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ToxicSlurpee posted:You can buy pretty much anything on the internet no matter how ridiculous it seems. Rather than being limited to whatever the store chooses to stock you can get whatever odd thing from somebody, somewhere. Prices for smallish consumer goods aren't that great on Amazon though, like if you needed to buy dish soap or trash bags or a can of tomatoes you can pay 2x, or I've even seen 4x more than if you were to buy it in a grocery store. It's just not economical to ship a single can of tomatoes to someone's door. glowing-fish posted:I don't know who to disagree more with in that article: the strawman, or the author who destroyed the strawman, presumably to the slow clap of onlookers. It's not really a strawman though. A lot of criticism of Wal-Mart basically boils down to classism--'ugh the people who shop there are trash' and 'why does anybody need to pay low prices for consumer goods?'. It's no wonder that people take umbrage to that. Also, as mentioned before by other posters, working retail for a small business isn't really that much better and may even be worse than working for Wal-Mart.
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Dec 5, 2016 16:23
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Star Man posted:Man, I sure do wish that the people that grow and raise our food, mine our energy, and transport our goods all exploded into bloodmist because they vote for people I don't like and love in places I think are boring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDt-3V0x0XE Gail Wynand posted:Weimar Germany was an early adopter of department stores. Guess who banned them because they were allegedly putting honorable rural merchants out of business? lol
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Dec 6, 2016 06:05
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Does anyone remember service merchandise? I guess it existed in some form till the early 2000s but does anyone remember it in the old days? Aren't you describing Ikea?
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Dec 10, 2016 18:09
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exploded mummy posted:Uh, EMF tends to have more pressing immediate health effects if received in high amounts than just cancer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ9Xk0Lln5Y
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Jun 18, 2017 16:38
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Amused to Death posted:I'm still going to poo poo on suburban living even if you do pay half your income in rent(which coincidentally my rent is near half my net income) as being terrible. My friend and I were actually in NYC Monday talking about this, "There's a reason you don't see too many crazy evangelicals or gently caress you, got mine libertarians even in the wealthy part of the here or at home(New Haven), and its because they actually have to deal with and interact with all kinds of people, not live in some homogenous suburban bubble" Lol if you don't think that wealthy people who live in cities don't live in their own peculiar type of bubble, I don't know what to tell you
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Jun 21, 2017 18:34
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xrunner posted:Your city should be built around my suburban car culture needs and you're an elitist rear end in a top hat who wants to exclude the poors if you disagree. I should not have to change in any way. I'm glad to hear that you are able to walk/use public transit in lieu of car commuting/travel, but you should realize that isn't really a practical option for many non-rich people who live in the western part of the US. Basically, I'm telling you that you need to check your public transit privilege. fishmech posted:You are giving way too much credit to European and Asian cities for being well designed and not sprawl, because tons of them are poorly designed and sprawl like crazy. I feel they mostly are better because they had the benefit of being built before the invention of the automobile. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Jun 27, 2017 |
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Jun 27, 2017 15:44
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xrunner posted:Interestingly, it's not the poor who I hear complaining about parking. It's middle class and upper middle class suburbanites who think that the entire point of the urban core is for them to drive in on weekdays for work and the occasional basketball game or nice dinner. These people are completely capable of parking a little further out and taking transit for the last leg, or, quite often, just loving parking twenty minutes away and walking. Where do you live in the US?
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Jun 27, 2017 16:02
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xrunner posted:Portland, Oregon. Lol isn't Portland now a city for wealthy retirees from California? Don't you see an issue with extrapolating from your experiences in Portland, OR to the rest of the US?
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Jun 27, 2017 16:46
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I think the reason why the milk is in the back is that it is easier to make deliveries of milk from the refrigerated truck parked behind the store and loading its wares in the back part of the store to the refrigerated shelves in the back of the store. The milk doesn't come up to room temperature and so stays refrigerated longer, and so it lasts longer in the refrigerator shelves and is cheaper. We actually want the milk to be in the back of the store.
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Jul 9, 2017 10:31
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Yeah, I'm regurgitating that guy's argument on the show.
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Jul 9, 2017 13:26
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WrenP-Complete posted:I read both of these threads. I still think the case is much more complicated in entrenched monopolistic markets than simply "infinitely worse" and "the benefits to you are ephemeral." (Paraphrasing Vox bc I'm on the phone) I'm happy to leave discussion in those threads though. Discendo Vox has a ton of dumb opinions. I remember in one thread he claimed that academic publishing companies need to charge high fees to labs and universities because it is expensive for them to host .PDFs on a website and have volunteers do all their work for them.
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Aug 1, 2017 16:08
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WampaLord posted:Please cite some statistics about how a "huge portion" of Millennials are rich. Don't you spend a lot of time posting about how techies in Silicon Valley have too much money in the Unicorn thread? That demographic that you spend a lot of time complaining about might be who Xae is referring to.
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Aug 22, 2017 19:24
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If you aren't in the highest value industries and/or highest earning professions, you can have a higher standard of living if you move away from SF/NY/LA to a different major metropolitan area in the US while still having plenty of job opportunities and progressive culture. Your two options aren't Manhattan and North Dakota with nothing in between.
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Aug 23, 2017 19:34
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Welcome to the beginning of the conversation. I'm just replying to Solkanar512's post, where he's creating this kind of false dichotomy. There's no need to be rude. Solkanar512, If an internet company boom is pricing you out of an area, e.g. Seattle or SF, and you aren't working in those high paying industries, it is very smart to move, if you can afford it or you don't have family keeping you there. While many young people are fixated on NYC/SF/LA, they ignore the fact that there many other major metropolitan areas in the US with jobs and progressive culture, where you aren't surrounded by millionaires who bid up the prices of housing.
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Aug 23, 2017 20:26
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WampaLord posted:Also I've never heard of Potbelly, are they regional? I think they are mostly a Midwestern chain.
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Dec 24, 2017 02:50
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KingFisher posted:Like what is the actual Amazon specific complaint? I’m interested in responses to this question too. Monopoly threat notwithstanding, Amazon is pretty good for consumers right now IMO—this is how they got to be so dominant in retail. The guy complaining earlier about Amazon’s shipping and search is missing the big picture which is that, while it would be nice if they could be better, Amazon still is miles ahead of their competitors.
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Jan 15, 2018 20:38
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Quandary posted:ITT a bunch of people who have no idea how design works. I can guarantee apple isn't doing things like soldering RAM down and having non removable batteries because it makes it harder to fix, but are doing it because it's cheaper/more effective/more robust/thinner/etc. Planned obsolescence due to lovely parts is a thing, but it's not like Apple twirled their mustache and made it shittier so it would break, but rather because the non lovely parts cost more and would cut into profit margins. Likewise with the battery - it would add a pretty significant size disadvantage and extra cost to make an everyday consumer replaceable battery and someone at Apple decided that wasn't worth the trade-off. You can disagree with that decision absolutely, but it's not in any way done because they are desperately wanting your phone to die. There may be some good side effects to Apple designing their devices in they way they do, but I think it is pretty obvious that a huge motivation for how they design their gadgets is so they can make money on upgrades, repair services, & adapters and accessories. It is pretty transparent. Like for example, their new iMac Pro is an all-in-one desktop computer with plenty of space to fit connectors for RAM DIMMs, but the RAM in it is soldered to the motherboard. There is basically zero technical reason to do that. Apple removed the headphone jack from their new phones two years ago because they now own a headphones company, Beats, and were also launching their own Bluetooth headphones, the AirPods, and wanted to nudge users towards buying their pricey Bluetooth headphones instead of using their old wired headphones. There are a tonne of other examples of this--these two only scratch the surface. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Jan 25, 2018 |
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Jan 25, 2018 13:08
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DrNutt posted:I can't even remember the last time I got Costco gas. The lines and associated traffic assholery are just too much for me to want to deal with. I have a Costco right next to my work and the Costco gas pumps are rarely crowded. I get the slightly lower Costco price, collect 4% cash back for gas on my Costco credit card, and it is pretty convenient. I can stop by Costco multiple times a week and pick up the odd item, too. I’m pretty blessed. Not raising a family I wouldn’t otherwise have a Costco membership but since there is one right by my work, the membership has been a great boon to me.
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Feb 14, 2018 14:01
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MiddleOne posted:There are some many misconceptions behind the "online retail is only x% of the entire retail market and therefore Amazon's dominance doesn't matter"-argument that I wouldn't even know where to start. Please make your case. Like the poster Cicero, I don't understand why buying things online is so important that it has to be considered as its own market sector, especially since it is such a small portion of the entire retail sector. No one holds a gun to your head and forces you to buy stuff only online. If someone could expound on this, that'd be really helpful, thanks. SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:I actually want all businesses nationalized so it's not a 'big business' thing friend. Retail is one of the sectors in the economy where American Capitalism has made things great for the consumer--there is a lot of competition and choice, and retail company profit margins are pretty low. I'm not sure how state-run retail would be better for the consumer. If Amazon one day decided to raise prices 10x, people would stop buying stuff off of Amazon and go to one of the many alternatives. If you have an issue with American Capitalism, I'd think you'd find the issues elsewhere in the economy, and not in retail.
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Nov 10, 2018 13:46
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Lambert posted:You are right. But focusing on "for the consumer" means you can ignore the enormous amount of waste this system produces and how that ripples into how agriculture works, which I assume to be one of that poster's gripes with this system. Could you expound on this waste issue? I'm not seeing how a state-run retail sector would be more efficient & less wasteful, unless you want state-run retail to be run at a much much much lower quality of service, convenience, availability, etc. and at greater cost. BTW, this kind of opinion is sort of at odds with the idea that online retail is a very important market sector. I have a sneaking suspicion that if private-run retail happened to have problems with availability, price, access, etc. then the 'Retail Figure of Merit' would likely be totally different, and then we'd all be reading in this thread about how important low prices and consumer access & convenience are.
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Nov 10, 2018 14:27
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Lambert posted:It doesn't have to be state-run, but reducing food waste for example would necessitate potential shortages at times. If customers expect to be able to buy all kinds of produce and all kinds of bread at all times of the day, a huge percentage will have to be thrown away in the end. Ok good, I agree in that adding/removing regulations to private retail is probably more effective to achieve whatever goal you want to achieve than making all retail state-run. Personally, I think your goal is sort of an oddball goal. I'm not really bothered by food waste, and will gladly accept a little more food waste over shortages and poor access, variety, & freshness in food. Most Americans probably agree with me here. Many people who have personally experienced food shortages in communist countries and later move to the US would probably agree with me as well. Lambert posted:It really isn't, Amazon destroys tons of products that were sent back but they don't deem worth the effort to check & resell. The great thing about online retail is that it is the high-convenience, high-access and choice retail option. If you think that none of those things are important, then why is it so important to have the government protect the following unalienable rights of mankind: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, AND access to easy, cheap online shopping? silence_kit fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Nov 10, 2018 |
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Nov 10, 2018 15:35
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Lambert posted:Oh, my goal isn't to make retail state-run, that was another poster. I was just trying to explain the rationale. But I do think some more regulations to combat waste and create an environment where more sustainable agriculture is encouraged would be a good thing. Ok. I guess I got a little overexcited to point out a paradox in this kind of thinking. I will do it anyway below: The rationale to Nationalize Industry X is usually so that it better serves the public interest. But in this case, it is being called for to reform the industry so that it becomes totally opposite of what the people want. The paradox is resolved if you believe that the American people don't know what is best for themselves. However, wanting to consolidate power into a government where this is a principle viewpoint doesn't sound like a recipe for a healthy system of government to me! silence_kit fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Nov 10, 2018 |
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Nov 10, 2018 17:07
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I’m inclined to agree that Amazon isn’t uniquely nefarious and that people in this thread are a little paranoid and are exaggerating the Amazon monopoly threat. But you could argue that while maybe what Amazon is doing isn’t really totally new or unique, Amazon certainly is taking it to the n-th degree and so they are definitely more of a monopoly threat to retail than what has come before. What do you think about that?
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Dec 31, 2018 17:48
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Cicero posted:What exactly are people searching for where they see the entire first page of search results being Amazon house brands (I believe at least one poster made this assertion)? I see Amazon brands all the time, but I've never seen them take up the whole drat page. Me neither. I’m also not getting how when Amazon white labels, it is a great evil, but when other companies do it, it is totally different and ok.
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Jan 1, 2019 14:10
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There's something in the primal part of the human brain which draws us to stories about apocalyptic scenarios. This is why Christianity has the book of Revelations, and this is what compels people to write and read those bogus articles about how running out of resource X is going to doom industry Y. It is also is what compels D&D posters to exaggerate the effects of and to obsess over global warming. It is almost like they get a perverse thrill from the prospect of global warming.
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Aug 31, 2019 16:14
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Empress Brosephine posted:Isn’t it malarkey that vinyl sounds better than CD and it’s just nerds pretending there’s extra “warmth”? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCumH8LRo1A&t=102s
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Oct 18, 2019 22:44
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Anyone that wants to sit there and wring their hands about how we can't possibly feed every hungry American when we put so much time and effort into supplying stores with massive amounts of food they simply display and throw away can suck-start an elephant's rear end in a top hat. I thought the problem in America wasn’t that poor people go hungry, it was that poor people get too fat from not exercising and eating unhealthy convenience food. The prescription often given to this problem is increasing poor people’s access to fresh, “less-processed”, (also less shelf-stable) foods, but as you said, this increases food waste.
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Oct 29, 2019 17:26
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fishmech has taken up the torch for this argument before on the forums, and it is one I am sympathetic to. There are a lot of paradoxes in how food moralists (never heard this phrase before fishmech used it just now--I think it is really appropriate) talk about America's food industry, Americans' food habits, and the correct way to eat food. I think a lot of nutritional advice is just the naturalistic fallacy writ large. Eating a small or moderate amount of 'processed' or convenience food is not going to make you weigh 300 pounds, nor will it make you malnourished.
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Oct 30, 2019 11:52
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inkblottime posted:I said nothing about eating in large quantities. Typically, a human is supposed to limit their sugar to 35g a day. You know some cups of yogurt have almost that. Why? 35g of sugar is only 135 calories.
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Oct 30, 2019 16:52
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The theory of human nutrition and diet is not that great--IMO it is probably best to have something like the more simple-minded approach that fishmech advocates. If you took the theory of human nutrition too seriously, you'd be obligated to change your diet every couple of years when each new idea comes out and contradicts the prescriptions from all of the earlier ideas.
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Oct 31, 2019 02:41
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Don't they get a lot of people who want to be pilots? I assume that the pay & working conditions are that way because of that. Being a pilot is like one of the most desired military jobs, I thought.
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Dec 5, 2019 00:42
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Smiling Jack posted:you don't get to fly very often, you're a glorified admin guy like 90% of the time, yet you are constantly deploying. Ok, that might be how the job actually is, but is it the case that there are a tonne of people who don't understand that who are lining up to be military pilots?
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Dec 5, 2019 00:58
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JustJeff88 posted:The thing is, anything to do with economics isn't impartial... the oligarchy/capitalists/right-wing (call it as you will) is interested in maintaining the status quo, and any "research" done about the best way to do things is either going to be horrendously biased Nothing in academia is impartial. Every discipline is guilty of this, even those areas which don’t usually inform public policy. One of the strongest biases in academia, which might not be well-known to laymen, is the tendency towards self-aggrandizement and self-preservation.
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Dec 28, 2019 17:04
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Plastik posted:Well for one thing the Republicans would have a scapegoat to blame for the sky high cost of medication. Republicans like the American Medical Association though, which acts a lot like a guild for medical doctors. I think Republicans might actually like protectionist laws for pharmacists.
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Mar 5, 2020 00:42
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Sodomy Hussein posted:My current car is a Hertz rental return and has been a great value, so I don't look forward to having less choices if I go used again in the future. This advice is contrary to the popular opinion in the BFC subforum car thread. Thread title: AI meets BFC: Car Buying Thread: No Rentals and No Salvage Titles
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May 27, 2020 19:33
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Sodomy Hussein posted:This thread took me a while to find because for some inexplicable reason it is in Ask/Tell, not BFC or AI Oh yeah, you’re right. Al+BFC=Ask/Tell?
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May 27, 2020 22:01
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NaanViolence posted:I've been disciplined enough to avoid shopping on Amazon for years now and I'm starting to look down on people who aren't. I occasionally buy stuff on Amazon, but yeah, I get puzzled when goons talk about Amazon's monopoly threat--there are so many big retail competitors to Amazon, both online and not, where you can buy all of your stuff.
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Dec 1, 2020 12:51
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Cicero posted:edit2: and let's be real, "lol are there any businesses that people like??" is an extremely D&D thing to ask that's totally out of touch with normal people, very few of whom are socialists who just hate businesses in general Yeah, this kind of post is totally alien to most people. My experience as a retail customer in the US is that it is extremely convenient and great. There is so much competition in retail, and as a result the businesses, including Amazon, IMO provide great customer service. The companies with bad customer service are the ones with little to no competition--they are even worse than government. It seems to me like a more effective way to improve the lives of American retail workers would be to regulate the retail companies more heavily or to expand the welfare state. I don't think a government-run version of Amazon would be something that non-D&D people would want.
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Dec 2, 2020 12:49
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