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

349 points · 189 comments · vrganj

  1. toomuchtodo · · focus · HN ↗
    More evidence Big Tech valuations are driven primarily by worker exploitation. Keep 'em coming.
    1. ausbah · · 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 · · focus · HN ↗
        And they mostly keep getting away with it because digital makes things preposterously more convenient.

        I missed the bus by 1 minute today, putting me in a place to wait 30 minutes for the next one.

        Lyfted to the office in 10 minutes. Cost $10. That $10 was worth 30 minutes of my day.

        1. krispyfi · · 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?
          1. shadowgovt · · focus · HN ↗
            Wildly underfunded? I don't think so.

            America underfunded? Yes.

            There are three buses that go from the main depot to my office. They all arrived in a line back to back to back, picked up zero passengers, and went their merry way.

            I watched this happen from one block over, waiting for the stoplight to change so I could cross the street and catch any of them. Unfortunately, since they were all moving in a blob, the next blob was going to be around in 30 minutes instead of the average 10 minutes one might expect from a non-blob arrangement.

            But that part of the story was anecdote. The more relevant part was that in the event of disruption of the infrastructure solution, modern cellular radio and digital technology let us ad hoc book a one-off service solution on the fly, and that is so convenient that the people who facilitate it can get away with some massive wealth extraction as a result.

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