alt Hacker NewsThe comments here always blow me away by how totally out of touch with the rest of the world many posters are.
Yes, home delivery is a luxury, and it 'does not work' in India - it's only evidence of an utterly broken system.
It's a sign of radical inefficiency and economic failure that labour is being used for those kinds of things because it's extremely unproductive.
"It has nothing to do with loopholes on anything. "
--> it's entirely about 'loopholes' <---
Food delivery is not 'efficient' in India - it's the least efficient process imaginable - that can only work because 'loopholes' - marginal cost of labour is cheap aka no rights, no standards, high unemployment, low wages, externalizations and corruption, sketchy taxation, safety, social insurance, healthcare, emissions, food safety etc.
The only place in the world where 'Food Delivery Works' - is for rich people in First World countries.
That is the only scenario in which labour, rights, wages, taxation, non-corruption safety etc. are all met and the 'comparative value' (aka price) still works out.
That's it - the top 10% in the Denmark etc. can have their food delivered in a way that is 'economically efficient' (maybe >10% for some things) - aka those are the only people 'willing to pay a true fair market price when all of the externalizations are built into the model'.
We're making some progress with automation, probably China are leaders there but it's still not closed to automated and won't be because the marginal cost of labour is still low.
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You are correct, and the problem is an embarrassing lack of understanding and imagination on the part of the people criticizing you. An entire car dedicated to delivering one meal at a time, directly to the recipient, should be exorbitantly expensive to cover labor and resource costs for the driver; the artificially low prices customers pay are borne by drivers, who see essentially zero return in the long run when their profits are netted against vehicle costs.
What actually works is delivery of multiple orders to a semi-central location for last-mile pick-up by the customers. In a sense, this is what restaurants and grocery stores are. But to retain the variety, readiness, etc. of delivery, obviously some new solution must come around.
You state things as fact without citing a reason.
For the person getting the item, it is [extremely] productive.
How is a delivery service unproductive? Division of labor is one of the most fundamental principles in our economic system. You being able to do it yourself in your free time doesn't make it unproductive. You could also make your own clothes, that doesn't make the clothes industry an unproductive endeavor.