https://seattle.eater.com/2024/2/21/24079162/tony-delivers-seattle-delivery-app-fees-downtown
Tony Illes was working as an Uber Eats delivery person when an ordinance passed last year by the Seattle City Council came into effect in mid-January. The new rule required app companies to pay workers like Illes a minimum wage based on the miles they travel and the minutes they spend on the job. The apps say that this amounts to around $26 an hour, and both Uber Eats and DoorDash responded by adding $5 fees to every order (even when the customer is outside Seattle city limits) while calling for the law to be repealed. According to a recent DoorDash blog post, the ordinance has resulted in an “unprecedented drop in order volume,” a drop that Illes felt personally. He told Geekwire that “demand is dead” and told local TV station KIRO 7, “I didn’t get an order for like six hours and I was done.”
So Illes had an idea: Who needs these apps, anyway? He printed up signs with QR codes directing people to a bare-bones website with his phone number, promising that he would deliver food by bike in Uptown, South Lake Union, Belltown, and a chunk of the downtown core for $5 a pop from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. daily. All you had to do was order the food and send him the screenshot. He called himself “Tony Delivers.”
I've been dreaming of a future where Uber, DoorDash, etc are devoid of any corporate organization. Developers, drivers and support staff are the only human workers, the rest is organized by a complex, but open source, program.
No investors, no shareholders, every cent goes to the workers. Wages are higher in prices are lower because we aren't paying five VPs a million dollars a year or sending all our profits to the shareholders.
I think advances in computing and AI could actually make this possible. If only greed didn't run the world it might be doable
I want free market capitalism that works for us. What we have now if slavery with extra steps
Federated DoorDash?
I'm in.
The funny thing is that sounds a lot like communism, despite being a capitalistic free market service. Corporate communism if you will
The USA is supposed to be a Country of the people, by the people and for the people.
Free market communism sounds American as fuck to me.
Free markets can exist without corporate overlords, we collectively need to stop believing the Capitalism vs Communism false-dichotomy. Hybrid systems are the future, any other pure system devolves into slavery.
That's not communism, that's just a worker co-op.
I always wonder why trade organization don't organize stuff like this. Wouldn't this be in the interest of the whole gastronomic industry? Pretty much every single restaurant in the country could earn more money (and I know they probably don't care, but the gig workers could also earn more).
There is billions of dollars in preventing this. Amazon has an entire fleet of people hired for the sole purpose of stopping unionization, which is illegal but they get away with it because power.
This is what happens when money and power write our laws. First step is to get money out of politics. No more millionaires representing people making an avg of 35k a year.