A scientist who studies the influence of our environment on our health once showed me a picture of an American gym with an escalator in front of it. Directly in front of the escalator was a gigantic parking lot with, of course, gigantic cars. Handy, straight out of the car and up the escalator. Then you don’t have to make an effort before you start making an effort.
This image is typical of this crazy time. We ban exercise from our lives and go to a school for sports. While it is smarter and easier to integrate as much movement as possible into our daily lives. As long as you can, walk and cycle without an electric boost and take the stairs instead of the escalator or the elevator (there are architects who take this into account nowadays. They no longer give the elevator, but the stairs the most prominent place in a building). Free movement!
In this light, speed cameras are idiotic and disgustingly decadent. Fancy ice cream, but nothing in the freezer: order flash delivery! Run out of milk or no more beer in the fridge? Bring on the electric bicycle courier. For the same price as in the supermarket plus €1.80, it will be at your door within ten minutes of your order. What do people order? According to Jeroen van Bergeijk who is in for a wonderful piece de Volkskrant Working undercover for three weeks as a flash courier is quite predictable: in the morning granola, fruit and yogurt, in the evening pizza, vegetables, rice, and late at night mainly beer, wine, chips and ice cream. Lots of ice cream.’
He estimates that the average customer orders for about ten euros. According to Van Bergeijk, the average customer is young, single and wealthy and never elderly or infirm. Luxury, not a necessity. The couriers are also popular with minors who are not yet allowed to buy alcohol. It is often easier to get a drink there than in the supermarket.
As a flash courier you can earn gold money. So many, that newspapers can hardly find deliverers anymore. Why a newspaper route when you can earn more elsewhere? Give them a go. But the funny thing is, the flash business is not yet profitable at all. On the contrary. At the moment, a number of parties with large pockets of venture capitalist money are conducting a flash war with the aim of eliminating all competition and being the only one left. Only then can you (hopefully) earn money.
Until then, the battle is being fought with a lot of couriers and a lot dark stores in the city, where all products are stored that have to be delivered within ten minutes. If you pay attention you see those uninviting blinded spaces everywhere. A waste of places where you could also have real shops or living space. In addition, the dark stores often for nuisance, by the couriers who drive back and forth. That is why the municipality of Amsterdam also wants to ban them in residential areas
Why must every impulse be immediately satisfied? How difficult is it to just do the shopping and also think ahead about what you need in the evening? Don’t be a spoiled slack decadent bum and don’t buy from the flash couriers who are destroying the city.