Why is it my responsibility to ensure they’re paid fairly by me directly?
Because the price you pay for a service is a reflection of the relationship you have with the person providing that service, and to believe otherwise is something known as commodity fetishism
"What is, in fact, a social relation between people (between capitalists and exploited laborers) instead assumes “the fantastic form of a relation between things.”
We are defined both individually and societally by the relationships that we form with other people.
If you can’t pay your workers fairly, why does your business deserve to exist?
It does not deserve to exist. However, it does exist, drivers drive for them and are not paid enough for their labor, and you continue to use it despite all of that. I’ll ask again: why don’t you personally be the change you want to see in the world and pay them more now?
I’ll ask again: why don’t you personally be the change you want to see in the world and pay them more now?
Because it’s not my responsibility to subsidize your business. If a tip is required to get good service, then the question becomes how much of a tip required to get good service. It pits customers against workers, while you brush it off as just the cost of getting good service. But if people decide that the cost of your business plus a tip is too much, then no one will use your business. That’s capitalism…it works both ways. You can either decide to make less profit and pay your workers fairly without putting the onus onto your customers, or you can close the business. You are not entitled to exploit both your workers and your customers.
Man, I don’t know what you think we’re talking about, but I’m talking about DoorDash and DoorDash drivers in reality as it is today. I do not own DoorDash, so you are not subsidizing my business. The service offered is just bringing your food to your door, there isn’t really any “good” service that can be used to justify a tip or vice versa. If people decide that the cost of a DoorDash delivery plus a tip is too much, they won’t close the app and go get their food themselves–they will just not tip like OP did and like you do and they will both receive a message like the one above. If you want to have your order picked up quickly, you have to place a winning bid.
THAT is what capitalism is–not some idealized pursuit of profit that refuses to exploit its workers; but a house of cards built out of dozens of competing contradictions, full of people hoping to leave someone else holding the bag when it all comes crashing down. I recommend reading Contradiction 7 of Seventeen Contradictions and The End of Capitalism, “The Contradictory Unity of Production and realisation”. It’s all about how capitalists are fighting the competing contradictions of wanting to sell their goods for as much as possible while paying their laborers as little as possible, and what the broader social impacts of that may be.
I’m talk about “you” figuratively, as in one of the middle-man businesses that only exist to make money off of other people’s work, not “you” literally.
Doordash and other such services merely a convenient way to connect restaurants to more delivery drivers instead of hiring their own. On the surface that’s a decent business model. In reality, it just exploits drivers and charges restaurants for the privilege, and then charges customers and asks for tips that don’t necessarily all go to the drivers. At some point though, customers are going to decide its too expensive, or in this case stop tipping which only results in worse service and complaints. It’s already happening. When real taxi services charge less for delivery, a service they use to provide before these fake taxi companies started, then the tides will turn. Unless Doordash can exploit their drivers more, in which case they risk losing drivers. That’s capitalism…your company is as much a customer as it is a service provider, but most companies refuse to accept that and instead exploit their workers. That’s why laws should exist to prevent that. That’s why we should demand those laws, instead of just subsidizing the wages of workers through the company that’s exploiting them in the first place.
Because the price you pay for a service is a reflection of the relationship you have with the person providing that service, and to believe otherwise is something known as commodity fetishism
We are defined both individually and societally by the relationships that we form with other people.
It does not deserve to exist. However, it does exist, drivers drive for them and are not paid enough for their labor, and you continue to use it despite all of that. I’ll ask again: why don’t you personally be the change you want to see in the world and pay them more now?
Because it’s not my responsibility to subsidize your business. If a tip is required to get good service, then the question becomes how much of a tip required to get good service. It pits customers against workers, while you brush it off as just the cost of getting good service. But if people decide that the cost of your business plus a tip is too much, then no one will use your business. That’s capitalism…it works both ways. You can either decide to make less profit and pay your workers fairly without putting the onus onto your customers, or you can close the business. You are not entitled to exploit both your workers and your customers.
Man, I don’t know what you think we’re talking about, but I’m talking about DoorDash and DoorDash drivers in reality as it is today. I do not own DoorDash, so you are not subsidizing my business. The service offered is just bringing your food to your door, there isn’t really any “good” service that can be used to justify a tip or vice versa. If people decide that the cost of a DoorDash delivery plus a tip is too much, they won’t close the app and go get their food themselves–they will just not tip like OP did and like you do and they will both receive a message like the one above. If you want to have your order picked up quickly, you have to place a winning bid.
THAT is what capitalism is–not some idealized pursuit of profit that refuses to exploit its workers; but a house of cards built out of dozens of competing contradictions, full of people hoping to leave someone else holding the bag when it all comes crashing down. I recommend reading Contradiction 7 of Seventeen Contradictions and The End of Capitalism, “The Contradictory Unity of Production and realisation”. It’s all about how capitalists are fighting the competing contradictions of wanting to sell their goods for as much as possible while paying their laborers as little as possible, and what the broader social impacts of that may be.
I’m talk about “you” figuratively, as in one of the middle-man businesses that only exist to make money off of other people’s work, not “you” literally.
Doordash and other such services merely a convenient way to connect restaurants to more delivery drivers instead of hiring their own. On the surface that’s a decent business model. In reality, it just exploits drivers and charges restaurants for the privilege, and then charges customers and asks for tips that don’t necessarily all go to the drivers. At some point though, customers are going to decide its too expensive, or in this case stop tipping which only results in worse service and complaints. It’s already happening. When real taxi services charge less for delivery, a service they use to provide before these fake taxi companies started, then the tides will turn. Unless Doordash can exploit their drivers more, in which case they risk losing drivers. That’s capitalism…your company is as much a customer as it is a service provider, but most companies refuse to accept that and instead exploit their workers. That’s why laws should exist to prevent that. That’s why we should demand those laws, instead of just subsidizing the wages of workers through the company that’s exploiting them in the first place.