Call me crazy, but all the various food delivery apps should be consolidated into one and run by the government. Make it part of the post office. It helps businesses, drivers would be paid fairly, and it provides an extremely useful public service.
Unfortunately one of two major US parties and a chunk of the population believes that government fundamentally can’t work. And they’ll run for office to prove it.
It is a little like saying bridges are unsafe and then taking a sledge hammer to a bridge for years until it falls apart. “See? If you hit it a bunch and don’t pay for maintenance or repair anything, eventually it falls apart!”
I feel like making it part of the state is not the right course here. Rather, consolidate it into larger cooperatives (maybe not just one, but one for each area or city or state or something), which are collectively owned by all the restaurants. They all have an interest in having delivery personnel available. It seems like a collectively owned coop fits well for that.
If they add tomatoes when I asked for no tomatoes, do the Post Office police get involved?
Only if they find a way to make it possible for the courier to go back to the restaurant to fix order issues. If there is no model to make that work, then these services should never exist.
I think with a unified restaurant listing system and order verification by drivers, these could be minimized (no system will ever be error free). As it is now, some delivery companies will list menus without consulting with the restaurant and that is a big source of mistakes.
What happens when the restaurants aren’t satisfied with the government service and decide to go with some third party? Or run their own, as many still do?
OP wants it made public to go prevent abuse. If you have both we’re back to square one
If they operated under the government at a loss I think it’s terrible policy. If it’s ran as a for-profit then it’d be fine.
And of course make discounts for people that actually need the service (disabled people and such). But no way I’m paying for lazy 20 year olds that can walk across the street to pick their food themselves, but don’t want to because the government service would be cheap.
The government isn’t a business. It’s a public service and I never hear anyone bitch about the wasteful spending when it comes to the military. I don’t understand why the post office is being treated like a for profit business.
The government is not a business, but it has limited resources as everyone else.
If those resources are spent on delivery drivers, they’re not spent in anything else. I’m not American, but if I were I would much rather those resources be spent on affordable healthcare for everyone than on food delivery for everyone.
Until recently when a bill was passed drastically changing how their retirement accounts had to be funded, the USPS was usually run for profit and was even usually actively profitable year over year. I think they’re still dealing with the fallout of that bill meant to hobble them, but I can’t imagine they’d operate at a loss purposefully.
The USPS even used to offer banking services which was also reported to be widely profitable until legislation was passed eliminating that service. Wouldn’t even be the first time that they had branched out beyond just mail.
Every lazy 20 year old is supporting a restaurant and a delivery driver. You benefit from this via taxes. I think the system could easily be made self-sustaining though while still being cheaper than any private options.
The purpose of an economy is to decide what to output, given the unlimited human desires but limited resources.
If there was a law which gave 100€ to every millionaire, we would be supporting millionaires? Isn’t that good? No it isn’t, just “supporting someone” isn’t good economic policy, it must support outputs that will most benefit the population.
That’s why for it to be remotely viable it has to be self-sustained. Which means that they would not be able to operate further if there’s not enough demand or the competition from the private sector is more efficient.
If you want to support delivery drivers you make laws regulating their job. If you want to support restaurants you give them subsidies or change the laws surrounding them.
Capitalism is good at making efficient use of resources. However it has many failures. The purpose of governments is to fix those failures (for example the exploitation of workers, and monopolies).
If you just make a government-backed company (that doesn’t need a profit to keep going) compete with private companies that need a profit, it must be because the service benefits the whole population. Examples: healthcare, education, communication, water.
Not that not all necessary services need to be provided by profitless government corporations. For example, food and electricity is also needed by 100% of the population but they are also resource-intensive. Therefore they’re usually ran by private companies with heavy regulations/subsidies.
I think that’s how it works in Dubai. Basically you’re asking for a benevolent dictator thingy. Now think hard, do you think your own country government has what it takes to do it properly?
They’re asking for a government regulated public service. Where the everloving fuck are you getting the impression of a benevolent dictator
Do you think a regular democracy can even change its own diapers without fucking up? Only a benevolent dictator (sometimes called President, whatever) can do it right.
