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Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

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Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#171

Post by afuchs »

a3n wrote: post #126
XaspR8d wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People in the US tend to prefer fish that's already bland to begin with (cod, haddock, tilapia, and sometimes tuna or salmon) To be fair, in the Midwest this is often because there used to be a diet of much more flavorful freshwater fish from local lakes, but overfishing destroyed their populations and pushed prices way up, forcing cuisine to adapt to cheap saltwater fish.

Fresh water fish strikes me as likely very labor intensive, and labor is searched for and destroyed in this country, in favor of industrial sized processes and yields. I see big fillets of salmon and other large fish in Krogers, from the large industrial supply chain, next to the occasional little trouts and whatevers, and I often wonder "where do those little guys come from? How is it possible for them to get into t…

Considering that the Midwest contains the Great Lakes [1][2], how would fresh water fishing be any more labor intensive than in the open ocean?

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Lake_Erie#/media...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#172

Post by tw04 »

look_lookatme wrote: post #74
tn135 wrote: post #66

As a fish loving Indian, I was totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the choice of fish was absolutely pathetic. At American fish places you only get "shrimps" may be "large shrimps" and "small shrimps". Salmon, Bass, Red Snapper and just few handful of usual fish. My small village fish market offers at least 20 varieties of fish in India's coastal region. A proper fish market would offer at least 100.…

For whatever reason Americans just don't eat a lot of seafood. This is why the choices are so bad in "Capitalist America" -- there's not enough demand. It's literally capitalism at work. Some theorize that this is due to American's avoiding flavor in general [1]. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/07/01/327248504/the...

Which we should all rejoice. Because the oceans are already being over fished to the point we're facing a very real likelihood of collapse. If Americans were pulling at the same rate as nations like Japan or India, we'd all be in a very bad place already.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#173

Post by jandrese »

tn135 wrote: post #66

As a fish loving Indian, I was totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the choice of fish was absolutely pathetic. At American fish places you only get "shrimps" may be "large shrimps" and "small shrimps". Salmon, Bass, Red Snapper and just few handful of usual fish. My small village fish market offers at least 20 varieties of fish in India's coastal region. A proper fish market would offer at least 100.…

Most of what you see in a US grocery store is farm raised, because the market has grown too big for the oceans and rivers to sustain it. Since it is farm raised you see mostly fish that are easy to farm.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#174

Post by Alex3917 »

metaphorm wrote: post #71
aardvark291 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the linked article doesn't say anything about lack of sanitation, and almost implies the opposite. »Imbruce, who's researched the Chinatown produce economy for over a decade, is the author of From Farm to Canal Street: Chinatown’s Alternative Food Network in the Global Marketplace. In the Journal she distills to Kadet the real reason Chinatown can keep prices low: “Chinatown’s 80-plus produce markets are chea…

they don't strictly need refrigeration because of rapid turnover (most of the inventory sells same day) and because the buyers are knowledgable about what condition the produce really is. that said, if you've ever walked down Mott St. on a hot summer afternoon there will be no doubt in your nose that the produce isn't making the sanitation grade that you will find at Whole Foods.

> if you've ever walked down Mott St. on a hot summer afternoon there will be no doubt in your nose that the produce isn't making the sanitation grade that you will find at Whole Foods.

Are you sure what you're smelling isn't the fish markets or medicinal herb stores? Produce is produce, it doesn't smell like anything.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#175

Post by secstate »

briandear wrote: post #160
anigbrowl wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans avoid flavor because of capitalism, in my view. There is huge money in feeding people bland crap that's been processed as heavily as possible. Frankly, I'm astonished at people's willingness to consume shitty food that is obviously likely to have a detrimental impact on their health. I would prefer to go hungry or eat the same boring but nutritious meal day after day than consume bad food, and frankly I thi…

Perhaps some data to back that up? Some of the best restaurants and chefs in the world are American. Have you been to an American grocery store of any reasonable quality? The cheese selection of many big-city grocery stores rivals even French grocery stores. I shop in France all the time and I am still amazed at the variety at many American grocery stores. Try finding Napa/Chinese cabbage, fresh chiles, daikon radish…

I dunno. Sample size may have something to do with this. I live in a rural section of the US now, but spent a year living in Eastern provincial France and the difference in the cheese case makes me cry when I think about it.

Americans stock their shelves with "swiss" "american" "jack" and "cheddar" with almost all of them being made in about a week in cheese factory somewhere.

Contrast that with having TWO versions of Cantal, one of the blander AOC cheeses, in every cheese case we encountered in France. To say nothing of blues I'd never heard of, and small batch regional cheeses in many supermarchés.

It's all hearsay and conjecture, really, but I think the outsized influence of American chefs is just due to TV culture which is pervasive and consistently unfortunate.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#176

Post by wyager »

In other words, ultra-small ultra-low-overhead businesses are good for consumers.

Problem is, most places in America there's a certain baseline red tape cost that exceeds the budget of these types of operations.

In an unrestrained market environment, people can make money by eating up little inefficiencies like a swarm of ants. When you make the baseline energy cost of existence too high (e.g. with onerous incorporation or registration or licensing requirements), you kill off all the ants. Now those small but myriad inefficiencies go unconsumed, and society loses.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#177

Post by civilian »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #114
civilian wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might get something out of this article: http://www.americanteeth.org/2015/06/21/why-i-m-a-capitalist... If " Capitalism in America means as close to monopolization and price gouging as possible. " is your definition of capitalism, then you're off. (And I think that may be why you're being disagreed/downvoted on.) If you think that monopolization and price gouging is an emergent property of capitalism in America-…

> My [...] view [is] that a free market [...] only leads to monopolies when they're already providing the best service Where does this belief come from? Is it just an article of faith for you? I've never seen any science to that effect, and there would appear to be no shortage of counterexamples. What would be the incentive to offer the best service once you are a market leader? It seems obvious to me that in many ca…

I don't want to believe that it's an article of faith for me :) I've heard convincing arguments for it, and the arguments against market monopolies haven't ever been satisfying. But, I also haven't taken a survey of all monopolies or wannabe-monopolies in history. Yeah, my view on monopolies comes from the base assumption that: "It's never cost-effective to try to interfere with the competition by either buying them out or by a price war." The awesome American example of it is from Dow Chemical vs. Bromkonvention (short description: http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/dow-chemical-brom... ) and this is a longwinded account in favor of Standard Oil (and to be honest, I'm jumping around in the article as I'm reading it): https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-summer/stan...

For "buying out the competition", the idea is that: If company A with market dominance wants to maintain market dominance by buying out the competition, it'll always come at a bad deal. People who are starting new companies that do the same thing will be able to hold out for a price that makes selling worth it, which probably means that it's a bad deal for company A.

At the same time, the person running the upstart company B can stay in business if they're willing to take fewer profits. Company A should be making lots of profits, if they have economies of scale. But if Company A takes any more profit than the difference in the benefit of having an economy of scale, then there is an opening to a competitor. If we start with Profit=Revenue-Cost / P = R - C, then if (Pa - Pb) > CostReductionFromHavingAnEconomyOfScale, then there is space for a small competitor to come in and make some profit.

Sorry for going on that tangent--- I know that wasn't your main objection, but I wanted to back up my assumptions.

The "misleading advertising" is a new angle I haven't thought of too much, but I would hope that consumers and organizations like Consumer Reports would be able to cut through the bullshit and get the product that's actually the best value. And I feel like, with the pervasiveness of aggressive advertising/marketing, most people, especially people who guide purchasing decisions in households & businesses, are able to look at it with a sharper eye. Not always an accurate eye, but sharp enough to be somewhat guided towards the direction of better value. The way that this applies to the recent election is that I think the effect of "fake news" is pretty overblown.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#178

Post by naravara »

mncharity wrote: post #83
naravara wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what's stopping chains from replicating this. Scale. Anything living has a level of variability and likelihood of failure/damage/spoilage to it that gets harder and harder to manage as your scale gets bigger. When you're a small shopkeeper who sells about 3 baskets of apples a day, it's both easier to sift through it and throw out the bad ones AND easier to find 3 basket's w…

I wonder whether this might change with increasingly powerful computer-human hybrid systems. So instead of "I want to grow, and my current 100 suppliers are an unmanageable drag on that." being followed by "I need that consolidated towards 10, so my purchasing agents can talk with them all more often, and thus better manage my supply chain.", it might instead be followed by "I need that replicated towards 1000, so my…

>A more complicated to manage network in some ways. Lots of fine grain tactical purchasing with multiple competing suppliers, that you couldn't staff at supermarket scale.

Well yes and no. Objectively it is more complicated, but it's a sort of complexity that humans can handle intuitively since it's mostly about personal connections and relationships. It's not as abstracted as more expansive supply-chain logistics are.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#179

Post by jandrese »

metaphorm wrote: post #119
rifung wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since sushi is Japanese, doesn't it make sense that it would be found in Little Tokyo instead of Chinatown? Maybe there are lots of Chinese people eating it outside of Chinatown?

there's a huge number of sushi restaurants all over New York and a lot of them are not authentically Japanese nor are they owned or operated by Japanese Americans. Sushi is very popular in New York, much more popular than the Japanese population alone would support. There are sushi restaurants in neighborhoods where the residents enjoy sushi. The absence of them in Chinatown is an indicator that the residents there (…

As I understand it the majority of Sushi restaurants in the US (dunno about China) are run by Koreans. There was a weird religious cult thing that did the legwork to set up sushi grade fish distribution on a large scale and flooded the market with restaurants.

Sometimes the clues are really blatant that it's not an authentic Japanese restaurant. There used to be a Sushi place a few miles down the road where the hirigana on the sign spelled out Arikato.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#180

Post by rb808 »

bruceb wrote: post #53

Paying non union, employees who might be working under the table as they are not authorised to work is part of it, same with some restruants. Many regular supermarkets pay a living wage.

Agreed. I was surprised that many supermarket chains are union shops with good wages, paid time off and healthcare. Trouble is they're having trouble competing with non-union competitors and are closing down eg A&P. Chinatown I'd expect a lot of employees aren't even legal.

> Grocery clerks with service of five years or more generally earn the maximum rate allowable under the contracts, between $18.71 and $19.80 per hour. http://work.chron.com/union-pay-journeyman-grocery-clerk-281...

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