4 ms·

the normal supermarket (or any non-gig-business) here in Germany has to provide: - parking (bikes/cars/none if only pedestrians are there) - some rest/change

by fock 5y ago

the normal supermarket (or any non-gig-business) here in Germany has to provide: - parking (bikes/cars/none if only pedestrians are there) - some rest/change area for employees These things cost quite a bit of money. Now, as with most gig-economy "startups" (or should you call them moneybaths?), the "dark stores" require these things too, but at least with the locations I saw, they don't really do that. Essentially their fronts look like a branded homeless-camp. No thanks. Also: can someone explain to me, how this concept will (like that of any other gig-economy company) be realized in any semi-equal society (aka no slavers state). Essentially you'd probably need 2/100 people working for that, nonstop. These people will basically do something which nowadays everyone but the richest people have heavily optimized already, just that it's not supposed to be optimized, because I don't think the idea is a soviet-style "hey, I bring you your allocated food, once a week". The explicit promise is that whoever can afford this, can just call these services on a whim, meaning this is super-inefficient from a societal view (how do you optimize 10min delivery time?). Then, just letting the price decide and having all of services structured that way, you'll essentially get the slavers state, neolib. edition™. Because a lot of people working in these sectors will then be forced to choose the soviet-style solution outlined above (and you already see this!), just without being allowed a say in that matter, because that's how the system is supposed to be, no? What a brave new world!

Nextgrid 5y ago
> how this concept will (like that of any other gig-economy company) be realized in any semi-equal society (aka no slavers state). Essentially you'd probably need 2/100 people working for that, nonstop It can work, just not in a way that Silicon Valley VC bros want it to. Most countries already have a legacy version of this system in place: the post office, as well as a few private courier companies. Those systems' "tick rates" are typically one day - packages are collected at depots/sorting offices early in the morning, assigned to couriers who then spend the rest of the day delivering them. Increasing the tick rate of such a system is possible especially with smaller goods as well as being able to take advantage of more "depots" (for grocery deliveries, supermarkets are essentially the depots) - the costs will obviously be higher, but not prohibitively so. The problem with the current delivery services is that it's fragmented - every company has their own couriers, restaurants/supermarkets, etc where not only is the supply & demand unbalanced, leading to situations where one company's couriers may be sitting idle wasting time loitering (leading to potential antisocial behavior) where anothers' might be overloaded and delivering a poor customer experience with regards to wait times. The system also has the overheads of people staying idle which is currently subsidized by treating these workers like shit and denying them employment rights/benefits. A single marketplace providing an API for moving goods from point A to point B priced by weight, special requirements (refrigerated transport, etc), timeliness and the current state of the market (dynamic pricing) could work. This will allow the system to maximize the efficiency of the people on the ground, being able to consolidate deliveries and reduce waste (bikes or vehicles sitting idle, couriers loitering around, etc). This could be operated by the existing postal system and even use this same infrastructure for mail/package delivery. The above system would undeniably cost more than the current VC-subsidized services which also underpay their workers and treat them like shit in general, but not by an exorbitant amount. Its costs overheads would scale linearly though which is a bad fit for VCs looking to monopolize the world, however as a public service similar to the post office it should be viable.
- numtel 5y ago
  > A single marketplace providing an API for moving goods from point A to point B priced by weight, special requirements (refrigerated transport, etc), timeliness and the current state of the market (dynamic pricing) could work. This is interesting but the debate between private/public services is political gridlock. Just like there's no single payer healthcare in the US because of insurance companies, this idea would be basically a nationalization of Amazon, Fedex, and UPS. I'm not sure how you'd pull that off. I've thought about over-collateralized logistics smart contracts for something like this: post a request for transport with parcel details like size and speed desired then collect deposits from both shipper and carrier. I'm not sure people would want to deal with large deposit values to cover the potential for irresponsible carriers though.

by fock 5y ago

Nextgrid 5y ago

> how this concept will (like that of any other gig-economy company) be realized in any semi-equal society (aka no slavers state). Essentially you'd probably need 2/100 people working for that, nonstop It can work, just not in a way that Silicon Valley VC bros want it to. Most countries already have a legacy version of this system in place: the post office, as well as a few private courier companies. Those systems' "tick rates" are typically one day - packages are collected at depots/sorting offices early in the morning, assigned to couriers who then spend the rest of the day delivering them. Increasing the tick rate of such a system is possible especially with smaller goods as well as being able to take advantage of more "depots" (for grocery deliveries, supermarkets are essentially the depots) - the costs will obviously be higher, but not prohibitively so. The problem with the current delivery services is that it's fragmented - every company has their own couriers, restaurants/supermarkets, etc where not only is the supply & demand unbalanced, leading to situations where one company's couriers may be sitting idle wasting time loitering (leading to potential antisocial behavior) where anothers' might be overloaded and delivering a poor customer experience with regards to wait times. The system also has the overheads of people staying idle which is currently subsidized by treating these workers like shit and denying them employment rights/benefits. A single marketplace providing an API for moving goods from point A to point B priced by weight, special requirements (refrigerated transport, etc), timeliness and the current state of the market (dynamic pricing) could work. This will allow the system to maximize the efficiency of the people on the ground, being able to consolidate deliveries and reduce waste (bikes or vehicles sitting idle, couriers loitering around, etc). This could be operated by the existing postal system and even use this same infrastructure for mail/package delivery. The above system would undeniably cost more than the current VC-subsidized services which also underpay their workers and treat them like shit in general, but not by an exorbitant amount. Its costs overheads would scale linearly though which is a bad fit for VCs looking to monopolize the world, however as a public service similar to the post office it should be viable.

numtel 5y ago
> A single marketplace providing an API for moving goods from point A to point B priced by weight, special requirements (refrigerated transport, etc), timeliness and the current state of the market (dynamic pricing) could work. This is interesting but the debate between private/public services is political gridlock. Just like there's no single payer healthcare in the US because of insurance companies, this idea would be basically a nationalization of Amazon, Fedex, and UPS. I'm not sure how you'd pull that off. I've thought about over-collateralized logistics smart contracts for something like this: post a request for transport with parcel details like size and speed desired then collect deposits from both shipper and carrier. I'm not sure people would want to deal with large deposit values to cover the potential for irresponsible carriers though.