[ExI] powerful image

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
<extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of SR Ballard via
extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] powerful image





>...Addition of money allows for grocery delivery. If something like Shipt
could accept food stamps + waive delivery fee (bill govt instead) then I
think that whole issue would be basically solved... SR



I can think of a couple of obvious problems SR.  If the grocery store is at
risk, the delivery truck is more at risk.  Imagine you are insuring that
delivery.  What do you charge to underwrite that activity?  Suppose you bill
the government and they can't pay?  Both the city of Chicago and the state
of Illinois are facing huge revenue shortfalls and the Fed will likely not
pay for that delivery.  The delivery company would attach an additional
delivery charge to cover the risk they wouldn't be paid and the risk they
don't get their truck back, or it comes back damaged.  

So... that delivery fee must be tacked on.  For groceries we already know
that fee is huge, which is why we have grocery stores to start with: a lot
of mass and bulk, making it incompatible with point to point delivery.  You
can't order a watermelon on Amazon Fresh.  It would cost 30 bucks, if you
are willing to wait three weeks for whatever is left of it.

I could imagine some kind of outdoor produce market of some kind, where food
could be bought in bulk and distributed in tents.  They can be set up on the
sites where grocery stores were before the fires.  Those could work if they
lean away from factory food, the kind most of us eat, but rather sell raw
produce in bulk, a sack of potatoes, a sack of rice, sacks of beans, a 20
pound hunk of pork, that sorta thing.  

It would be retro in a way, but it could sustain the locals for the next two
to five years as these grocery chains re-establish themselves, if they do.

I wouldn't want to be the mayor of Chicago today.

spike