I think the general point to take away from notions like this is that many of these very profitable opportunities (Uber, airbnb, instacart, even private MOOC to replace education) are all responses to public infrastructure failures as our voting population becomes more and more self-centered and focused on individualist (i.e. extremist capitalist/Libertarian) economics and less willing to fund public infrastructure, be it in transportation, education, any public good really.<p>The solution that is always suggested is some form of leaning in harder to Libertarianism and trying to explain away how private control of infrastructure with a profit motive is somehow a good thing. Which makes sense taking the world view that [private profits == good, market economics are the only solution to any problem] for granted and if you're likely to be the private person controlling the infrastructure and its corresponding enormous untouchable profits. Incidentally, the private structures are even certainly better for everyone than the broken dilapidated infrastructure that exists right now (see: Uber) and so it's a net gain for the public in the short term, but it's dystopian in the long term.
Another self-serving Libertarian-themed post that works under the flawed premise that market forces can replace all natural monopolies efficiently, as well as surpass the laws of physics.<p>There's a whole bunch of reasons why you don't want infrastructure to be privatized, the biggest of which being because infrastructure will not be profitable everywhere, yet that doesn't take away its strategic value not the idea that there are some fundamental services that should be reasonably available to all citizens.
I don't really see how Instacart can be considered "infrastructure", at best it's a marketplace-driven service. There are lots of examples of private infrastructure - e.g. the internet - which don't suffer the various problems described, and all the examples cited still rely on actual infrastructure to exist..
The food desert comment was interesting but I guess it depends on your definition of a food desert. I imagine if everyone is delivering their food then food deserts (as defined as regions with walkable grocery stores) would increase as there would be less grocery stores around (replaced by gigantic food warehouses).