The Victorians were obsessed with the idea of the future.
Unlike the dystopias of the 20th century, crafted through the horrors of war and tyranny, the Victorian futurists imagined bright, mechanised utopias where technology delivered fairness, abundance, and joy.
Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) pictured Boston in the year 2000 as a land of equal wealth, credit cards, and benevolent corporations. William Morris, in News from Nowhere (1890), conjured a pastoral Thameside vista where the smog and industry of London was replaced with an artisanal commune in which government and money were no longer necessary.
These naïve dreamers, like travel writers, sketched public life: what people ate, how they moved, what they saw in the street. By those same measures, what would a time traveller from 2015 notice first about London’s streets today?
Not the odd new skyscraper or recycled 90s fashion, but the swarm of mopeds and illegal e-bikes carrying square boxes with the ugly minimalist heraldry of Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Just Eat.
Our traveller would recognise takeaways—but not their ubiquitous dominance. McDonald’s redesigned with special entrances for couriers; ‘restaurants’ existing only as kitchens hidden in industrial estates; entire towns deserted on a Saturday night save for huddles of riders staring grimly at their phones, waiting for the next order.
While French illustrator Albert Robida, another of the Victorian futurists, imagined cheerful citizens buzzing overhead in personal flying machines, our most visible technological leap is the rise of the takeaway app. And it has not been a positive one.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, meal delivery grew by over 50% during the pandemic and has stayed high since. The market has tripled in value since 2015, making Deliveroo’s founders millionaires many times over. The upside is obvious: convenience. Anything from champagne to toothpaste can arrive at your door with a few taps. But, as Nietzsche might warn, easier is weaker.
Take the typical Deliveroo journey. You slump at home, seduced by an app cynically engineered to maximise habit, with all its colours and noises and whimsy calling you like the Sirens’ wail designed to lure Odysseus to his doom.
The order pings to a dark kitchen posing as half a dozen different restaurants, where processed food is pumped into plastic tubs. A rider collects it—often on an illegal moped, often underpaid or illegally in the country, sometimes renting someone else’s account. If you’re unlucky, you become one of the one-third of women between 18 and 34 who have reported harassment by predatory follow-up texts from delivery riders.
And finally, the prize: a box of overpriced slop that brings a brief dopamine hit, followed by guilt and indigestion, like a rat in a cage.
It’s a grim caricature, but it’s not far from a typical Deliveroo experience. It is an ecosystem where everyone loses, except the shareholders. Riders’ wages are driven down, young people are crowded out of casual jobs once done by students, and customers are nudged into habits that fuel obesity, loneliness, and debt.
Some groups call for a boycott on immigration grounds. “There is no reason why delivery culture can’t return to how it used to be 5-10 years ago, where teenagers and students delivered takeaways to people,” said a spokesperson for Turning Point UK.
“Illegal migrants working for pennies keeps wages low and conditions poor for delivery drivers, and also prevents young people from accessing work in a period where unemployment is on the rise.”
But the deeper problem is cultural. Deliveroo encourages a society where people outsource effort in the guise of food. Cooking and eating together are acts of creativity and community. Clicking “order now” is an act of surrender.
The Telegraph’s Judith Woods put it bluntly: “How did we reach the point in civilisation where people are too entitled and lazy to get up off the sofa and fetch their own sodding crisps?”
Could we just ban Deliveroo? Probably not. Britons cherish economic liberty, though the government could easily limit the harms: stricter penalties for illegal labour, proper licensing of mopeds, caps on rider numbers, or liability for illegal e-bikes. It would be a brave council who revoked a licence.
Yet the real issue is moral. Adam Smith, so often invoked as a free-market champion, was equally clear in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that markets depend on virtue and “self-command.” A society of selfish individuals only works if those individuals restrain themselves. Convenience without discipline erodes that foundation.
Politicians rarely speak this language now. JFK once warned Americans they were becoming physically and mentally “flabby.” No British politician would dare to call out the responsibility of the individual. But we remain the sick man of Europe, with ballooning welfare costs and waistlines that have grown eerily in lockstep with Deliveroo’s market cap.
If the Victorians dreamed of gleaming futures powered by invention, our most visible technology is an army of underpaid, illegal riders delivering plastic boxes of cold Tandoori.
For an accurate allegory of where we are headed, we need not look at Morris’ egalitarian commune, or Huxley, or Orwell, but Disney’s Wall-E, with its pathetic band of humans coddled in their floating chairs dumbing out on screens.
If we want something better, we must demand it.
The Dark Philosophy of Deliveroo
A Deliveroo food delivery courier rides a bicycle along a street in Toulouse on March 18, 2025.
Ed Jones / AFP
You may also like
It’s Not Just Food: Trump Takes the Culture War to the Food Pyramid
Unlike Brussels’ policies, this new pyramid also indirectly supports farming and livestock—sectors absurdly demonized for decades by far-left environmentalists.
Censorship Backfires: Germany’s Assault on Press Freedom
There is a direct link between our establishment's struggle against social media and ‘fake news’ and the growing perception of politicians as dishonest.
Venezuela Tests Europe’s Moral Credibility
Those who equate democratic action with tyrannical abuse in the name of international law will not be remembered as cautious but as complicit.
The Victorians were obsessed with the idea of the future.
Unlike the dystopias of the 20th century, crafted through the horrors of war and tyranny, the Victorian futurists imagined bright, mechanised utopias where technology delivered fairness, abundance, and joy.
Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) pictured Boston in the year 2000 as a land of equal wealth, credit cards, and benevolent corporations. William Morris, in News from Nowhere (1890), conjured a pastoral Thameside vista where the smog and industry of London was replaced with an artisanal commune in which government and money were no longer necessary.
These naïve dreamers, like travel writers, sketched public life: what people ate, how they moved, what they saw in the street. By those same measures, what would a time traveller from 2015 notice first about London’s streets today?
Not the odd new skyscraper or recycled 90s fashion, but the swarm of mopeds and illegal e-bikes carrying square boxes with the ugly minimalist heraldry of Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Just Eat.
Our traveller would recognise takeaways—but not their ubiquitous dominance. McDonald’s redesigned with special entrances for couriers; ‘restaurants’ existing only as kitchens hidden in industrial estates; entire towns deserted on a Saturday night save for huddles of riders staring grimly at their phones, waiting for the next order.
While French illustrator Albert Robida, another of the Victorian futurists, imagined cheerful citizens buzzing overhead in personal flying machines, our most visible technological leap is the rise of the takeaway app. And it has not been a positive one.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, meal delivery grew by over 50% during the pandemic and has stayed high since. The market has tripled in value since 2015, making Deliveroo’s founders millionaires many times over. The upside is obvious: convenience. Anything from champagne to toothpaste can arrive at your door with a few taps. But, as Nietzsche might warn, easier is weaker.
Take the typical Deliveroo journey. You slump at home, seduced by an app cynically engineered to maximise habit, with all its colours and noises and whimsy calling you like the Sirens’ wail designed to lure Odysseus to his doom.
The order pings to a dark kitchen posing as half a dozen different restaurants, where processed food is pumped into plastic tubs. A rider collects it—often on an illegal moped, often underpaid or illegally in the country, sometimes renting someone else’s account. If you’re unlucky, you become one of the one-third of women between 18 and 34 who have reported harassment by predatory follow-up texts from delivery riders.
And finally, the prize: a box of overpriced slop that brings a brief dopamine hit, followed by guilt and indigestion, like a rat in a cage.
It’s a grim caricature, but it’s not far from a typical Deliveroo experience. It is an ecosystem where everyone loses, except the shareholders. Riders’ wages are driven down, young people are crowded out of casual jobs once done by students, and customers are nudged into habits that fuel obesity, loneliness, and debt.
Some groups call for a boycott on immigration grounds. “There is no reason why delivery culture can’t return to how it used to be 5-10 years ago, where teenagers and students delivered takeaways to people,” said a spokesperson for Turning Point UK.
“Illegal migrants working for pennies keeps wages low and conditions poor for delivery drivers, and also prevents young people from accessing work in a period where unemployment is on the rise.”
But the deeper problem is cultural. Deliveroo encourages a society where people outsource effort in the guise of food. Cooking and eating together are acts of creativity and community. Clicking “order now” is an act of surrender.
The Telegraph’s Judith Woods put it bluntly: “How did we reach the point in civilisation where people are too entitled and lazy to get up off the sofa and fetch their own sodding crisps?”
Could we just ban Deliveroo? Probably not. Britons cherish economic liberty, though the government could easily limit the harms: stricter penalties for illegal labour, proper licensing of mopeds, caps on rider numbers, or liability for illegal e-bikes. It would be a brave council who revoked a licence.
Yet the real issue is moral. Adam Smith, so often invoked as a free-market champion, was equally clear in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that markets depend on virtue and “self-command.” A society of selfish individuals only works if those individuals restrain themselves. Convenience without discipline erodes that foundation.
Politicians rarely speak this language now. JFK once warned Americans they were becoming physically and mentally “flabby.” No British politician would dare to call out the responsibility of the individual. But we remain the sick man of Europe, with ballooning welfare costs and waistlines that have grown eerily in lockstep with Deliveroo’s market cap.
If the Victorians dreamed of gleaming futures powered by invention, our most visible technology is an army of underpaid, illegal riders delivering plastic boxes of cold Tandoori.
For an accurate allegory of where we are headed, we need not look at Morris’ egalitarian commune, or Huxley, or Orwell, but Disney’s Wall-E, with its pathetic band of humans coddled in their floating chairs dumbing out on screens.
If we want something better, we must demand it.
Our community starts with you
READ NEXT
Censorship Backfires: Germany’s Assault on Press Freedom
The Iranians’ Freedom Fight: The Prospect of a Hamas-Free Palestine
Diversity High Commission: Macron’s Latest Bad Idea