Postal Arbitrage (opens in new tab)

But they also could have just raised prices on everything but the cheap one DoorDash was using for pricing.

You only need to specify the name and address of the registered agent, which is sort of a "contact person", not somebody who works for the company.

https://www.delawarebusinessincorporators.com/blogs/news/can... and https://velawood.com/anonymity-in-delaware/

Personally, I don't believe that free markets are a sensible way to manage local affairs. They work well on a medium scale, where goods are fungible and efficiency matters: but for something like the local pizza place, customer behaviour doesn't match that of a market participant. I don't think it's sensible to expect the local pizza place to be free of arbitrage opportunities. Someone who identifies and exploits such opportunities (e.g. "free meals available on request") would be taking advantage of goodwill, and the reason we can't have nice things. However, if a large corpo comes along and starts trying to undercut the locals, absolutely mug them for all they're worth: they're playing a different game, and it's not one you should want them to win.

From my side, as someone old enough to remember Domino's running the "there in thirty minutes or it's free" promotions... These delivery services absolutely tanked the quality of delivery.

Now you can basically only get slow delivery of over priced, cold food. Sure, you can get it from far more places, but it's a pyrrhic victory if I've ever seen one.

Used to be if a restaurant offered delivery, it was ok food for delivery, at ok prices, and their drivers had gear to keep it warm and presentable.

Now we basically only do pick up because these universal delivery companies suck at the one fucking thing they're supposed to do. But they've run all the local restaurants out of the delivery game.

Uber eats / Door Dash suck so much I have no desire to order delivery food at all other than the two that run their own delivery and I know it will be a consistent experience. Anything else I either pick it or go without.

It was also shady how they paid for ads to supplant the phone numbers on Google so you were calling Door dash instead of the food place.

Order A,B,C - receive only A+B, or A,B,D. No explanation. Tipped generously.

For a long time, I myself drove and picked up my orders. The same restaurants rarely made mistakes. I never had to ask for missing item to be included. They always had everything in the bag.

It’s happened so often, it has to be malice from one of the parties involved.

Win everything you need from sweepstakes!

So it appears to be privatised but with strict government regulations.

> While nearly three-quarters of the world’s cargo is carried by ocean-going ships, road vehicles like trucks and vans make up the majority, 65%, of freight’s emissions. Most ships burn fossil fuels and emit carbon, but they carry large amounts of freight at the same time, making them the most efficient way to move cargo. Road freight, however, can emit more than 100 times as much CO2 as ships to carry the same amount of freight the same distance. Road transport is also a fast-growing sector—80% of the global increase in diesel consumption can be attributed to trucks. E-commerce and home delivery are two reasons for this growth.

Gemini's summary about the shipping CO2 sections:

Shipping accounts for 80% of all international transport but only 37% of transport's carbon emissions (9:13 - 9:18).

Road transport is highlighted as the "King of pollution," making up less than 10% of international transport but over half of emissions (9:26 - 9:32).

Ferrying pears across the Earth is actually less carbon intensive than driving them in a truck to a packing plant across one's own country (9:48 - 9:52).

All international shipping combined is responsible for only 2.5% of global emissions (9:58 - 10:15).

Container ships use ~0.015 kWh per ton-km[1] and a car is ~1.35 kWh/km.

If you go to the store and end up getting >10 things it becomes "worth it" from an energy standpoint. Anything less printing at home seemed to be more economical... Not an expert though just saying it opened my eyes to how inefficient "last mile delivery" energy consumption is.

[1] https://www.withouthotair.com/c15/page_95.shtml (old reference)

The question is which is easier to do (ROI)... to cut the shipping fuel carbon footprint by half, or over the road trucking (that's about 1/4th of all the shipping) by 20%? For that matter, moving 25% of the over the road trucking to rail would accomplish that too.

At my house, it's a 140 mile round trip between the fulfillment center ("are you feeling fulfilled yet?") and the drop off location.

OTOH, there's likely more of "you" than there are of "me" ...

I can almost guarantee that everyone mentioned in that blog post is a habitual Amazon user. They're all renewing Prime each year at full price and making a ton of regular purchases. The family has even turned on the FOMO by making Prime a family social network with social pressure to stay. I see it as a self-own, personally.

Edit: I'm taking part of this to the root of the thread

But that’s exactly the loophole: you can borrow for very cheap against this notional equity without incurring a cent in taxes (since divodends are never paid out)

The USPS is a government-run spam delivery service that there is no way to opt out of. Those of us who do banking and other administrative tasks online would be better off if the government shut it down completely, or better yet subsidized it slightly so it doesn't have to deliver spam to survive.

But as it is, I don't see any good reason to have any more respect for USPS than I do for any other spammer.

That just means that whatever it actually costs to deliver mail to/from whatever parts of Denmark they provide service for, the people who use the service will pay that cost plus an additional cost on top of it so that the private owner (and perhaps their shareholders) can line their pockets. The nice thing about public services is that you avoid paying that extra money just so that a small number of people can personally profit from it. You can also lose a lot of transparency and control over how the service is run.

That said, I'm a bit envious of the lack of junk mail.