If people lived in 15 minute cities and had significantly more leisure time I don’t see why delivery would be necessary in most cases.
delivery is a big thing even in large chinese cities with good infrastructure. and the number of delivery workers is going up, it was at 3 million in 2020 but 7 million now in 2023 in china. urbanization in china is also increasing, and so are the numbers of high quality cities with good infrastructure. the fact is a lot of people have a need for this.
And if we want to talk about planned economies I don’t know how you justify putting a ton of resources into developing, manufacturing, and maintaining a fleet of robots for delivering food to treat boys
people need food to survive.
absolutely, there will be people who need home delivery by default but it seems like the goal for urban planning should be to make these individualistic actions unnecessary and undesirable, in the same way that it should prioritize public transit and dense development or car-centrism and suburban sprawl.
sure, you should reduce the need for the robots, and of course you want to reduce the time its needed for a robot to travel anyways, its more efficient. the fact is we must automate as many aspects of society as possible so that people can focus on personally and socially meaningful pursuits. china itself even has little underground passages between major residential buildings to make deliveries faster, and those passages are only for delivery vehicles/robots. and also imagine what a society that is able to automate menial labor looks like, i often wonder how many incredibly intelligent people are not afforded opportunities because they have been filed away under ‘manual laborer’. imagine what technologies and ideas we have missed out on because of that.
no means-testing but build society in a way that does away with treat-brain.
I don’t think you’re getting that I understand people need food. I’m talking about treat-seeking behaviour = mindless, marketing-driven consumerism which should be stamped out. I’m currently a courier and I’ve done doordash. 90% of the things I deliver now are completely worthless impulse buys that will get tossed in the garage/attic/trash after a week and never interacted with again (or they get returned a week later, yay more fossil fuels used to transport worthless trash!). 100% of the things I delivered with doordash should be classified as unfit for human consumption in any just society. Literal poison concocted in a lab to get people addicted and prey upon people in food deserts. We could certainly get into the crisis of overproduction and making things for which there is no market and then creating a market via banner ads fed to boomers here. There are SO MANY people whose have been conditioned to think that buying thing = good emotion and not being able to buy thing = why even live?
Delivery is a big thing because everyone is falling all over themselves trying to corner the market. Third party food delivery (ie doordash, not pizza hut delivering their own stuff) is just more capitalist “innovation” in finding new ways to extract rents. I would argue that people have an increased need for delivery because society has removed alternatives or made them inaccessible via e.g.: consolidation and monopolization of the necessities of life and longer working hours (rate of profit declining and all that jazz). The focus is on creating new captive markets and squeezing as much blood from that stone as possible. All of these are examples of problems brought on by profit-seeking and are antithetical to communism.
I will reiterate that I’m not talking about the supply chain as a whole (never disagreed that people need food) and that, of course, people shouldn’t have to travel to each individual farm to get their basics. I really don’t know where you’re getting these assumptions about what I’m saying. All I’m saying is that personal, individual delivery as default should be heavily disincentivized for people that do not need it.
I’m currently a courier and I’ve done doordash. 90% of the things I deliver now are completely worthless impulse buys that will get tossed in the garage/attic/trash after a week and never interacted with again (or they get returned a week later, yay more fossil fuels used to transport worthless trash!).
yeah that makes sense. afaik the delivery services in china are all food. its a little weird that people are ordering things like toys or plastic baubles or even stuff like detergent on doordash when you can just order something like that via amazon / normal mail on a regular basis, the carbon impact of that is likely minimal because USPS/UPS/FedEx will already have courier routes going through your area already. probably even more minimal than going to a store in your own car.
I will reiterate that I’m not talking about the supply chain as a whole (never disagreed that people need food) and that, of course, people shouldn’t have to travel to each individual farm to get their basics. I really don’t know where you’re getting these assumptions about what I’m saying. All I’m saying is that personal, individual delivery as default should be heavily disincentivized for people that do not need it.
i guess i was a little kneejerk of a response, i get very angry at people being luddites on here about tech that has very obvious uses under socialism, marx was very clear about how luddites are reactionary.
It’s cool. I realized you might be thinking I’m just another anti-tech luddite but I would describe myself as more against wasteful/inefficient uses of tech and using tech as a band-aid instead of attacking the root cause of societal issues.
delivery is a big thing even in large chinese cities with good infrastructure. and the number of delivery workers is going up, it was at 3 million in 2020 but 7 million now in 2023 in china. urbanization in china is also increasing, and so are the numbers of high quality cities with good infrastructure. the fact is a lot of people have a need for this.
people need food to survive.
sure, you should reduce the need for the robots, and of course you want to reduce the time its needed for a robot to travel anyways, its more efficient. the fact is we must automate as many aspects of society as possible so that people can focus on personally and socially meaningful pursuits. china itself even has little underground passages between major residential buildings to make deliveries faster, and those passages are only for delivery vehicles/robots. and also imagine what a society that is able to automate menial labor looks like, i often wonder how many incredibly intelligent people are not afforded opportunities because they have been filed away under ‘manual laborer’. imagine what technologies and ideas we have missed out on because of that.
people need food to survive.
I don’t think you’re getting that I understand people need food. I’m talking about treat-seeking behaviour = mindless, marketing-driven consumerism which should be stamped out. I’m currently a courier and I’ve done doordash. 90% of the things I deliver now are completely worthless impulse buys that will get tossed in the garage/attic/trash after a week and never interacted with again (or they get returned a week later, yay more fossil fuels used to transport worthless trash!). 100% of the things I delivered with doordash should be classified as unfit for human consumption in any just society. Literal poison concocted in a lab to get people addicted and prey upon people in food deserts. We could certainly get into the crisis of overproduction and making things for which there is no market and then creating a market via banner ads fed to boomers here. There are SO MANY people whose have been conditioned to think that buying thing = good emotion and not being able to buy thing = why even live?
Delivery is a big thing because everyone is falling all over themselves trying to corner the market. Third party food delivery (ie doordash, not pizza hut delivering their own stuff) is just more capitalist “innovation” in finding new ways to extract rents. I would argue that people have an increased need for delivery because society has removed alternatives or made them inaccessible via e.g.: consolidation and monopolization of the necessities of life and longer working hours (rate of profit declining and all that jazz). The focus is on creating new captive markets and squeezing as much blood from that stone as possible. All of these are examples of problems brought on by profit-seeking and are antithetical to communism.
I will reiterate that I’m not talking about the supply chain as a whole (never disagreed that people need food) and that, of course, people shouldn’t have to travel to each individual farm to get their basics. I really don’t know where you’re getting these assumptions about what I’m saying. All I’m saying is that personal, individual delivery as default should be heavily disincentivized for people that do not need it.
yeah that makes sense. afaik the delivery services in china are all food. its a little weird that people are ordering things like toys or plastic baubles or even stuff like detergent on doordash when you can just order something like that via amazon / normal mail on a regular basis, the carbon impact of that is likely minimal because USPS/UPS/FedEx will already have courier routes going through your area already. probably even more minimal than going to a store in your own car.
i guess i was a little kneejerk of a response, i get very angry at people being luddites on here about tech that has very obvious uses under socialism, marx was very clear about how luddites are reactionary.
It’s cool. I realized you might be thinking I’m just another anti-tech luddite but I would describe myself as more against wasteful/inefficient uses of tech and using tech as a band-aid instead of attacking the root cause of societal issues.