I sincerely hope the best for courier #coops and am happy to help them if I can.
However, I'm concerned whether these sort of businesses can be viable regardless of the ownership model.
Grubhub and Uber Eats are making a loss under these lockdown circumstances that should be a jackpot to them.
There's many convincing cases from people with different types of expertise and experience on why the math simply doesn't add up and these sort of companies will never be profitable.
@LeoSammallahti I too have been convinced that these corps[es] cannot survive (at their undercutting rates? lockdown means they're losing less than ever before! ) I haven't really internalized what it means about taxi and livery services maybe having been well scaled and priced. Courier coops that tend towards unionized effects then maybe have a space. I worry on your point more generally, what collective service business models survive even with the removal of extractive cos in the new normal.
My guess would be that food-ordering online platforms could make a lot of sense if they would be owned by the restaurants, who would also organise the deliveries themselves. There are many companies like that are profitable.
However, these platforms often extract monopoly rents from the restaurants. In Finland the restaurants have to pay these platforms more than they pay in taxes. If these were #coops, the incentive would be to only take enough to maintain and develop the platform.
@LeoSammallahti @loppear "only take enough [...] the platform" This assumes the delivery isn't part of the coop, otherwise those time and expense costs have to be captured.
There was a recent USA court ruling against one of the 'gig economy' companies that found the drivers to be employees.
It's an interesting problem. Restaurants that provide delivery can roll the delivery costs into the rest of the overhead, and provide "free" delivery. Not an option for courier.
