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I think you just made the argument, more or less -- there's an implicit moral obligation in noting that there are negative social impacts. As for whether the t
by wwweston 3y ago
I think you just made the argument, more or less -- there's an implicit moral obligation in noting that there are negative social impacts.
As for whether the term parasite applies:
- They move in and take over the channel for demand, often burning VC cash to do it
- But they can't meet that demand for the product themselves, and therefore can't survive on their own
- Once they sit in between those who can meet demand and the market, they mess with the cost structure without apparent consideration for whether or not they kill any given host
One can imagine a more symbiotic relationship but if the restaurant owners are basically tell us that it's already reaching the point where they die if they go off the apps and they die if they stay on, it's pretty clear that something is wrong.
- namaria 3y agoMakes me think of the pizza app in Silicon Valley. I just realized they were likely satirizing this very model. Who knew it could become so entrenched...
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoAny restaurant that finds itself in financial trouble can point to delivery apps and say, well, if they charged me less money I'd have more money. What's not obvious to me that this is any different from saying that they'd have more money if their landlord charged less money or their suppliers charged less money. It'd be one thing if delivery apps were "taking over" the demand channel in the sense that they're preventing customers from ordering directly. But that doesn't generally seem to be the case. As the article covers, it's not like delivery apps are even cheaper. (There was a story a while back where Grubhub was creating websites which looked like direct orders but weren't - I have no qualms about calling that parasitic.)