At some point in economic decline, the business concepts of attendants pumping-gas-aaS and people shining-shoes-aaS become no longer widely distributed and prof

At some point in economic decline, the business concepts of attendants pumping-gas-aaS and people shining-shoes-aaS become no longer widely distributed and profitable. Customers don't make long term investments in commodity -aaS businesses and when the cost exceeds the value they very quickly leave, and when enough leave the -aaS business folds. It seems likely we are nearing that point for many business models. Small scale retail, small scale restaurant. Even large scale retail is nearly dead, see the dead mall situation. It does seem somewhat ridiculous to have an ultra short term relationship with a servant to have them cook assembly line fashion, generally mediocre, food for you at enormous expense with numerous layers of middlemen in between. Certainly restaurants were an extremely small fraction of total caloric intake for the majority of history; there just wasn't enough excess wealth floating around for nonsense like that. Soon, as permanent economic decline continues, we will go back to generally not having restaurants. As always, people will adapt or perish, and usually they adapt. The future is always unevenly distributed and Boston may just be a little further along.