially" -- prop up a local one. There is now NO good reason anyone in California deserves a cent for e.g. a local Florida driver delivering local Florida food to a local Florida customer.

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

#314

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #191
Aurornis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing how many Gen Z people use food delivery services on a weekly or even daily basis was mind blowing to me. I’ve had numerous conversations where I’ve had to bite my tongue when younger colleagues complained about finances after also explaining that they DoorDash dinner nearly every night. It’s bizarre. Not all Gen Z, of course. Most of the younger people I’ve worked with have been generally smart about finances.…

Even the subtitle of this article basically enforces that fact: > Why is my $8 burger $23 after fees - An average reddit user As you say, it's a private taxi for your burrito. When you factor in the labor costs, gas/car maint costs, and the amortized cost of providing the service, it's hard to see why anyone would think $15 for an on-demand delivery in a major urban area is abnormal.

Food delivery in a car seems to be a purely American aberration. Literally everyone else uses more efficient methods. (E-bikes or whatever.)

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

#315

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

potato3732842 wrote: post #254
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s by degrees right? You can make a business that treats people as well as you can manage while feeding yourself, but almost anybody will want more than that, and some people want way more than that for a variety of social and innate reasons. Eventually you cross some arbitrary threshold where you’re doing, or at least enabling, really awful mistreatment of people and you use the level of indirection you have or so…

>Also, not that this is particularly important, but many or most of them (the extremely rich) dislike and look down on you because they need to in order to feel alright about their position The rich don't give a shit. They're comfortable in their position. It's the uppity doctors, lawyers, techies, and everyone else with an office job that need to feel like they're better than the plumber, line cook and brick layer.…

> The rich don't give a shit. They're comfortable in their position.

I don’t get why you say this. Almost everyone has a need to feel like a good person, justified, etc, and the easiest way for someone with a several hundred million plus net worth to feel that way is to believe that they earned it, are special and that normal people are too stupid to do the same thing. There’s lots of other options for justifications but none of them are particularly flattering to the have-nots.

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

#316

Post by RamblingCTO »

WalterBright wrote: post #307
RamblingCTO wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it harnesses the inherent selfishness of everybody the biggest lie we're constantly being told: https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Ostrom.html . this really annoys me, we're not inherently selfish. at least not most people. free markets don't work in any rate. how do you even come to this conclusion? also, lots of counter examples here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_cooperatives

Ostrom: "the ones that worked did have a kind of property rights system" LOL. And the fact that she gets a Nobel Prize for this shows how unworkable it is in general. > we're not inherently selfish You're selfish, so am I, so is everyone you know. > free markets don't work in any rate. how do you even come to this conclusion? The success of free markets in the US, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Si…

> You're selfish, so am I, so is everyone you know.

you can ignore the evidence all you want. Doesn't make it correct. Google it for yourself then.

> The success of free markets in the US, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Singapore, etc.

how have they succeeded? enshittification and wealth accumulation is success? what's the metric here? decreased health? decreased lifespan? increased addiction? increased unhappiness?

> Worker cooperatives: A worker cooperative is not a commune.

Let me quote the discussion, which you obviously didn't even understand:

>> 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.

> I could have saved you the trouble if you'd just asked me!

> Over 20,000 communes have been started in the US. None have survived. What baffles me is why people keep believing they can work.

they talked about cooperatives, you answered with communes. I gave proof that cooperatives work.

do better.

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

#317

Post by WalterBright »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #239
WalterBright wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I could have saved you the trouble if you'd just asked me! Over 20,000 communes have been started in the US. None have survived. What baffles me is why people keep believing they can work. Free markets work because it…

> it harnesses the inherent selfishness of everybody the biggest lie we're constantly being told: https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Ostrom.html . this really annoys me, we're not inherently selfish. at least not most people. free markets don't work in any rate. how do you even come to this conclusion? also, lots of counter examples here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_cooperatives

BTW, it's perfectly legal to set up a commune in the US. Feel free to start one and let us know how it works out!

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

#318

Post by WalterBright »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #316
WalterBright wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ostrom: "the ones that worked did have a kind of property rights system" LOL. And the fact that she gets a Nobel Prize for this shows how unworkable it is in general. > we're not inherently selfish You're selfish, so am I, so is everyone you know. > free markets don't work in any rate. how do you even come to this conclusion? The success of free markets in the US, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Si…

> You're selfish, so am I, so is everyone you know. you can ignore the evidence all you want. Doesn't make it correct. Google it for yourself then. > The success of free markets in the US, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Singapore, etc. how have they succeeded? enshittification and wealth accumulation is success? what's the metric here? decreased health? decreased lifespan? increased addiction? inc…

> how have they succeeded?

Bootstrapping poor people up into the middle class and beyond.

> they talked about cooperatives, you answered with communes

You score that point!

> I gave proof that cooperatives work

So go start one. What are you waiting for?

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

#319

Post by robertlagrant »

kazinator wrote: post #289
robertlagrant wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The customer is responsible for avoiding vendor lock-in, not the vendor.

Sure! Don't like your country's passport application website? I'm sure debian.org has an alternative for you.

What do you propose? A country builds multiple passport application website for you to choose from?

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

#320

Post by WalterBright »

ars wrote: post #308
WalterBright wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Kibutzen are subsidized by the Israeli government. They would otherwise collapse.

That's not true. I just checked on it, and they used to be subsidized, these days not so much. A lot of them are hybrid models with some capitalism, mixed with the socialism. So I guess it sort of confirms your opinion that these things don't work when pure? But they do seem to have found a successful hybrid model.

If you mix enough gasoline with water, you can get your car to run on water, too!

Capitalism can do well despite being taxed to support socialism. The other way around doesn't work.

The Soviets starved until they allowed farmers to have their own private plots of farmland. Collective farms => famine.

Post reply on HN