by ButterflyEffect
The actual nerdy economics joke there is in the second paragraph, which takes the form: Two economists are walking down the street. One of them sees a $20 bill on the ground. As she bends to pick it up, her colleague says “don’t bother, if that was a real $20 bill someone would have picked it up by now.” She replies, “no see this was left here by a consumer tech startup trying to maximize user growth; their Monthly Active Picker-Upper numbers are doubling every two months.” She picks up the $20 bill and the startup raises money at a $2 billion valuation. The pizza arbitrage described above is basically a breakeven trade because the pizzeria has to actually make the pizzas, which costs money, but if this arb works (it does) the obvious next step is to not make the pizzas: You hand the DoorDash driver some empty boxes, he brings them to your friend’s house, your friend does not complain (because this is a purely financial transaction), you capture the entire spread and can do it at scale.
lol holy shit. kleinbl00