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Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

This seems like such a weird law. Cool for supply chain transparency and all but it feels super political to target delivery apps when literally everyone does commissions for sales.

Customers should also be confused that…

* Paying $1.99 for an app doesn’t mean the developer receives $1.99.

* Buying a product on Amazon when your browser has a referral cookie means the full cost doesn’t go to the seller.

* Buying a pack of Oreos at Walmart doesn’t mean that Nabisco gets $3.

* Paying $17 to see a movie doesn’t mean the theater gets all of it.

* Buying a game on Steam…

* Buying a flight on a Travelocity…

* Getting a hotel through hotels.com

* Renting an AirBnB…

Like this list could almost literally go on forever.

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We're talking about knowing how much a middleman is charging here.

To use your example, when I rent an airbnb, yes I absolutely want to know how much Airbnb is pocketing. Airbnb happily discloses this as an itemised "Service Fee", and they charge hosts a fair 3% fee to cover payments processing.

When I hire a cleaner on Thumbtack, I absolutely want to know how much the cleaner is paid. I want to make sure everyone is earning a liveable wage.

And when I order something through a delivery app, I absolutely want to know how much the restaurant is paid.

I think you are vehemently agreeing with OP?

Food delivery is being singled out here because of pure politics.

Your AirBnb example by the way is a perfect example. The 3% service fee is the amount charged to the host by AirBnb. They also have a separate charge which they bill to the renter;

> Guest service fee: This fee is typically under 14.2% of the booking subtotal (the nightly rate plus cleaning fee and additional guest fee, if applicable, but excluding Airbnb fees and taxes).

I’m counting a total of at least 5 different line items for taxes and fees. Not all of which will be broken out on the renter’s invoice.

Like when renting a car at the airport, eventually you stop paying attention and just look at the total. You’re only amazed after taking a second look that taxes, fees, concession recovery, environmental etc. fees make up more than half the cost.

In my country we often get breakfast included for the same price as the room if we cut out the middleman (booking.com, airbnb).

Fun fact, I prepaid my trip to Croatia and lost all of my money... because I paid directly to the person. 800Eur down the drain.

Can you guess if I'm giving a fuck if the middlemen take 90% of your income?

Depends how you've paid. If you've paid through credit card or bank transfer there is at least a paper trail and you can claim being defrauded.

I think I lost my airplane ticket money through eSky.eu as well. We'll see. We're still in the "we have forwarded you request to the airline" phase. The trip was cancelled because we got the more expensive "free cancellation" option from bokking.com.

Booking.com also tried to push some friends into getting vouchers instead of money back, but they eventually got their money back after contacting support and making threats.

Bank transfer and I got a big FU.

I would rather deal with Booking/Expedia and get a voucher, than deal with assholes.

Airlines will be forced to give you options, but private hosts will do fuck all. Do you know why? Because the host is still giving me the right to come to Croatia... it's not his problem that the borders are closed.

These middlemen are insurance for the consumer. Be it Booking, GrubHub, AirBnB, Uber, etc...

You rarely know what middlemen are charging for basically anything that has middlemen. This is not new territory invented by the tech industry.

When was the last time you bought a product or service and they did tell you what their margins were?

Temp staffing agencies show customers their markup. In the tech world, examples like airBnB and fixer (started by Grubhub co-founder) show it’s not unheard of.

They are no more a middleman than the grocer or restauranteur is a middleman between you and the farmers. There's an actual value added service being provided: discovery, payment, delivery, order history, etc.

The middleman is providing value, is it not? In the case of the food ordering app (let’s say you’re picking up, not getting delivery), they’re increasing discovery for the restaurant, simplifying payment and the ordering experience, organizing and managing the orders for the restaurant, give you a reasonable estimate on when the order should be ready, and provide decent customer service if something goes wrong. I use several apps custom built by restaurants, and they never come anywhere close to the fidelity of a DoorDash/GrubHub.

I don’t know why you think it’s your business to know who is making what. I don’t need to know the salaries of all the engineers at Thumbtack. No one who works for them is a slave. They can quit if they don’t like their compensation. I don’t need to stick my finger in their business and start making demands when I don’t have an inkling of what their financials and contracts even remotely look like. I hope their clearers make a liveable wage, but for someone with no real competitive skills, just having a job may be all you can ask for. If we fix a certain wage floor, some people could end up without a job at all.

Labor markets are hard to regulate well. There are cases under monopoly or monopsony conditions where it’s desirable to do so, but “I just don’t like that” isn’t cause to interfere with efficient markets. You can’t regulate the world to perfection.

If society decides everyone should have a preset minimum standard of living, the burden of meeting that minimum should fall on all of society, not just the handful of firms who deliver a valuable service that requires providing employment to large numbers of unskilled workers.

The transparency is good for competition and market in general.

Yes because then people aren't competing on price but the value of goods and services. Arguably transparency brings us closer to a true free market system as well - with the same other potential pitfalls if not managed for.

Does this include any monthly fees? Do you have the right to see private party contracts? Also - fun fact, some places pay more to generate higher placements.

I would also like to see how much restaurants are paying their cooks, waiters, busboys and deliverymen. Some restaurants don't deserve my custom.

PS: AirBnB is a shitty example, as host cancellation rates are ridiculous.

Never rent from strict-policy hosts and your cancellation rate will never be ridiculous. I'm a flexible-policy host.

Fun fact - because you are associated to the shitty hosts via AirBnB, you get the some of that tar drops.

I'm a consumer and I don't give a hoot about what kind of "policies" AirBnB offers. I've had hosts cancel a week beforehand, without explanation. Thankfully they paid me back, but rebooking was triple the price.

That's literally the reason why I will only book at chains, that can upgrade or shuffle me around their networks at worst.

Yeah, I always tell people to beware of hosts who cancel on their guests. You can easily see if they do, by looking at the reviews. Whenever a host cancels on a guest an automated review is posted that says "This host canceled a reservation X days before the stay." If I see that, I move on to a better host.

On a related note, I would love for all businesses to periodically send customers an email or other notification showing them how much of the money they spent went to taxes on a monthly basis and yearly basis.

People would give a lot more thought to taxes if they added up all the different ways the government nickels and dimes them.

People can already see the governments tax receipts and expenditures on the government websites.

People don’t want to relax by auditing taxes.

I would go even further and suggest that a lot of the high standard of living we enjoyed post WWII can be attributed to all these inefficiencies of cost information. Due to the lack of transparency, pretty much every profession and industry was able to pad enough margin into their business that they could make a decent living.

The acceleration of information diffusion means that no one's margin is safe anymore and why we have Bezos' favorite aphorism "Your margin is my opportunity".

Historically, margin was not the opportunity except maybe between grocery stores or gas stations (businesses where discovery of two or more providers of the same good/service was trivial and all where easily accessible to the customer). Historically, simply providing the customer with the product or service they need was the opportunity. It was only when discovery became easy (first the yellow pages, later the internet) and competition ceased being local (first franchises, later the internet) that margins eroded across the board.

Your argument is that higher prices for goods increase standard of living?

Isn't the standard argument based on increased productivity?

My argument is that less price transparency (due to less competition and diffusion of information about prices) produced less aggressive competition based on margins. You only needed to provide a good or service people wanted and charge them a price they were willing to pay. There was far less need to worry about competing on price.

I loved when there was no competition for stuff in my town of 100k people.... LOL! (I suspect that you aren't actually against competition. But all competition is based on price, ultimately.)

There's no value judgment in my statement. I'm for competition, but I'm just pointing out that it's easier to everyone to embed a margin they can live on when there is less competition.

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