I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people (especially in the US) regularly demand that their food be chauffeured to them.
I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people (especially in the US) regularly demand that their food be chauffeured to them.
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I've lived several places. In some, I could walk to get food, and I gladly did so. In others, I could not.
Should I have starved?
If your argument is "you should have driven," then you are depending on cars. Whether it's the buyer or an employee doing the driving has little effect on how much a car is being used. The environment doesn't care who's burning the gas.
That almost makes it a steal, $20 for delivery or $20k + fees (tag, insurance, license, etc) + the cost of the food.
I do get your point though, the shit we have in the US terrible, the are only really walkable places are only in a few overly-expensive areas.
in history we learned how most civilizations starved to death until pizza hut started delivering food to people.
before then people would starve as there was no other way to get/prepare food at home.
So did you hunt for your dinner last night?
yes, because the optimal solution is clearly the most extreme counterexample you can imagine
An extreme counterexample is required in response to your extreme mischaracterization of the guy's argument. I'm just continuing down your logic of exaggerating the argument to the point of being nonsensical. It turns out you only like it when you do it to other people, but not when its done to you.
my point is that a society optimise for an individual ends up being needlessly wasteful and miserable for an individual.
a society were time is so scarse that is in your best interest to have someone barely making a living so you can have overpriced cold meals, because having time to just exist and do groceries and cook is unfeasible.
however a more collectivist and less atomised society you would rarely be in such situation in the first place
You're right, but that's wanting something that the guy you're replying to is powerless to change by himself. Simply arguing against using gig economy delivery services without fixing the underlying cause for why they need to use it doesn't solve the problem.
he can change it, we all can,
participate in your community, find local mutual aids...
it'll make you feel much better, less powerless, and make their neighbourhood a much better place to be.
Should I have starved?
I mean I'd say you could've cooked yourself and saved many trips by car. But fair enough if we assume you must order food (which is quite uncommon to do on a very regular basis where I live), then sure.
And how do I get the ingredients to cook exactly?
We're back where we were.
You don't need 1 car trip for every single meal if you cook yourself. You obviously buy in bulk, usually for a whole week. That's 6/7 car trips saved.
That's kinda the whole point of having a car, so you can transport a lot of goods home. At least, that's the point in my country.
In practice, sometimes you have to improvise, if something goes bad, or you realize you're missing a key ingredient, or you're too tired after a hard day etc
Sure. But none of those things happen on a daily basis. At least, they shouldn't with a modicum of planning. It still saves probably at least half of the trips
Sure. But none of those things happen on a daily basis.
No, but in aggregate they do happen millions of times per day
Well yea but I meant for a single person. In aggregate, it still saves probably at least half of the trips.
You're not really arguing that getting takeaway and buying food ingredients in bulk is just as bad when it comes to the amount of car trips, right? That seems ludicrous.
No I'm just saying these delivery services have their place. And they're at least more efficient (in terms of fuel) than doing pickup yourself. They can group orders and daisy chain their routes.
Don't expect problems to have neat, individually actionable solutions. Most don't.
But cooking your own food is pretty damn near to being that.
Provided you have time, and the groceries available, and the...
Point is, taking every observation personally is missing the forest from the trees. Objecting to overuse of cars is an objection to a systemic issue (usually insufficientpublic transport), and it won't be solved by individual action. Responding to it with "Well, I need a car, actually..." is missing the point. Same with delivery: getting into a "well, I can't walk to food" "well, you should cook", "well, I ..." is missing the point of "there's a whole mess of traffic that's both expensive and has been managed without earlier - that's weird, wonder what changed to cause it?"