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You don’t sound like the representative example of most consumers in most communities in America.

0xffff2 7y ago
Really? Where are most consumers living then? I think I'm in the unusual situation of seeing both sides of the urban/rural divide in a way that most people don't. The fact that I split my time between a major metropolitan area and a town that's only just starting to recover from the local sawmill closing a couple decades ago probably puts me a lot closer to the mean than most people.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Your metropolitan area is not representative of other metropolitan areas. Most of population is clustered around cities that are not comparable to SF and it’s surroundings, economically and culture wise.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    Oregon is also notoriously unlike other states. In Utah, for example, if there is a big store in a small town, it's most likely a Walmart. In the town where I grew up, there were other options further away, but Walmart there now often has better and more diverse produce than several of the supposedly nicer chain supermarkets in SF.
kbenson 7y ago
Dollar General has over 15,000 stores and most are in towns of less than 20,000 people. [1] I think perhaps you're assuming too much and working off incomplete or obsolete information. 1: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=717664332 https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...
- digitaltrees 7y ago
  Dollars stores sell a subset of products not the full A-Z Thst amazon and Walmart specifically target. Small towns used to have a fabric store, a butcher, a florist, toy stores, auto parts. The list goes on. Walmart sells it all, often with no real competition, the dollar store does not sell all of those items.
  - kbenson 7y ago
    It's true that it does not sell all the items Walmart does, but it does point towards Walmart having not quite as much of a physical space monopoly as you presented. It also points towards the ability of other companies to compete with Walmart in niche areas (at least niche compared to Walmart). I could see a future where a few chains each carve out a chunk of the more popular Walmart inventory and out-compete Walmart on physical location, as Dollar General has done. You can kind of imagine them as CPU cache layers. In-town local stores are L1 cache with great speed but relatively poor choice for all but the most common items, Walmart is L2 cache with good speed (not still slower for most, as it's a ways away for the majority of people) and better selection, and the internet is general memory with everything you might need, but slow speed. There has been a major upheaval in the L! level because of both a major shift in how close/fast and large L2 got (a shift from major cities to large complexes in rural areas) and a huge boost in general access (the internet), but I don't think it's all played out yet, since I think there's still need at the local level that's not fulfilled well anymore. Sorry for the tortured analogy, but it did probably save time on both ends.

Really? Where are most consumers living then? I think I'm in the unusual situation of seeing both sides of the urban/rural divide in a way that most people don't. The fact that I split my time between a major metropolitan area and a town that's only just starting to recover from the local sawmill closing a couple decades ago probably puts me a lot closer to the mean than most people.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
Your metropolitan area is not representative of other metropolitan areas. Most of population is clustered around cities that are not comparable to SF and it’s surroundings, economically and culture wise.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  Oregon is also notoriously unlike other states. In Utah, for example, if there is a big store in a small town, it's most likely a Walmart. In the town where I grew up, there were other options further away, but Walmart there now often has better and more diverse produce than several of the supposedly nicer chain supermarkets in SF.

kbenson 7y ago

Dollar General has over 15,000 stores and most are in towns of less than 20,000 people. [1] I think perhaps you're assuming too much and working off incomplete or obsolete information. 1: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=717664332 https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

digitaltrees 7y ago
Dollars stores sell a subset of products not the full A-Z Thst amazon and Walmart specifically target. Small towns used to have a fabric store, a butcher, a florist, toy stores, auto parts. The list goes on. Walmart sells it all, often with no real competition, the dollar store does not sell all of those items.
- kbenson 7y ago
  It's true that it does not sell all the items Walmart does, but it does point towards Walmart having not quite as much of a physical space monopoly as you presented. It also points towards the ability of other companies to compete with Walmart in niche areas (at least niche compared to Walmart). I could see a future where a few chains each carve out a chunk of the more popular Walmart inventory and out-compete Walmart on physical location, as Dollar General has done. You can kind of imagine them as CPU cache layers. In-town local stores are L1 cache with great speed but relatively poor choice for all but the most common items, Walmart is L2 cache with good speed (not still slower for most, as it's a ways away for the majority of people) and better selection, and the internet is general memory with everything you might need, but slow speed. There has been a major upheaval in the L! level because of both a major shift in how close/fast and large L2 got (a shift from major cities to large complexes in rural areas) and a huge boost in general access (the internet), but I don't think it's all played out yet, since I think there's still need at the local level that's not fulfilled well anymore. Sorry for the tortured analogy, but it did probably save time on both ends.