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I agree with your point, but there's a fundamental problem you need to consider. The problem is that the Mom & Pops are inefficient and the giants are efficient

• cogman10 1mo ago
  > The problem is that the Mom & Pops are inefficient and the giants are efficient. There are diminishing returns to efficiency. Grocery stores, for example, are just as efficient as Amazon is even though many of them are a fraction of the size. Something like a gas station will be just as efficient whether it's ran by a mom and pop or whether it's ran by Shell. > Are the Mom & Pops going to deliver an order you place at 4 pm on your phone by 10 am the next morning? Often yes, if it's in inventory. If it's not you'll have to wait longer than you would with amazon. In fact, one of the benefits of mom and pop shops is that they can generally get things delivered to you same day because they live in the same city as you do. Much like you get same day delivery from a restaurant even though they are often mom and pop shops. But to my point above, you don't need a company the size of amazon to get next day delivery. Amazon could be broken up into several smaller (but still big) companies and it'd have close to exactly the same efficiency. It would also result in lower prices because now Amazon would have actual competition.
• AngryData 1mo ago
  I think that largely depends on what you define as "efficient". I see nothing efficient about funneling profit margins to a larger single entity that may not live in the same state, or even the same country, versus going into local hands who spend most of their money locally. Oh sure the large corporate model of stores may have a bigger pile of capital in their accounting book to spend versus the same grouping of small independent stores even if they were added together, but nowhere in the accounting book is there any mention of money leaving local economies and ultimately making it poorer and down the line reducing the value of the community which devalues the stores too. Also a mom and pop store is far more likely to be able to and willing to break from the standard mold and let you call at 4 PM and then come pick something up at 7 PM after the store would normally be closed. That might also seem "inefficient" because now some employee is sitting around an extra two hours just to serve one customer. But what about the efficiency on the customer's side who may gain even greater value by having that thing ready to go at 5 am the next day? Very few people are accounting for all the "efficiencies" that are not represented by capital holding in somebody's accounting book.
  • cogman10 1mo ago
    > Very few people are accounting for all the "efficiencies" that are not represented by capital holding in somebody's accounting book. Yeah, my hometown is a good example of that. It has always had a population of around 300 people. When my dad was a kid it had a hardware store, a grocery store, a bowling alley, a restaurant, a pharmacy, and an auto repair shop. Every single one of those shops closed and a big reason why they closed is because distributors decided they didn't want to deal with them anymore. So they raised their minimum order size and decrease the discount to the point where the same product could be had for a lower price by traveling 40 minutes away to the nearest Walmart or Home Depot. In fact, the grocery store closed while I was a kid and, in the end, what the owner was doing was literally going to walmart and reselling what they purchased retail. That has had a cascading effect on the town and services available in town. It's also caused a number of longtime families to move out and away because the work they did dried up. Where the small town had a large amount of economic activity and jobs, those all dried up to where now basically every kid born there moves away. There's no way for that town to grow and prosper.