i wish people were more capable of articulating critiques about exploitative conveniences like doordash without implying that the exploitation and the convenience are both equally objectionable.
i kinda think it is because u cant rlly have one without the other
well see now i don't think that's true. its entirely possible to adequately compensate people to do stuff like "pick up and deliver food or other objects to someone's house," or any other kind of situation where you're paying someone else to do a task for you. it's the desire for third party entities to extract as much money as possible out of these interactions that causes the exploitation. like, having a neightborhood mailmain isn't exploitative just because there's a world where people could pick up their own mail at the post office because the mailman gets stuff like health insurance and paid leave and overtime.
#like.#most convenience boils down to value-added right?#frozen diced onion is more expensive per unit than a whole onion bc someone spent time adding convenience to it#the need for convenience is totally value neutral!!!#it's not providing convenience as a service that exploits labourers#it's having the value of their labour extracted to the business owner#this is true of the instacart worker and true of the worker who works in the packing plant chopping the onions#nobody who is remotely serious is suggesting that we abolish labour bc it's simply not feasible and never will be#there is always work that needs doing#making things more convenient and accessible for anyone who needs that is extremely valuable work in fact!#and the people doing that labour and producing that value are entitled to the whole proceeds of it!#what i'm trying to say is that yeah we need to move these conversations beyond really weird guilt rituals around consumer behaviour
The interesting thing here is that it's not necessarily true that adding convenience adds cost. Pre-diced frozen onions might be more expensive in some places because there's an extra step... but they're also cheaper in some places, because it's easier to transport and store frozen food (and you can store it for much longer) than fresh food, and nobody's out there selling frozen whole onions. Pre-diced food also allows the use of unattractive vegetables, or damaged parts can be removed and the undamaged parts diced and sold, which you can't do with whole onions. The small amount of extra labour is one part of the equation re: what affects the total costs and benefits of pre-chopping, bagging and freezing onions.
There's a gut reaction to the idea that if something is more convenient for the end user, then it must be more difficult, expensive, or worse in some way to make, but that's not entirely true. It is true in many cases and false in many cases. Dishwashers use less water than sink washing, but you'll still see people hating on them because they take less labour and more labour is somehow righteous. Tumble dryers are a bad idea in many areas because they use so much electricity and damage clothing, and a good idea in others where electricity is abundant and the local weather and space availability isn't conducive to air drying. Those blender things that Americans have in their sinks look like an absurd sign of laziness and negligence to the rest of us, but if you look at how their waste disposal systems are set up, breaking down basic organics and flushing them in wastewater is actually a very convenient way of dealing with food waste in areas where composting is inconvenient and reduces the need for road transport to take away green waste in rubbish bins. Installing little electric blenders in all the sinks is a reasonable investment that reduces the need to transport and deal with waste in other ways.
There are taps in my house that I can turn on for all the clean, safe water I want, whenever I want. I can get it hot, cold, or mix it to any temperature in between. That's fucking absurd. Having clean water available on tap inside almost every home is a bonkers convenience. Having systems to take away the wastewater is even more convenient. This system is unbelievably complicated and expensive and integrating it into every home and most businesses has a huge impact on the design, cost and maintenance of every town that has it and every home within those towns. Yet, obviously, it's worth it from a practical standpoint -- the massive health benefits, ability to make sure that the majority of people have access to clean water (some people fall through the cracks in any system) and reduction in the traffic we'd otherwise experience if everyone had to obtain and dispose of their own water hugely outweigh the costs of implementation.
Also: Convenient things are more likely to actually happen.
Look, people are tired, there are only so many hours in the day, we're all doing our best out here.
If there's a public good that you want to happen, making it as easy and convenient as possible matters.
Indoor plumbing makes it more likely that people will stay hydrated.
Having mail delivered to your house makes it more likely that people will actually check their mail regularly, rather than forgetting to go to the post office.
Having blood drives and vaccinations at places people already go, like work, means they're more likely to go for the inconvenient needle jab. At least it's not an extra trip.
Hell, having routine trash pickup has wildly reduced the amount that people just set trash on fire or leave it laying around their yards. If you walk around an old farm, you'd better be up on your tetanus shots, at least here in the US.
If it's being done right, a lot of government is about making the best course of action also the cheapest and most convenient one, and tbh that's great. It's not always how things are done, but I think it's one of the better carrots society has, as opposed to sticks, which don't work well.
