Related reading, on the social cost of cheap goods today: "The True Cost of Dollar Stores", in the current New Yorker [0]. What is the underlying system? In my

Related reading, on the social cost of cheap goods today: "The True Cost of Dollar Stores", in the current New Yorker [0]. What is the underlying system? In my interpretation, these low price vendors have succeeded in a market that is foremost cost-sensitive, both in terms of price and time. Eventually competition was priced out and now "dollar deserts" exist in poor neighborhoods. These vendors ignore "externality" accountabilities, in the Dollar cases in particular spending for customer and employee safety, in keeping with minimizing cost. The resulting situation, as illustrated in the article, I'll say is one of immoral public jeopardy. In these locales consumers and employees have no alternatives. It gets worse, because the vendors extract wealth from the communities without reinvestment. The margins, from a community perspective, are exploitative. What are the characteristics of this system? A subsistence market cannot price safety and dignity into the cost of its goods. Margin-maximizing vendors can ignore it. Regulation and policy processes act slowly and undervalue safety, not to mention dignity. And returns for new entrant competitors are too low to make these markets a priority. I think this illustrates an systems cycle with a very few "winners" and many, many more losers. The New Yorker article is an argument that the very least, Family Dollar and Dollar General, as businesses, should be ashamed of their conduct. That's a starting point. When you move onto interventions and incentives, to say specifically "what should the new policies be?", I don't know. [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/the-true-cost-of-dollar-stores https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/the-true-cost-...