Thread

DoorDash Spent $1.4M Trying to Stop Mamdani from Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why

348 points · 189 comments · vrganj

Loading the complete thread in the background. This saved snapshot is available now. Refresh

dust42 · 1790194464 · focus · HN ↗
Oh, the interShiitake is trying to keep up some reputation... Just the other day there was a posting on HN why no other Snowden files have been released. Go look for it.
1. contingencies · 1790194700 · focus · HN ↗
  <a href="https://libroot.org/posts" rel="nofollow">https://libroot.org/posts
2. Terr_ · 1790194732 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
toomuchtodo · 1790194803 · focus · HN ↗
More evidence Big Tech valuations are driven primarily by worker exploitation. Keep 'em coming.
1. Ekaros · 1790195007 · focus · HN ↗
  It is not like they aren't exploiting businesses either... Looking at Amazon(retail) and almost all SaaS services...
  1. toomuchtodo · 1790195248 · focus · HN ↗
    You eat an elephant one bite at a time. This bite was good, lots more bites to go.
    I realized what most of sibling comments refer to as soon as Mamdani quoted DoorDash's CEO on the "Greedy Algorithm," which I had not heard of before.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm
    <a href="https://x.com/FortuneMagazine/status/2084806653472358752" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/FortuneMagazine/status/2084806653472358752
    > “I think a lot of times you kind of, as an entrepreneur, have to take the greedy algorithm,” DoorDash cofounder and CEO Tony Xu recently said on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast. “You have to keep going all the way and seeing if there’s more.”
    "Ahh, they're all paperclip maximizers building the torment nexus for valuations and shareholder returns at the cost of everyone else." This is the lens through which I see these enterprises now until proven otherwise. I wish it wasn't so, but we must take the world as it is and not as we would like it to be. It's such a shame most of this is turning out to be equal parts grift and worker exploitation in some fashion. The tech and code is just the cover as progress and innovation, "ignore the man behind the curtain."
2. SoftTalker · 1790195290 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm not unsympathetic, but also, nobody is forced to work for DoorDash.
  And if DoorDash had to pay drivers a "living" wage that also included fuel and wear and tear on their car and the extra insurance needed to cover using their car for work, your burger and fries would probably cost $40 delivered, making the whole business model infeasible. Maybe that would be a good thing but I generally favor letting all the actors make their own decisions.
  1. toomuchtodo · 1790195366 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm unwilling to argue with "It is a free choice to be exploited." I understand some will argue for this, and will hold the mental model, I am simply unwilling to entertain it from a time and effort perspective.
    If the business cannot exist without exploitation, the business should not exist. I also understand this is an argument at the political process level at its core. Not much progress to be made in the argument over the US being an economic exploitation engine. Some are for, some are against. We choose, through policy, whether someone must make the choice to be exploited because we give them no other choice. We can make better choices, I argue. "The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats it's most vulnerable members."
    SoftTalker · 1790195572 · focus · HN ↗
    I recognize that there is a power imbalance in play, but I would rather see activism towards educating would-be DoorDashers that the numbers don't work in their favor, rather than regulating DoorDash out of existence.
    And in some cases, if you just need some money to pay a bill and you have a few hours available, maybe doing a few DoorDash deliveries closes that gap for you, even if it's not a good long term job. But, that can also work as a trap if you're not very deliberate about it.
    toomuchtodo · 1790195651 · focus · HN ↗
    When you are mayor, you can implement such a policy. I encourage you to attempt to run where ever relevant to your residency.
    throwaway27448 · 1790248400 · focus · HN ↗
    I suspect the doordashers are aware they're poor. The issue is the lack of better employment because the fed hates workers and loves business.
  2. bob778 · 1790195386 · focus · HN ↗
    They have to do exactly this in Australia and a burger is still $20-22 all up.
  3. Forgeties79 · 1790195451 · focus · HN ↗
    > your burger and fries would probably cost $40 delivered, making the whole business model infeasible.
    Tough luck? Businesses aren’t entitled to exist. If it’s a bad model it’s a bad model. We can’t just throw our hands up and ignore bad business practices for that reason. It’s not our job to protect DoorDash’s unsustainable business model that only works if they behave particularly unethically. That is squarely their issue
    SoftTalker · 1790197509 · focus · HN ↗
    You conveniently trimmed what I wrote to argue against a point I didn't make.
  4. ahoy · 1790195563 · focus · HN ↗
    The fact that you think NYC doordash delivery workers are driving is a good indication that you're out of your depth on this topic.
  5. [deleted] · 1790195578 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  6. throwaway27448 · 1790195624 · focus · HN ↗
    The treatlerites strike again. All hail the burger reich!
  7. jmull · 1790195688 · focus · HN ↗
    > nobody is forced to work for DoorDash
    It doesn’t matter who you work for, they still can’t underpay you or pay you late.
  8. tredre3 · 1790195713 · focus · HN ↗
    > your burger and fries would probably cost $40 delivered, making the whole business model infeasible
    Pizza places, chinese food places, many diners, they've all been making deliveries work for decades without inflating the prices to absurd levels. It's almost as if it can be done when you don't have to pay the middle man who has a billion dollar of venture debts.
    It's so wild to see you, someone who seems to be older than gen z, so unaware that the food delivery model existed before delivery apps, and was highly successful without charging delivery charge + service fee + tip + 30% of the food price.
  9. schnevets · 1790196387 · focus · HN ↗
    "Private chauffeur for your burrito" is proving to be too costly. Time for New Yorkers to rise up and side with the BurritoBus™
    Place your order 6 hours in advance and our hyperadvanced algorithm will place your burrito on a hyperefficient route alongside other orders within your neighborhood. Estimated arrival times remain hyperaccurate (15 minute window) and your neighborhood FoodBusser is paid an hourly wage with hyperbenefits.
3. ausbah · 1790195432 · focus · HN ↗
  the common unifying theme of most tech companies over the past 15 years has been rent extraction. whether posing as middlemen who VC’d their way to monopoly power ruining both sides of their target market, or taking a common good without attribution (attention, knowledge) tech hasn’t been much a game changer beyond digitizing something and charging everyone more for it
  1. shadowgovt · 1790196083 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    krispyfi · 1790197563 · focus · HN ↗
    It's surprising to me that you would need to wait 30 minutes for a bus. Are you in a very rural area? Was it outside of normal commute hours? Or is your city's public transportation network wildly underfunded?
    saturn8601 · 1790198569 · focus · HN ↗
    Are you European or American? To a lot of America, that is considered a good numbers. Its worse in many parts of this vastly large country. The country has chosen to invest heavily in road networks. It appears that you can have one or the other but not both without great expense and reform.
    I like to remind my European friends that this is what the US looks like placed on top of Europe: <a href="https://i.imgur.com/HkRZfKd.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/HkRZfKd.png
    Its not a perfect illustration but it drives home the point.
    mfost · 1790203116 · focus · HN ↗
    That surface area map is a seriously bad argument: We are talking about bus lines here. Local transit just requires local lines. This isn't about train lines crossing through the whole country.
    And how come China does a much better job than the US while they have the same surface area? Why aren't you overlapping those two maps?
    shadowgovt · 1790346767 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    scun · 1790204029 · focus · HN ↗
    imgur is geoblocked for some of Europe
    shadowgovt · 1790199262 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
4. throwaway27448 · 1790195482 · focus · HN ↗
  Of course! that's always what "disruption" referred to.
5. usaar333 · 1790197481 · focus · HN ↗
  Since when did doordash count as big tech?
  1. toomuchtodo · 1790197579 · focus · HN ↗
    They're not FAANG or MANGA, but they're certainly at the top of <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/companies">https://www.ycombinator.com/companies with 8600 employees and an $82B market cap (as of this comment).
    usaar333 · 1790201723 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah that's not big tech. $1 trillion market cap is big tech or 30k+ employees.
    This is upper end of mid sized.
    No yc alum counts as big tech
    jackb4040 · 1790204397 · focus · HN ↗
    Boy I could not disagree more
6. saturn8601 · 1790198157 · focus · HN ↗
  Valuation yes, but if we take a step back, there must be value there. The idea of Uber really provided benefits to many groups. Example: minorities who were discriminated against by regular taxis. Declining service level due to Taxi monopoly. Same goes for Doordash in some regards.
  How can we separate the valuation from the real value generated by the tech? Would it be possible to allow Uber/Doordash to go bankrupt and instead a smaller worker owned or nonprofit cooperative take its place, replicate the tech stack and then allow the value to then be maximized to the employees + users with little middleman in between?
  Obviously this idea has lots of issues to be resolved:
  1. How do you you deal with government or other middlemen that wish to insert themselves? 2. Can we really copy Uber/Doordash or are those engineers/managers/middlemen really providing so much additional differentiating value that justifies the cost and thus the required valuation? 3. Worker cooperatives seem to move slower than their SV cohorts. For a company selling groceries, or door Windows (as a famous Bernie Sanders example talks about) its not an issue. But in the fast moving world of tech would it eventually kill the cooperative due to the inability to move as fast as the SV competitors?
  I dont know the answers but I do think about it more and more as I traverse the world and see so much poor quality and expense. All of that is stolen value that is extracted from workers + customers to line the pockets of the owner class.
time4tea · 1790195381 · focus · HN ↗
What does "this is not a pay wall" mean - if I have to give personal information over, that is a price.
Didn't read - too expensive.
1. cgio · 1790195623 · focus · HN ↗
  I am so trained now, that I didn’t even read what they were asking for. Just closed the tab and came here to see if there was anything of value. Too expensive to even read their wall.
  1. qurren · 1790196314 · focus · HN ↗
    Yep this is what I did as well. I also just close tabs if it ever pops up a "sign up for our newsletter" thing.
2. marricks · 1790195639 · focus · HN ↗
  I mean, test@example.com worked so info doesn't have to be that personal...
3. rsingel · 1790196037 · focus · HN ↗
  Journalism is labor
  1. jgalt212 · 1790197011 · focus · HN ↗
    Information wants to be free. But other than AI slop (where the tokens have become too cheap to meter), information costs money to produce. Pay with you info or your money. It's amazing how many people just cannot come to grips with that concept.
4. glitchcrab · 1790196125 · focus · HN ↗
  <a href="https://archive.is/RWt8f" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/RWt8f
5. rurp · 1790196164 · focus · HN ↗
  Disabling javascript let me read the whole article without any account nonsense.
  1. hapax_legomena · 1790196867 · focus · HN ↗
    I just reload the page and hit 'esc' a bunch of times right after it loads but before the paywall pops up. Works on 3/4 of these soft paywalled sites.
  2. andrewflnr · 1790197494 · focus · HN ↗
    Firefox reader mode also did it.
6. pluc · 1790196384 · focus · HN ↗
  Your identity isn't considered of value to you, you can't monetize it. We can, but since it has no value to you, give it to us for free.
  1. jasonm23 · 1790243799 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean they don't even say please, or offer an opt out...
    I'd give you my email if I can then retract it if your content is not worth the price of reading it let alone giving you some form of PII
7. thehamkercat · 1790196853 · focus · HN ↗
  Works with any random email, kinda fine tbh
nemomarx · 1790195606 · focus · HN ↗
Seems like they spent more on campaigning than they did on the extra pay and fines here though. Who's making these financial calculations?
1. bootlooped · 1790195714 · focus · HN ↗
  They just agreed to a $131 million settlement. The article says this is a hundred times what they spent to prevent Mamdani from getting elected.
2. bee_rider · 1790196129 · focus · HN ↗
  Presumably somebody who thinks the Mamdani’s policies will be popular and spread to other jurisdictions. After all, why campaign against an idea that you think will fail? It’d exist as a prominent warning flag for the next group that considers it.
3. xboxnolifes · 1790200625 · focus · HN ↗
  How did you come to that conclusion? The very first sentence explicitly explains that to be false.
4. Sohcahtoa82 · 1790206068 · focus · HN ↗
  In what world is $1.4M greater than $131M?
dzonga · 1790195655 · focus · HN ↗
services like door-dash are literally built on a concept of a sucker pays more. you order a meal that costs $10. total charge comes to $25. then delivery worker made $5 on that order. + the delivery worker expects a tip.
which means the company sees both the delivery worker and the person who ordered as suckers. no wonder ride-share companies jumped onto food-delivery.
1. ehe78qhe · 1790196663 · focus · HN ↗
  I thought they were built on "time is money". If you make the equivalent of $70 an hour, do you care about spending $15 for someone to bring you lunch and save you 15-30 minutes of your workday?
  1. dieselgate · 1790198428 · focus · HN ↗
    The gig workers are still suckers because gig work sucks. But yes the service is most sensible for higher paid consumers.
    moate · 1790200425 · focus · HN ↗
    ...only because the company is committing wage theft to subsidize costs. I don't think it feels reasonable to say "Your employer has to meet certain wages, but they didn't so you're a sucker".
    If you can't pay the wage you're required to then the whole house of cards starts coming down because now you can't create a large enough network to meet demand, which shrinks demand, which increases costs, which makes it accessible to fewer and fewer high paid consumers.
    Like a lot of capitalism "it's better than starving to death in the streets" is the appeal of the job and nothing more. Anything else is a paid message brought to you by UberDoorHub.
  2. odyssey7 · 1790198897 · focus · HN ↗
    It was kind of fun doing this math back when I was a freelancer. An hour saved would literally produce more money than the order cost. But really, it would have been better to save the money by making food ahead of time.
    drop_star · 1790199184 · focus · HN ↗
    Ya I dont get this argument. Takes me all of 2 mins to grab my lunch in the morning. It's also not a greasy burger that shortens my lifespan and physically disable's me.
    drdaeman · 1790200062 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    drop_star · 1790269413 · focus · HN ↗
    From what I've seen its the fat lazy devs at work that order chipotle for lunch rather than walking downstairs to get it themselves. Mostly the younger ones too that are right out of school and should be saving their money.
    WesleyJohnson · 1790199626 · focus · HN ↗
    I've always struggled with this thinking. Yes, you have finite hours in a day and if you spend an hour going to get food then you can't necessarily also be doing freelance work. But if you planned on working 8 hours to earn X dollars, you can still work 8 hours after spending an hour going to get food and still make X dollars. Sure, that hour has to come from somewhere so maybe it's lost leisure time or an hour of sleep. I guess it makes sense if you're trying to work every waking moment; and I can appreciate that some choose to and some have to.
    Joker_vD · 1790200544 · focus · HN ↗
    > Sure, that hour has to come from somewhere so maybe it's lost leisure time or an hour of sleep.
    Well, if you value an hour of your sleep or entertainment less than $15 dollars (if, for instance, you like to cook), then sure, spend it on cooking instead. Many of people would rather not, and their revealed preferences show it pretty clearly.
  3. someonebaggy · 1790199009 · focus · HN ↗
    Tony Xu spent three times as much time as the driver did, did he?
  4. gennarro · 1790199895 · focus · HN ↗
    Except they increase the charges of the food also, so you are getting taken advantage of there as well.
  5. itopaloglu83 · 1790201389 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s not just “time is money”, but also the convenience as well. Sometimes you’re sick and need a hot meal, or you’re busy helping someone, etc.
    Edit: Spelling. “right” to “sick”.
  6. kelnos · 1790241163 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
2. sokoloff · 1790197194 · focus · HN ↗
  I don’t think paying someone to perform a service for you makes you a sucker.
  I’ve never used DoorDash (and am pretty unlikely to), but if I did, I would look at as paying someone for a service they provided rather than simply “paying more for the item” (and expecting someone to wait on me personally for free?).
  1. wat10000 · 1790197804 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s not like they hide anything about what they’re offering. They advertise service X for price Y and that’s what they deliver. Seems fine. If you don’t think Y is worth it for X then don’t use it.
    Now, the part where they use tips to offset driver pay is evil and people should be in prison for it.
    Joker_vD · 1790200407 · focus · HN ↗
    Oh come on, all of the service personnel survive on the tips alone just fine, like the cashiers, and the nurses, and the receptionists do. Right?
    nonfamous · 1790201955 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, they hide the fact that the food prices are marked up for one thing. Even if you pick up yourself, menu prices in DoorDash are at least 20% above the restaurant’s posted prices. That undisclosed upcharge comes on top of the delivery fees and service charges they do disclose — but only after you have made your order.
    wat10000 · 1790207988 · focus · HN ↗
    I don’t see a problem with that. They show a price for a product. They have no responsibility to inform you that a lower price for the same product is available elsewhere.
    kyleee · 1790208865 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s still rude, have you no shame?
    sokoloff · 1790211469 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    dgently7 · 1790215634 · focus · HN ↗
    amazon is a bad example for this because they aren't just saying here is x for y$. they force the sellers into paying at least y everywhere, even if amazon has nothing to do with the sale. they are using their semi-monopoly to raise your price on x everywhere. sort of the opposite of the "the market will solve it" approach.
    wat10000 · 1790252739 · focus · HN ↗
    My local Giant charges $1 more for identical butter than Lidl. What an outrage.
    kelnos · 1790239414 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    jamilton · 1790205117 · focus · HN ↗
    Most states allow tips to be deducted from wages down to sub-minimum wages for for most tipped workers.
    wat10000 · 1790207406 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s bad and should be considered theft. But what DD did is even worse. They didn’t just reduce pay, they hid what they were doing and didn’t even show a tip to the driver unless the tip was more than the guaranteed pay. And they did this to the tune of over sixteen million dollars.
    dzhiurgis · 1790217755 · focus · HN ↗
    > And they did this to the tune of over sixteen million dollars
    So like $1 per driver?
    Also it's not like the tips they earn correlate with service drivers can provide. At most you can be a bit faster, but generally bound to traffic? (I haven't used them tbh).
    llbeansandrice · 1790225524 · focus · HN ↗
    You are excusing literal theft to the tune of $16mm. And the excuse is that the company is so large and vast and dominant that the scale to the company is a drop in the bucket.
    Does the theft of $16mm become worse if DoorDash was half the size?
    If I steal $16mm I’d go to jail but it’s no big deal because a corporation did it? The apologia for this is baffling to me.
    dzhiurgis · 1790226093 · focus · HN ↗
    Relax it's basically an accounting error.
    kelnos · 1790240478 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    dzhiurgis · 1790291660 · focus · HN ↗
    How much is it then? Their revenue is 16B per year. Do you really think its worth "stealing" 0.1% to pad your numbers? Are you that naive that publicly traded company can pull this off?
    wat10000 · 1790301661 · focus · HN ↗
    There’s no dispute that they did what they did. What are you even arguing?
    llbeansandrice · 1790298781 · focus · HN ↗
    Funny how those never seem to favor labor. I wish I could have an accounting error like that don’t you?
    khriss · 1790239143 · focus · HN ↗
    I genuinely don't understand how corporate propaganda in the US got people to get to the point where defending corporations is like a Pavlovian reflex for some people.
    wat10000 · 1790252466 · focus · HN ↗
    We’re on a forum run by the VCs who funded DoorDash. A lot of people here dream that they too can one day get funded and go on to steal millions with no consequences.
    dzhiurgis · 1790291603 · focus · HN ↗
    Nah we just don't let emotions get over the mathematics. DD does 15B in revenue. 16M is ~0.1% of that.
    wat10000 · 1790299277 · focus · HN ↗
    So theft is ok if you’re already rich?
    wat10000 · 1790252295 · focus · HN ↗
    Stealing sixteen million dollars spread out over a large number of people is still theft and should still result in serious prison time.
    smugma · 1790258309 · focus · HN ↗
    Have you not watched Superman 3 (or Office Space)?
    kelnos · 1790239816 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    josefritzishere · 1790289996 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  2. BeetleB · 1790203918 · focus · HN ↗
    It's been years since I used DoorDash, so I don't remember: Are you saying they don't charge any fees other than the (inflated) price of goods?
    I'd rather the price of goods be fixed, and they tell me what the delivery fee is.
    anon7000 · 1790237866 · focus · HN ↗
    Generally, they inflate prices (or take some % from the restaurant, so the restaurant has to increase prices).
    And have a small delivery fee.
    And have a small “city wants DoorDash to pay its workers fairly, so it’ll charge you an arbitrary amount extra” fee
    And a bag fee.
    And sales tax.
    And a tip
    Oh and don’t forget the service fee.
    I’m not kidding, this is from a recent receipt. There are 6 fees PLUS the cost of the actual food.
    Other delivery platforms are similar
3. handfuloflight · 1790197266 · focus · HN ↗
  This just translates to "anyone paying a margin on anything anywhere is a sucker."
  You're definitely a sucker too, probably multiple times over.
4. askafriend · 1790197463 · focus · HN ↗
  My time is more expensive than the $15 extra I pay for the food...who's the sucker.
  I'm not paying for the food. I'm paying for them to bring me the food. Those are two different products.
5. Aboutplants · 1790197522 · focus · HN ↗
  Eh, the difference is that DoorDash is a logistics company performing a service that restaurants do not like running (delivery). It’s not a middleman providing no value
  1. mschuster91 · 1790199607 · focus · HN ↗
    The problem is they use exploitative labor practices (as we're seeing here) and price-dumping funded by infinite amounts of venture capital. It sets customer expectations to unsustainably low pricing and it forces restaurants to either heavily subsidise their own delivery drivers to keep customer prices low or, because barely anyone can sustain that, to shut down their own delivery service and use <gig company> instead.
    And that in turn gives doordash, uber eats and whatnot access to a lot of data - who orders what and lives where or which restaurant is doing good and which is struggling - that can be sold to third parties. Governments (ICE and other agencies have been caught to just buy data from aggregators), advertisers, credit reporting agencies, political parties, you name it.
    Sure. As a customer the value that doordash et al provide is hard to understate. A single point of contact, a single set of credentials, a unified UI compared to what used to be a ton of never-updated garbage wordpress installs, reliable tracking... but as a whole, we all lose.
6. malfist · 1790197531 · focus · HN ↗
  > literally built on a concept of a sucker pays more
  Or they're built on the idea that they can sell convenience to people and make a lot of money doing so.
  It's not so different from a lot of other businesses. First class and main cabin in a flight gets you the same airplane, the same destination the same travel, but slightly different chairs and some food. Is anyone paying for first class suckers? What about if I buy a skip the line pass at a theme park? Am I a sucker because I paid more than the base admission price? Or is it a trade that I'm willing to make because I have excess income and want to actually ride the rides instead of standing in line all day in the heat?
  Why do executives have executive assistants? Are businesses all suckers?
  I know I'm getting ripped off by doordash, but I'm hungry and I'm busy and the harm of getting ripped off just a bit is way lesser than the time it'd take me to get or prepare food myself. That $10 hamburger that I just paid $25 for is outrageous, but the 30 minutes I saved is worth the $15. If you make mid-six figure income like most of big tech, that's a small small price to pay for time.
  1. ndriscoll · 1790198813 · focus · HN ↗
    Skip the line passes are an obvious sucker play; they oversell tickets to the park so that people can go on like 1 ride every 4 hours, then charge again to actually be able to use the ticket you already bought (and simply don't deliver service to the others). Do you think they are unaware of the capacity at which reasonable latencies can be maintained?
    jayrot · 1790199317 · focus · HN ↗
    In case you, or anyone else, actually care or are interested, there's a great deep dive video on the history of "FASTPASS" by the youtube channel Defunctland.
    brendoelfrendo · 1790203663 · focus · HN ↗
    The Shapeland reveal made me jump out of my chair.
  2. bluegatty · 1790203100 · focus · HN ↗
    "It's not so different from a lot of other businesses. "
    No - it's quite different and that's the point.
    The issues beyond 'apparent value creation are':
    1) asymmetries in power between different actors that induces some to make ill advised actions - passing off hidden costs and especially risks
    2) externalisations - aka damaging the environment, labour regs (which exist due to 1)
    3) misrepresntations in value to end customer - dark patterns, hidden fees, risks not apparent in the transaction.
    Entire industries would not work if we had to properly account for a lot of things.
    "I know I'm getting ripped off by doordash, but I'm hungry and I'm busy and the harm of getting ri" <- it's not just the 'price' that is high and you're 'willing to pay' - that's fine.
    That's definitely not 'rip off' because you're not coerced in any way for that - that's just 'high prices. Aka the $10 bottle of water at an event - that is a 'rip off'.
    It's all the other things in the system that make it problematic.
    Last mile delivery by poor people almost should not exist as a business because it depends on externalizing too many things.
    If they provided healthcare, vacation, job security, didn't force people to run around, all that stuff that removes the 'power and information asymmetry' - and then - it still works as a business, fine but it generally wont.
    Some businesses are structurally unsound, and people invest in them to take advantage of broken systems (social, regulatory) at the margins.
    Now 'Robot Delivery' - that's an entirely different prospect.
    That's an attempt at real value creation. If we got our act together, everything could be delivered by little robots - today - already in 2026. It would reuire a lot of coordination.
    llbeansandrice · 1790225711 · focus · HN ↗
    I wonder how quickly businesses would advocate for better land use and city planning if these externalities were more apparent and properly accounted for instead of providing “convenience” in a system that has been designed to be inconvenient.
  3. trhway · 1790204090 · focus · HN ↗
    > That $10 hamburger
    fast-rise sugar infested bun, non-organic antibiotic infested horrendous animal welfare beef, etc. - the BOM is well under $5. So, you pay $25 for $5 bill of low quality materials (not good to your health with thus additional expenses down the road). Who is the sucker?
    sershe · 1790205603 · focus · HN ↗
    The guy who buys organic, an obvious marketing gimmick with zero scientific evidence behind it... Sorry, couldn't resist.
    trhway · 1790206132 · focus · HN ↗
    Fully understand you. I thought for long that way myself. My cat though for example clearly knew the difference :) With time i learnt it myself.
  4. wombat-man · 1790205724 · focus · HN ↗
    I think there's a business there, for sure, but the markup is definitely a problem for some. I think below a certain order volume it might be hard to get enough delivery people at the ready. As they ask customers to absorb more of the cost the volume could drop. If they don't have enough delivery people then that adds to the delivery time which makes it less and less worth it, at least to me.
    I really dislike the unreliable delivery times. 99% of the time I just use the apps, or more likely the restaurant's site, to place the order and pick it up myself.
    I have the time to do this though, so maybe it's more valuable to busier people, like parents.
7. tstrimple · 1790197643 · focus · HN ↗
  Doordash and grubhub are insane for single food purchases. But the fees are barely noticed when feeding my family of 5. We use it every other week or so just because of how chaotic school activity schedules can be. When we order sushi/chinese for the kids the bill before any delivery services is around $200 for enough food for dinner and another meal with leftovers. The service charge is like $7 and I make sure the driver gets at least $10 regardless of the distance. Cheaper than if we ate in the restaurant and were expected to give a 15-20% tip.
  1. lattalayta · 1790202017 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
  2. cgriswald · 1790202278 · focus · HN ↗
    > Cheaper than if we ate in the restaurant and were expected to give a 15-20% tip.
    You should run that experiment. Get two identical meals, one via delivery the other at the restaurant. Pay close attention to menu prices.
8. robomartin · 1790198078 · focus · HN ↗
  > services like door-dash are literally built on a concept of a sucker pays more
  Strongly disagree with your entire narrative, one that it demonstrably disconnected from reality.
  Nobody is forcing anyone --at all-- to use these services. Not one person. Not one company. Not a single law or mandate. If I want to use it and you don't, that's perfectly fine. If I, for whatever reason, want to pay a premium and you think it's stupid, that's fine too. Don't use it. I will. Simple as that.
  What's the opposite of that? Obamacare. Mandated and forced on everyone. It's shit. It's three times the cost of the insurance we were all promised we could keep if we wanted to (and we could not, because Obamacare killed those plans). Etc.
  See the difference there?
  1. someonebaggy · 1790199054 · focus · HN ↗
    Sounds like you agree that suckers pay more.
    robomartin · 1790387662 · focus · HN ↗
    Sounds like you failed English Reading and Comprehension in school.
  2. mandeepj · 1790200713 · focus · HN ↗
    > Mandated and forced on everyone.
    Nope. It's a marketplace. Your above argument is perfectly applicable to it as well.
  3. moate · 1790200819 · focus · HN ↗
    If you think "high earners with company subsidized plans"(where I assume you fall based on the general demographics of this site, but correct me if I'm wrong) were the target audience of the ACA, you're right to be pissed. It was for the un/underinsured, and people with preexisting conditions.
    But your comparison is wrong, because you can...elect to not use the service. You could pay less for less coverage (so like, buying food without paying for a delivery fee because you don't need the convenience). Also, the individual mandate was killed (sucking funding out of the whole program), so you could opt out of the service entirely.
    Nobody is forcing you to have insurance (at a federal level).
    See the difference there?
  4. rootusrootus · 1790203102 · focus · HN ↗
    > Obamacare. Mandated and forced on everyone. It's shit. It's three times the cost of the insurance we were all promised we could keep if we wanted to
    In a sense, I agree with this assessment, and I think it should be corrected. We should allow people to have the older, less expensive plans with their lifetime caps and preexisting condition exclusion. We'd need to work out the details on whether or not we would allow someone choosing those plans from coming back to the ACA plans in the future, though. Maybe for the right price it could work out. Definitely adds complexity, however.
    robomartin · 1790321316 · focus · HN ↗
    There should not be anything of note between you and the doctors and services you choose. The layers of complexity and interference in our system a both nonsensical and costly, both in dollars and lives or outcomes.
    I have over the years become a believer in the first payer concept. When I pay for goods and services, I get better goods and services. It's that simple.
    We should, of course, help and support the less fortunate (weather that means for financial or health reasons). That should not mean that you screw everyone else to the wall with a disaster of a system that causes such distortion that you can actually find yourself at a doctors office in the US that is worse than a third country clinic. I have seen it with my own eyes. That's just insane.
  5. preg_match · 1790222945 · focus · HN ↗
    Your previous plans were subsidized by the insurance company stealing money, basically. As soon as we said “you can’t steal” then surprise! Your plan is more expensive.
    They stole through denying claims, denying coverage, and more. The reality is that if Obamacare didn’t exist, I would be uninsurable. Yes that might bring your price down. For a bit, until you also become uninsurable, then you’re also fucked.
    Yes insurance can be very cheap if you only take on fit, healthy clientele who will never use your insurance. But yeah, for society that sucks so we stopped doing that.
    robomartin · 1790321048 · focus · HN ↗
    > The reality is that if Obamacare didn’t exist, I would be uninsurable. Yes that might bring your price down.
    There's nothing whatsoever wrong with covering everyone by having everybody contribute a bit more for those who might need more care. I am 100% for that.
    That does not mean that a family's health insurance costs should TRIPLE or more. That's theft. Particularly when you barely use it. A couple hundred bucks a month, sure. Triple or quadruple? No, that's just wrong. Take that extra cost and multiply it by ten years. It's a shit-ton of money. They take away from retirement, kids college, etc.
    What you cause it what a friend of mine has done for ten years: No insurance. If he needs something important he travels to Latin America, gets excellent care and at a reasonable cost that is LESS than the cost of insurance here in the US. Actual care costs less than paying for insurance. Go figure. And, on top of that, you get doctors who will spend 45 minutes talking to you rather than 5 minutes looking at a chart and see you next visit.
    The only reason people accept the dumpster fire that US health insurance has become is because they have not been outside the US to understand how else it could be. This does not at all mean socialized medicine (which is, in general strokes, a disaster).
    preg_match · 1790354611 · focus · HN ↗
    All the countries that the US is compared to have socialized medicine. I think it’s obvious socialized medicine just works better. The only reason you can even travel to get care is because of:
    - currency exchange
    - socialized medicine
    Some countries, like the UK, also have private plans. What people miss is that the reason the private plans are so cheap is because of socialized medicine. When you have to compete with low cost or zero cost, then your price goes down. The US is the worst of all worlds, and a fully socialized system would work better.
    robomartin · 1790387620 · focus · HN ↗
    The part you are missing is that these people are going to Latin America and paying for care, not using socialized medicine...which isn't the best at all.
    Socialized medicine is another fantasy that has infected the minds of those who have never had to actually live under such fantasies.
  6. Edman274 · 1790265935 · focus · HN ↗
    Even before the penalty for non enrollment was set to zero, you could have still paid the $700 tax penalty and then had whatever plan for health insurance you wanted. If the market decided that there was no demand for those non eligible plans, then it means that the market collectively decided that keeping the old plans + 700 dollar additional annual cost was not a good value proposition compared to what replaced them. The net effect of everything taken together was that you would have to pay additional taxes.
    You know, tariffs and gas prices going up have the effect of raising taxes. When the things you buy and the gas you buy costs more, you have to pay more in real dollars in sales and gas tax on those items. The tariffs and the gas prices also have the effect of killing industries locally, which might be more impactful nationally than predatory insurance plans that basically only cover going to the doctor's office for checkups. If you have an objection to things being forced on people, do make sure you're thorough.
    robomartin · 1790320584 · focus · HN ↗
    > Even before the penalty for non enrollment was set to zero, you could have still paid the $700 tax penalty and then had whatever plan for health insurance you wanted.
    Nope, the net effect of the ACA was to make all those plans evaporate. No longer available. We tried. It was impossible to keep our plans and doctors.
    You mention "the market" a few times. The ACA forced a paradigm shift, there was no market left. Not as it was pre-ACA. We have several doctors and medical professionals in our family. Believe me when I tell you that they all say the ACA is shit and it destroyed US healthcare. This is not to say it was perfect before the ACA, but it certainly was not this bad.
    After a few experiences I concluded that the system the ACA has created is now worse than the DMV. I never thought I would find something that would top the DMV.
    We had one horrific experience that I will not recount here in detail. My son tore his ACL. It took WEEKS to get his care sorted. It was incredible to witness the dysfunction and horrifically low quality of care we experienced.
    I have friends who will travel to different countries in Latin America for medical care because of what the ACA did to their healthcare in the US. I was talking to one today over lunch in fact. He has been without US health insurance for a decade now. When he needs anything important he goes down to Argentina, gets better care and at a lower cost.
    > If you have an objection to things being forced on people, do make sure you're thorough.
    The list of government abuse is long and wide. Don't get me started. My post was not intended to be a compendium. That said, yes, we have much to question...and if people ever got their heads out of their asses, we would.
    Simple truth: Both major political parties deserve a solid spanking. They have caused more damage to the US over the last, say, 50 years (pick a number) than one could express in a simple post. Politics in this nation has become so disgusting it inspires projectile vomiting.
9. peezd · 1790200176 · focus · HN ↗
  It's just a standard reintermediation play, inject yourself in the middle of a supply chain, and then once established squeeze the living shit out of both sides.
  Also use exploitation of regulation (e.g. leveraging contractors via 1099s to access cheap labor and indemnification from liability) to your advantage .
  this was the model of like 2/3 of the 'startups' in the 2010s.
  1. trhway · 1790203010 · focus · HN ↗
    >inject yourself in the middle of a supply chain, and then once established squeeze the living shit out of both sides
    And that is what OpenAI and Anthropic are trying to do. Currently they have to compete due to anti-monopoly laws. Once they scare everybody into allowing collaboration between them ("or our AI will kill you all"), ie. removing anti-cartel provisions, they would be able to squeeze both sides - the suppliers of hardware and energy as well as the customers.
10. 2OEH8eoCRo0 · 1790200187 · focus · HN ↗
  Get ready for all the door dash suckers to come defend it.
11. jackb4040 · 1790202844 · focus · HN ↗
  The enshittification model, but with an extra step because they actually have to employ labor.
  First they exploit their own gig workers, to make an unsustainably cheap product and corner users. Then they exploit users, to monopolize distribution and corner restaurants. Then they exploit restaurants, threatening to cut off distribution entirely if they don't get an increasingly large share of profits.
12. quickthrowman · 1790204133 · focus · HN ↗
  Food delivery services offer convenience for a price. If I hire a courier service to bring some materials and tools to one of my electricians, it’ll cost me a minimum of $50.
  I can pay a bit extra for food and $10 in tips and fees to have it delivered to me instead of spending half an hour driving to go get it myself. I know what I’m paying for and value the service they provide.
13. sershe · 1790205857 · focus · HN ↗
  I was just ordering some food on Uber eats and noticed that my bill for 50 bucks of food came to $75 or something. So I decided it was wasteful and I'll drive and pick it up myself. I wasted half an hour of my life and driving at rush hour was also stressful. That one didn't be worth it for 25 bucks but it turned out over it's somehow has a lower price than in person so that brought it down to 21 and then in the restaurant despite it being a counter place with no sitting they pressure you to tip way more than Uber app and I kind of autoclicked it so my savings are down to like 10 bucks for 30 minutes of stressful driving and waiting in line.
  I dunno I think the delivery payment is totally worth it especially if you order multiple meals and make any amount of money at your job
14. JKCalhoun · 1790208101 · focus · HN ↗
  Sucker or lazy-tax?
15. kelnos · 1790240659 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
xyst · 1790195668 · focus · HN ↗
only $1.4M? DD was not confident in their efforts to stop Mamdani. This is like a couple weeks of work from high priced political consultants in NYC.
1. probably_wrong · 1790196243 · focus · HN ↗
  The article disagrees:
  > At the time, DoorDash’s campaign contributions in the run-up to the 2025 mayoral election were considered unusually large — it made a single $1 million gift to a super PAC that, at the time, was the largest donation in the race
2. thrance · 1790202632 · focus · HN ↗
  They knew that tons of other PACs and democracy-hating billionaires like Bill Ackman had their back. Cuomo spent $65 (!!!) per vote received, while Mamdani was at $15.
  Just shows the power of being a politician that actually cares.
sharkjacobs · 1790195677 · focus · HN ↗
If they were honest about it and said something like "we believe our actions were fair and legal and disagree with this decision" it would at least be ideologically consistent.
> In a public statement about the settlement, DoorDash said, “Simply put, we screwed up. Our mistakes meant some Dashers were underpaid or paid late. While these mistakes weren’t intentional, that doesn’t make them okay.” (DoorDash did not respond to a request for comment on its campaign contributions.)
This is villain shit.
1. InsideOutSanta · 1790197848 · focus · HN ↗
  "Simply put, we screwed up. We should have given Cuomo two million so we can keep underpaying Dashers."
Aunche · 1790195816 · focus · HN ↗
Even though the press likes to give Mamdani all the credit for these types of things, this started with a law passed under DeBlasio, and most of the investigation was done under Adams.
1. xrd · 1790196383 · focus · HN ↗
  Mamdani deserves credit for taking this all the way.
  Adams was "indicted in September 2024 on federal charges including bribery and wire fraud, accused of accepting over $100,000" from Turkey. He's now an Albanian citizen, because "he loves travel."
  I don't really agree that this judgement would have happened with anyone as mayor. That road is long and paved with gold distractions.
  1. giancarlostoro · 1790196677 · focus · HN ↗
    > taking this all the way.
    How did you arrive to this conclusion?
    iaw · 1790198506 · focus · HN ↗
    I think they just explained how corrupt the prior mayor was, this coupled with the disclosure by Mamdani about every prior mayor hiding air safety data after 9/11 paint a damning picture of the priorities of prior NYC mayors in recent memory.
  2. Aunche · 1790206899 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, the road is long and these sorts of investigations take time. Eric Adams is an old-school, working-class New Yorker. They tend to be corrupt, but they do get stuff done. His administration resolved a $20M Chipotle lawsuit, then launched and resolved a $39M Starbucks lawsuit.
2. tclancy · 1790196761 · focus · HN ↗
  >most of the investigation was done under Adams.
  Better than about him like the rest of it, I suppose.
3. devindotcom · 1790201435 · focus · HN ↗
  really we should be giving credit to hammurabi for developing the idea of laws in the first place. where would deblasio be without him??
  1. Aunche · 1790209376 · focus · HN ↗
    Is that the explanation your boss forced you to accept when you did 90% of the work and he took all the credit?
4. Freedom2 · 1790207357 · focus · HN ↗
  Perhaps we should give credit to Adams' parents for having a child, else the investigation would have never kicked off.
consumer451 · 1790196279 · focus · HN ↗
Josh Johnson has a great bit about Mamdani:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SCKj7gwbYrc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SCKj7gwbYrc
exabrial · 1790196358 · focus · HN ↗
I'm not so sure this is a victory lol
mkagenius · 1790197176 · focus · HN ↗
> Founders: Tony Xu, Stanley Tang, Andy Fang, and Evan Moore (Stanford students at the time)
Guess never got a chance to learn empathy.
1. verdverm · 1790197299 · focus · HN ↗
  is the drEAk meme appropriate here?
  (⌐_⌐)ノ Empathy
  (•ᴗ•)つ Apathy
2. ok_dad · 1790197480 · focus · HN ↗
  Too bad having their names associated with this immoral politicking won’t cause them problems. An employee stealing a few hundred bucks would get a felony and probably never work a good job again. Founders stealing hundreds of millions from workers get to say whoopsie.
  1. sassbadger · 1790198906 · focus · HN ↗
    Not even a whoopsie. Look how many responders here defend this exploitative behavior that is only enabled through monopolization as "the market regulates this", or "nobody forces them to buy/work there". Pure libertarian brain rot, no better than the communists they always cry about.
3. lern_too_spel · 1790197822 · focus · HN ↗
  <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/760317/how-to-rule-the-world-by-theo-baker/" rel="nofollow">https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/760317/how-to-rule-... is eye opening. When many of us were in college, there was still some idealism about using technology to make the world a better place. Maybe that still exists at some universities, but Sand Hill Road wiped that out of Stanford.
thomasjeff1 · 1790199418 · focus · HN ↗
Uber wants DoorDash gone and DoorDash is just making it too easy.
cdrnsf · 1790200280 · focus · HN ↗
DoorDash and gig companies generally are a play to destabilize employment and turn as many people as possible from employees entitled to benefits and legal protections into contractors that can be discarded at whim. How is ordering, say, a pizza via DoorDash in any way better for you, as a customer, than ordering from a pizza place that employs drivers?
1. healsdata · 1790202494 · focus · HN ↗
  Their appeal initially was that they would deliver for places that didn't have their own drivers. So you went from only getting pizza and Chinese delivery to anything being available.
  Now, everyone is offloading their deliveries to DoorDash. Wendy's first-party delivery is just a wrapper for DoorDash. Pizza Hut used DoorDash if they don't have enough drivers available. Even PetSmart or Petco uses DoorDash for delivery now.
  Not saying it's right or good, but you could order from Pizza Hut and still get a gig worker if their driver called out stick today.
2. tokioyoyo · 1790202793 · focus · HN ↗
  To play devils advocate, pre-UberEats era, we maybe had deliveries from Pizza places and some Chinese shops. Being able to order from basically everywhere and any time is very convenient. Restaurants are generating more sales as well, so it’s mostly the consumer, by choice, spends more on their dinner.
3. Sohcahtoa82 · 1790203220 · focus · HN ↗
  > How is ordering, say, a pizza via DoorDash in any way better for you, as a customer, than ordering from a pizza place that employs drivers?
  One word: variety.
  My local sushi place isn't going to have enough delivery orders to justify having delivery drivers on staff.
  Heck, I remember years ago (Was it the late 90s?) when McDonald's tried to do delivery.
  1. cdrnsf · 1790204155 · focus · HN ↗
    I'll concede the point on variety but I don't think the platforms or their terms are fair to restaurants, delivery drivers or perhaps even customers (though they're clearly choosing to engage). Our favorite Mexican food place in town will fill the orders but isn't happy with them and I imagine they're not alone.
    kelnos · 1790241744 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    Sohcahtoa82 · 1790269381 · focus · HN ↗
    Indeed, I don't like how the delivery companies double-dip by charging both the restaurant AND the customer for a delivery. A modest fee of like 5% to the restaurant would maybe be fine (Especially considering the restaurant is already likely paying 3% for credit card processing), but based on the price differences between DD and the restaurant's own menu, it likely 15-20%.
    The problem of course is that a restaurant that refuses to work with deliveries then ends up getting significantly fewer orders than ones that do. It creates a bit of a racket. Restaurants feel forced to cooperate, or lose significant business.
    As a customer, I get around a lot of the extra costs because my credit card gives me the Dash Pass for free as a little bonus, and Costco sells $100 DD gift cards for $80, so I'm effectively getting every deliver at 20% off.
4. kelnos · 1790241653 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
dayvid · 1790201069 · focus · HN ↗
Ever since it was found that they took part of driver's tips for themselves, I didn't trust the company <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/27/doordash-new-york-tips-delivery-workers" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/27/doordash-new...
1. BeetleB · 1790203785 · focus · HN ↗
  Do you also not trust many/most restaurants?
  1. altairprime · 1790204064 · focus · HN ↗
    Extrapolating from DoorDash scale to ‘your favorite local restaurant’ scale is inappropriate. Fraud at an exponentially higher scale deserves a similarly exponential increase in mistrust. Yes, bad actors individually exist, but when megacorporations scale up bad actors to national and international levels, it’s appropriate for mistrust to scale up accordingly. I have not been able to determine which of the restaurants I frequent are bad actors in this regard, but I have absolutely been able to determine that DoorDash is an unrepentant bad actor, as many consecutive “we fucked you over and paid pennies on the dollar to do so” settlements have confirmed. So changing my behavior to avoid a corrupt megacorp does not automatically correlate with contradiction and hypocrisy in my local behaviors.
    BeetleB · 1790206789 · focus · HN ↗
    > Fraud at an exponentially higher scale deserves a similarly exponential increase in mistrust.
    It was never determined to be fraud. Keep in mind that what they were accused of was never actually tested in courts.
    Also keep in mind that this practice is explicitly enshrined in the laws of many states for restaurant workers. If the worker got a tip, the restaurant owner was allowed to pay below minimum wage for that hour to that worker (as long as wage + tip met the federal minimum wage).
    Which is why I was asking. If you're in one of those (many) states, chances are high that most restaurants are doing what people find so despicable of Doordash. So yes, it is "at scale".
    jasonwatkinspdx · 1790210014 · focus · HN ↗
    Ok, so let's imagine that it's common that mom and pop stores cheat employees by adjusting timesheets. Let's say we also find that Walmart was doing this as official policy accross all their stores.
    Are we supposed to just say "welp, that's ok Walmart, keep doing it, because we can't stop every other mom and pop store in the nation from potentially doing this."
    It's an absurd position to take.
    altairprime · 1790215818 · focus · HN ↗
    This. The three conversational branches in reply to the question posed are “yes”, “no”, and “TIL”; none of those three branches ends up in a conversation that excuses DoorDash, nor in one that promotes increased tolerance of DoorDash. If anyone feels otherwise, then present the case for why we should tolerate Doordash’s behavior, rather than asking one-sentence leading questions and then arguing about the indirection layer of the leading question.
    In this instance, for constructed example, one might present a straightforward claim that we should not direct moral outrage towards DoorDash for those behaviors they voluntarily paid money an apology for. I’m certain that’s not the correct phrasing of the argument intended, but since that claim hasn’t been made yet to us, of course my constructed example is wrong! That’s why it’s so essential to present one’s views as sentences, rather than through leading questions.
    Above, no claim is presented for why discussing local restaurant behaviors has any bearing on how we interpret, moralize, and respond to the behavior of the faceless megacorp DoorDash. Without that connection having been drawn, this is a functionally irrelevant tangent into businesses not comparable to DoorDash in either scale or function.
    jasonwatkinspdx · 1790217369 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, the comment is a variation on this common thought ending cliche: <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat" rel="nofollow">https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
    And these people are always so smug about it, like they're Columbo at the end of an episode doing the big reveal of your moral hypocrisy or whatever.
    altairprime · 1790242762 · focus · HN ↗
    My issue is with rhetorical methods such as that, yes, but let’s not cross the line into mocking the people using those methods. Rhetoric is often taught in morally-neutral terms in the schools underpinning tech — especially at Stanford, the big one next door to YC/HN in Palo Alto! — and the seeming insult of that comparison (I’ve never seen Columbo) will make people less likely to reconsider their rhetorical choices. Whether they want to be heard more successfully or (as I hope) they realize that rhetorical methods are morally-charged in real-world communities or they’re asocial like me and this offers a method-hack for social interaction efficiency, it’s the method that matters here, not the person behind it.
    (One benefit of being nameblind at HN’s community size is that it’s easy for me to treat everyone the same, because I lack any recognition for whether I’ve spoken with someone previously or not. I acknowledge it’s not that easy for other people, but certainly it has the upside of forcing this ‘method, not person’ approach I describe into every interaction I have here :)
    jasonwatkinspdx · 1790252849 · focus · HN ↗
    You may be treating everyone equally in your mind, but prose like the above reads as pretentious to most people, so I don't think your approach is particularly persuasive.
    altairprime · 1790319747 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    BeetleB · 1790257080 · focus · HN ↗
    > The three conversational branches in reply to the question posed are “yes”, “no”, and “TIL”; none of those three branches ends up in a conversation that excuses DoorDash, nor in one that promotes increased tolerance of DoorDash.
    Nothing related to any of my comments was meant to excuse DoorDash. What gave people that idea? It was meant for people to question their views on tipping to begin with.
    BeetleB · 1790258544 · focus · HN ↗
    > Are we supposed to just say "welp, that's ok Walmart, keep doing it, because we can't stop every other mom and pop store in the nation from potentially doing this."
    No, you're supposed to say "Let's stop everyone from doing this" and stop making it legal for mom and pop stores from doing it.
    And this has swayed from my original comment. I'm not asking about legality. The person I responded to found it so terrible he refused to use them. I'm merely suggesting they keep the same moral high ground when they go to eat at a restaurant.
    jasonwatkinspdx · 1790286653 · focus · HN ↗
    You don't seem to understand what DoorDash did wasn't legal. They violated NY's minimum rate law which has provisions specific to gig economy delivery services.
  2. rubyfan · 1790204824 · focus · HN ↗
    No. I’ve heard similar stories from baristas at small coffee shops. Any tips through the tap to pay systems get split between the processor, business owner and then the staff. This should be illegal. People should be ashamed
    BeetleB · 1790207138 · focus · HN ↗
    Should people not be ashamed for not tipping the chef in the back...?
    Tipping is problematic no matter how you look at it. Rather than getting outraged, how about focusing on discontinuing this pointless practice? I've yet to find a single pro-tipping person who is consistent in their views on tipping. They'll happily support one tipping practice in one scenario, and be against the exact same practice in a different sphere.
    BTW, what Doordash was accused of was not tip sharing, but using it to pay less than minimum wage. Which is standard practice for restaurants in the majority of states. That's why I was asking.
    JKCalhoun · 1790208071 · focus · HN ↗
    Agree that paying below minimum wage is bullshit. The small print does though state that if tips don't make up the difference between their wage and minimum wage, the restaurant owner is on the hook to make up that difference.
    Regardless, every tip is a savings to the business owner.
    BeetleB · 1790257136 · focus · HN ↗
    > The small print does though state that if tips don't make up the difference between their wage and minimum wage, the restaurant owner is on the hook to make up that difference.
    DoorDash was following this exact same fine print.
    rubyfan · 1790251112 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m against tipping in any scenario. I don’t think tipping for good service should be the norm. You don’t deserve a tip because you brought my food out correctly and timely, you don’t deserve a tip for delivering my appliances without damaging my walls, you don’t deserve a tip for ringing the register with a smile, all of that is what you’re supposed to do.
    If the entire economic model hinges on the majority of people tipping variable amounts then the model seems broken. Charge proportionately more and don’t rely tips, everyone will have a better experience.
2. scrapcode · 1790255542 · focus · HN ↗
  I feel like I recall this being a thing from close to the very beginning?
  I've used one of these delivery services directly only once since they've all existed. They have been pretty blatant scum since the rip.
ryanisnan · 1790201128 · focus · HN ↗
Money influencing politics again exposes flaws in our democracies. Shocking.
tamimio · 1790201235 · focus · HN ↗
This is a reminder to the naive people who think things are getting worse financially because covid/immigrants/gas/AI/supplychain/[insert BS reason], and not just the 1% greed. Things got bad and living wages are not enough substantially after covid at the same time when billionaires are getting exponentially richer, and all above excuses up there are only to distract the public from this simple fact: your life is getting worse because someone way wealthier is stealing your money, and unfortunately legally too because who writes and approves these legislation and laws is part of the game.
1. method_capital · 1790201520 · focus · HN ↗
  Ok, I'll bite. How are the "wealthier ... stealing [our] money"? We don't have to use doordash or claude code or aws or amazon or anything else. We get to choose. When it comes to paying for government, however, I don't believe we're allowed to "opt out". Maybe Mamdani will give us stores so great we'll be forced to shop at them!
  1. watwut · 1790202318 · focus · HN ↗
    Wealthy choose the goverment amd most of its agenda. People dont get much choice and choosing from available options is framed as "support".
    method_capital · 1790202392 · focus · HN ↗
    Doordash - ie "the wealthy" - spent to prevent Mamdani from getting elected. They failed. What on earth are you complaining about again?
    thrance · 1790202949 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    jackb4040 · 1790204071 · focus · HN ↗
    You're insulting the intelligence of everyone on this website by even attempting this argument. The handful of upset elections by young socialists who want to decrease the political hegemony of billionaires does not amount to evidence that the political hegemony of billionaires isn't real.
    kelnos · 1790242145 · focus · HN ↗
    For every failure like that one, how many successes are there? Probably more than one.
  2. thrance · 1790202380 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    tokioyoyo · 1790203053 · focus · HN ↗
    > The younger generations aren't able to afford homes because they're all bad with their finances
    Home ownership of Gen Z is aligned with millennials’ home ownership at their time. I agree about the K shape economy stuff, but it’s a bit more tricky than “everyone is poor”.
    jackb4040 · 1790204261 · focus · HN ↗
    Millenials were in college during the Great Financial Crisis. They're not exactly an example of a generation whose aspirations were met.
  3. tamimio · 1790202944 · focus · HN ↗
    You don’t get to choose, that is the illusion of choice that everyone (or rather most) believes. The stealing is indirect, and it has many forms like:
    - tax structure: investment income get taxed less than payroll etc etc
    - tax avoidance: offshore, trusts, using companies to write off the tax plus the benefit provided by the government on these write offs. Using assets to loan more with speculation, worse, the buy borrow die model where they borrow against the asset and the heirs inherit the gains never taxed, among many ways and loopholes.
    - asset inflation: low interest rates increase the stock and property, good for who owns it, while the poor get to pay higher rent, the cantillon effect
    - the housing and zoning topic, and how it’s one of the pillar of such indirect money stealing, a topic that needs a book to describe but the solution is simple, depreciating housing as assets.
    - monopolies and few (or one) companies controlling the price, or hold down the wages, to keep poor people poorer and shifting the money more to who controls the scheme
    - poor people end up usually paying even more with overdraft fees or higher interests, punishing the poor even further, and these interests goes to lenders and shareholders.
    - that leads the wealthy to be able to lobby to shape the interests and taxes to their liking, the subsidies etc. when a crisis or hard time happens, all tax payers get to pay and shoulder that but in times of booms the profit stay and remain private.
    And many more cases or situations, hell, not just monetary stuff, even remote work was attacked because it shifts a slight of power dynamics to employees rather than the employers.
  4. settsu · 1790206329 · focus · HN ↗
    > We don't have to use doordash or claude code or aws or amazon or anything else.
    I know you think you're dunking here, but unfortunately you're just proving that either: - You genuinely don't understand how the real works for vast amounts of people, in which case it would behoove you to educate yourself (maybe start by looking into topics like food deserts or Walmart's business practices in small towns) - You're consciously making a strawman argument, in which case please don't insult us with that BS
navinjohnson · 1790202313 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
er0k · 1790206617 · focus · HN ↗
(YC 2013)
1. routing_table · 1790219949 · focus · HN ↗
  We need a black bar on HN not just whenever a prominent computer scientist passes away, but also when a YC company behaves unethically.
  But it's too impractical. It'll probably be on throughout the year.
aquir · 1790230394 · focus · HN ↗
I hope no one orders from anything from them ever again
1vuio0pswjnm7 · 1790269440 · focus · HN ↗
1790101466 | DoorDash Agrees to $131.5M Settlement for Shortchanging Workers | <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/nyregion/doordash-settlement-delivery-drivers.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/nyregion/doordash-settlem... | <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49805887">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49805887 | 3 comments
1790224159 | DoorDash's $131.5M Settlement with the City of New York | <a href="https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/dcwp" rel="nofollow">https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/dcwp | <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49826260">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49826260 | 1 comment

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.