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Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

economist.com

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Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#271

Post by Gigachad »

uejfiweun wrote: post #249
Gigachad wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car culture has done this. The destruction of regular meeting places that get you to know and trust your neighbours. Now everyone you see is an untrusted stranger.

I think cars are only a symptom of the real issue, which is that the scale of modern society is just too big for our brains to comprehend or handle. I don't think getting rid of cars would necessarily help one cope with the fact that 99.9999% of people you see are untrusted strangers.

It's not the whole issue, but it's the biggest contributor imo. Even in small American suburbs people still don't know anyone because they never walk anywhere and have no local businesses / recreation spots. They all immediately get in the car and drive somewhere else, cut off from the rest of the world.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#272

Post by lupire »

scythe wrote: post #189
jakelazaroff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Walk around the city and you see more cops than ever. The issue is that police don’t actually prevent crime. Putting more cops on the street is like trying to use water to extinguish a grease fire.

>The issue is that police don't actually prevent crime. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004723520... https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/media/police... https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/666614 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X1... https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c11849/c11849.pdf https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0032258X…

> Research on the police–crime relationship generally shows police levels have little impact on crime rates.

> Two recent studies presented evidence that prior police–crime studies were methodologically flawed and found that increased police levels reduced crime.

Look like nutrition "science".

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#273

Post by nxm »

standardUser wrote: post #152
robertoandred wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? They’re a danger to society otherwise.

If a person steals some makeup from a drug store, what danger do you face? What exactly is the danger you feel you are in?

No post body was provided.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#274

Post by z9znz »

cpursley wrote: post #235
z9znz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm not putting all the pieces together correctly. What is the significance of her wearing a hijab? Why is that worthy of mention, or the fact that the owner family was from Turkey? And also the Thanksgiving eve bit?

It sounds like somberi is bringing home the point that they went really far out of their way to a very different culture to work hard and make a way for themselves and try to beat the odds? Isn't that the very idea of America?

You are filling in so many details that are not there. But whether that is correct or not is not the point.

The point is, why mention it? Should we be surprised, or should we be impressed that an immigrant Muslim family was involved? I just don't know what the OP wants me to feel. It's touchy, but it is ambiguous.

Is that good? Is that bad? Is it stereotypical? Is it challenging expectations?

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#275

Post by lupire »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #128
jakelazaroff wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One prevalent narrative in NYC is that there’s an epidemic of people being pushed onto the tracks. We need more police in the subway to prevent this from happening. I was in Singapore recently. Most people there take the subway. Yet no one gets pushed onto the tracks. Why is that? It has nothing to do with cops — you rarely see them on the subway there. Instead, they have a wall between the platform and the tracks. S…

I'd be very happy for western cities to emulate Singapore

By extremely punishing petty offenses, or by harboring billion-dollar financial criminals, or by being dictatorships?

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#276

Post by z9znz »

xwdv wrote: post #206
z9znz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm not putting all the pieces together correctly. What is the significance of her wearing a hijab? Why is that worthy of mention, or the fact that the owner family was from Turkey? And also the Thanksgiving eve bit?

It shows that she’s an outsider, and it foreshadows the kind of doctor that she will eventually be.

Seriously?

Perhaps I really am missing something obvious.

What kind of doctor will she be?

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#277

Post by wand3r »

someguydave wrote: post #250
nuclearnice3 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are just details. Let them echo around in your head as you like. Maybe she's from a conservative part of the world that doesn't have too many woman turning out as doctors. Maybe supporting her family of immigrants, who might not have a ton of money and are dealing with some of the hard things that being new in a strange country brings. Maybe in the deep background you can sense an unhappy reason they left Turkey…

It seems like you are a big fan of judging people on the basis of superficial appearances.

Not op. I frequently do, all the time. You seem to indicate this is a bad thing. Maybe I misunderstood but its just data. As long as you don't draw huge conclusions with no room to adjust, then in my book its basically par for the course. We reason from heuristics, its difficult to analyze every possible person from first principles, especially in a casual interaction...

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#278

Post by pnutjam »

ksenzee wrote: post #140
c_hackett wrote: post #133

As someone not from the US can anyone shed some light why deodorant and other personal care goods are so expensive in the US? The prices are so ludicrous compared to the UK that on my trip I had to take a photo as friends would have thought I was exaggerating when telling them! Take for example Dove Men+Care antiperspirant. In the US what is a rather compact can 3.8oz/107g was on the shelf at $9.55 (plus sales tax).…

The prices here vary wildly depending on where you're shopping. In a Manhattan CVS I wouldn't be surprised to see prices three or four times what you would see in a Nebraska Walmart. I live in the Seattle suburbs and $9.55 for deodorant makes my eyes bug out. I don't think that's normal.

I'm in the midwest and that doesn't sound too far off. I think the fancy Dove deodorant my wife buys is around $8 at Kroger or Target. We only buy it at a Sam's club.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#279

Post by jakelazaroff »

josephcsible wrote: post #240
DenisM wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some societies do better than others though. It’s perfectly reasonable to set the bar at least that high.

Some societies do better than others at stopping crime too. Can we set our bar to match Singapore in that respect?

I actually wrote another comment in this thread about Singapore [1]. The subway there was particularly interesting to me. While the New York media has used subway deaths to drum up support for police, Singapore has entirely solved the root problem in a non-carceral way by investing in infrastructure.

Plenty of other countries have done the same, actually. The knee-jerk response of adding more cops actually makes society worse for all of us.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33737563

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#280

Post by lupire »

ars wrote: post #243
jakelazaroff wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s one perspective. Another is that the truly greedy thing is to construct a society such that some people can’t afford basic necessities, and that inflicts far more suffering than people stealing what they need to live.

If that were actually true someone could hold up a sign in front of CVS or whatever saying "please buy me a stick of deodorant", and I can guarantee you someone will. They can go to a soup kitchen, or a church, or a food panty and ask for basic necessities. Americans are very generous, especially conservative ones, who lead the world in charity and generosity. There is no excuse to steal when you can just ask.

Paying the subscription fee for Sunday social club is not charity nor generosity.

Opposing social welfare is along standing political plank for conservative voters, because they don't want welfare for people not in their club.

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