So, as far as I can see, the meme “summoning my pizza slaves with a bourgeois app” has achieved legendary status on Hexbear, mostly as a form of satire, to make fun of it. That’s the full version I could find:
“I do self-criticism constantly because I’m trapped in a Maoist cult where comrades (white terrorists) criticize me mercilessly for having a fascist credit card (VISA Silver Signature Rewards). They won’t let me order vegan pizza anymore because the phone is fascist and “summoning my pizza slaves with a bourgeois app” is “bad vibes”
Now, I find myself in a country where these delivery apps have arrived relatively “recently”, sparking a vast social and political uprising. Workers are indeed treated extremely poorly, with NO job security, and they operate in a legal grey area (like, they are de facto employees, but they are treated as auto-entrepreneurs… neoliberal dream to destroy workers’ rights).
Adding to this, the working conditions can be quite perilous. In my city, traffic is notoriously chaotic, and cycling is dangerous. But not potentially dangerous, bodies-on-the-street-every-month dangerous. While we do have a well-established public transportation system, the city’s bike infrastructure is still quite underdeveloped, and cars dominate the roadways.
I’m aware that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism and yadda yadda. However, I find this particular form of consumption especially horrible. This is a highly walkable city with a wide range of food options readily available, making it unnecessary to rely on food delivery apps. And it really does feels like “summoning my pizza slaves with a bourgeois app". Mostly racialized workers, working dangerously in grey areas of law.
Have you normalized food delivery in your lifestyle? How do you deal with it? How do you navigate these ethical concerns?
What makes meet market delivery apps particularly bad is they basicly create a stranglehold on small business and workers and are basicly like the mafia controlled areas that have increased costs for everyone because everyone has to pay for protection to get customers.
Now for the workers, these apps present a regressive form of employment that reclassified workers as contractors. Notice home depot parking lots with McDonald’s you’ll see a bunch of people siting in their cars or in the McDonald’s waiting for work to pop up. A littral open air meet market.
With the rise in the price of money and the cost of cars and the car consumables these apps in the long term will struggle to stick around. The cost of these apps are increasing as they can no long be subsidized on cheap money to get marketshare with the goal of geting monomseney pricing or a goverment contract. That’s how vc capital works.
As I remind people captlism is changing neoliberalism is fading away at this conjecture a new form of capital management is coming right now the need to restore profitability is driving this this is what uber eats and lyft was about but it didn’t work.
As far as navigating it personally, sometimes I use the app it does feed workers, recently its too expensive to justify for most people since the cost of cooking is get close to approximating the cost of take out. Taking an ethical moral stance I think is kinda pointless.
People need healthy food for low cost and this is something any leftist of any stripe can do we can even charge a very modest fee to build more assets for the partys engaged in it. Like we need to create our own network of social reproduction feeding people healthy food in food deserts is a very practical thing most people can engage in. In captlism workers need assets like soup kitchens and job networks and even physical property for the party to be effective. Running a co-op that is allied with the local party for legal reasons and then using that to host events is a tool and to build community services, this is something we have to do to build trust in the community and to get credibility so we can engage in larger projects.
I don’t know if this helps.