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points by clcaev 13 hours ago | 0 comments

Could we have more discussion of our current legal/business environment, specifically, the economic opportunities it affords/constrains?

If this merger is approved via consumer welfare standard, should it be contingent upon some constraints? For example, should DoorDash be restricted from participating in the market it coordinates? If it’s a near monopoly in some regions, how will price be controlled without market pressure?

Historically, antitrust action also considers economic opportunity: Bell/AT&T licensed Unix source code for a nominal fee, largely because the 1956 consent decree restricted Bell/AT&T from selling products outside telecommunications.

[–] runako 9 hours ago

The good news is the US has seen similar economic consolidation in the past, and passed laws to rebalance the economy accordingly.

The bad news is the US has developed a deeply entrenched culture of non-enforcement of laws rich people do not like. Unfortunately, until the culture changes, market pressure is the only avenue for relief.

[–] cowlevel 13 hours ago

Is it even possible for doordash to be a monopoly? I understand that just about anyone can set up a website advertising food delivery for cheaper.

[–] clcaev 12 hours ago

From a marketshare perspective, it meets test of a monopoly in many localities. There is a "network effect" moat: the app is a storefront, payment gateway, and delivery network. The merger eliminates platform contention, giving customers perhaps greater choice of retailer but foreclosing the next largest platform alternative.

Their platform scopes and coordinates a market. They even recognize this in their announcement: "DoorDash and Instacart believe that communities benefit when Main Street competes"

[–] cowlevel 12 hours ago

If you're making a doordash competitor you can use doordash for order fulfilment on the back end until you build out your network.

[–] clcaev 12 hours ago

The "consumer welfare standard" and related contestability doctrine is often used to challenge anti-trust action. However, requiring consumer harm neglects the loss of economic opportunity for providers (eg stores and gig workers).

If contestabilty, not marketshare, is the appropriate test of economic power, then laws may be needed to increase contestability, such as "data portability" rules for store owners so they don't have to key-in product description, availability, and pricing multiple times.

In your example of a new delivery platform entrant who bootstraps using its direct competitor, what legal framework protects that startup? This seems another contestability consideration.

[–] cowlevel 12 hours ago

You can also do adversarial interop. Whenever a restaurant signs up, go to them on doordash and have your intern key in all their data.

Heck, they don't even have to sign up. Just copy their listing from Doordash and when someone orders, place an order on Doordash if you can't fulfil it yourself. You'll probably need several phones to scale this, or you could make a doordash account per customer.

Once you have some drivers yourself, go around restaurants in your area and copy down their menus. Have drivers go and make takeaway orders.

Doordash undoubtedly used all these tactics. This is just how business works. Obviously doordash didn't order off doordash but they surely integrated restaurant ordering from places that already had their own delivery.

If you have VC funding, subsidize part of what doordash is charging so your prices are lower. IIRC Google did this once to the point where a pizza restaurant repeatedly ordered their own pizzas and made a profit, making front-page HN - don't go that crazy.