i picked mail delivery as an example because it is a case of what in isolation would be almost unthinkable levels of convenience - people manually transporting packages hundreds of miles right to your doorstep over shockingly short periods of time for less than the cost of a cup of coffee - that is nevertheless extremely normal and benign due to the degree to which it has been effectively systematized and adequately compensated. but food delivery is already very much something that happens in scenarios that are significantly less exploitative than gig work while still being individual trips for specific people.
delivery drivers who are employees for restaurants are still bringing bespoke meals to your house on demand, and this is usually both cheaper And better compensated than gig work. some people have housekeepers or some kind of part time aide who will shop for them - elderly people more frequently so. obviously this is not a type of service that's super financially accessible for the average person, but when you consider how many grocery stores have started offering pickup orders at no additional cost, you can see how it could be feasible for a situation analogous to the post office to crop up in this space. grocery store employees who are already making an hourly wage based on the profits of the groceries get paid to prepare the orders for pick up, and a second person who is more like a mailman than an instacarter could do nothing more than pick up and deliver all orders for specific areas. much more efficient - and so much less costly - than each of those households needing to pay someone to spend an hour of their time in a grocery store on their behalf. we used to have a whole person whose job it was to bring fresh milk to your house every morning when that was a service the average person had a demand for.
i just feel like saying "how much convenience you need" kind of gives away the game on how much unexamined ableism plays into a lot of these discussions. without getting into the weeds of where one draws the line between convenience and accommodation, i really don't think that there are universally applicable 'quantities' or severity of convenience. there are just conveniences that are taken for granted and conveniences that aren't.
can having someone go to the grocery store for you really be thought of as "more convenience" than having an entire government agency with thousands of employees in place to hand deliver pieces of paper to the homes of every person in the country? personally i think not, but the difference is that mail delivery is something that almost everybody needs and wants, and the people who need or want grocery delivery are seen as only being in that position because there's something Wrong with us. we're too sick or too old. or we're just lazy. we just don't want to interact with people because the internet has made everyone misanthropic shut ins.
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