Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The death of the brick and mortar toy store

brainbaking.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 256 posts

Re: The death of the brick and mortar toy store

#201

Post by Terr_ »

CPLX wrote: post #123
mschuster91 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That seems like a rather inefficient use of resources. Inefficient for society? Yes. But for the capital providers aka investment (and let's be clear: retirement ) funds and banks? Definitely not. The fundamental problem at the root of all of it is how the US does pensions. In contrast to most European countries that operate in a redistribution system, aka the current workers pay the pensions of the current pension…

This is broadly accurate, but it can be a little easier to point the finger at the actual culprits, which is Wall Street. The problem is the financialization of everything, and the insistence on ensuring high rates of return above all other goals. Which is highly related to the dynamics that you mentioned here, so we're agreeing. But other countries don't do this because the government stops them. In this country, th…

> Ask yourself why General Motors is taking the many billions of dollars in cash that they generate from their business operations and literally sending it directly to Wall Street bankers through the form of stock buybacks rather than investing in the next generation of electric cars.

Hmm, putting aside others issues (e.g. stock-manipulation to make quarterly numbers) stock-buybacks might be viewed similar to repaying a loan and reclaiming the stock that was put up as collateral...

Although I suppose if the loan is zero-interest, why would one want to do that? Even if somehow all spending options are terrible today (but might improve tomorrow) one could just sit on the cash.

Re: The death of the brick and mortar toy store

#202

Post by bigstrat2003 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #169
kurttheviking wrote: post #6

I own a reasonably well performing indie bookstore. I've noticed for the model to work you need a critical mass of other local shops clustered to make the trip an experience for families and diverse tastes. My working theory is that three of such small businesses are sufficient and could operate well with a common inventory strategy and manager (e.g. a bookstore, a toy store, and a tea or candy shop...nothing that sp…

> a bookstore, a toy store, and a tea or candy shop This was Borders and B&N, in their prime. A one stop shop. They had a childrens area with books and toys. They had a coffee bar. And of course books.

That still is what B&N is like.

Re: The death of the brick and mortar toy store

#203

Post by SoftTalker »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #202
SoftTalker wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a bookstore, a toy store, and a tea or candy shop This was Borders and B&N, in their prime. A one stop shop. They had a childrens area with books and toys. They had a coffee bar. And of course books.

That still is what B&N is like.

I didn't realize there were any left. Both closed up here years ago.

Re: The death of the brick and mortar toy store

#204

Post by nothercastle »

emehex wrote: post #163
Andy_Donner wrote: post #101

My grandmother used to take me to Toys R Us for my birthday every year for exactly this reason — she didn't want to guess what I wanted, she wanted to watch me choose. Walking around that store and seeing what the toys looked like in person was something I looked forward to for days. You can't recreate that with an Amazon wishlist.

I still do this for my dog every year on his birthday. Funny that the Pet Store survived the Internet while the Toy Store did not...

Demographics play into the problem too. Massive decline in number of kids

Re: The death of the brick and mortar toy store

#205

Post by choilive »

BrenBarn wrote: post #98
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial real estate lending typically has a clause that allows pausing of payments during a vacancy and letting the interest accrue into the balance of the loan - effectively, the banks are giving the property owners a free option to try and get the vacancy cleared without affecting long-term incomes and asset prices.

That still sounds like a scam.

More like poorly structured loans and incentives.

Re: The death of the brick and mortar toy store

#206

Post by nothercastle »

SkiFreeWin3 wrote: post #132
patwolf wrote: post #128

Just last week, I was with one of my kids trying to kill some time before an appointment. I noticed a toy store in a strip mall, and I asked him if he wanted to check it out. His response was, "What's a toy store?" We did check it out, and he was pretty disappointed. Even though it was advertised as a STEM-oriented store, half of it was stress balls and jigsaw puzzles.

Recently in La Jolla, where presumably you have high wealth and IQs and tourism, and experienced the same thing—mostly fidget stuff, puzzles, and Lego resellers. The kids were so excited to go in but pretty quickly realized it’s effectively just a physical Amazon home page of mediocre plastic stuff.

Toy production is down significantly too. Not a lot of cool toys out there.

Re: The death of the brick and mortar toy store

#207

Post by CPLX »

Terr_ wrote: post #201
CPLX wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is broadly accurate, but it can be a little easier to point the finger at the actual culprits, which is Wall Street. The problem is the financialization of everything, and the insistence on ensuring high rates of return above all other goals. Which is highly related to the dynamics that you mentioned here, so we're agreeing. But other countries don't do this because the government stops them. In this country, th…

> Ask yourself why General Motors is taking the many billions of dollars in cash that they generate from their business operations and literally sending it directly to Wall Street bankers through the form of stock buybacks rather than investing in the next generation of electric cars. Hmm, putting aside others issues (e.g. stock-manipulation to make quarterly numbers) stock-buybacks might be viewed similar to repayin…

All spending options are not terrible today. That's the point. Without reinvestment, the companies will fall behind and die.

The decisions by major companies to prioritize stock buybacks over capital investment in the next generation of products and innovation is the absolute core of why the financialization of everything threatens to destroy us as an industrial economy and, by extension, our prosperity and way of life.

Re: The death of the brick and mortar toy store

#208

Post by nkrisc »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #83
conductr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot. Us parents joke how insane it all is but realistically it will taper off soon as kids start having smaller birthday celebrations. At this age it's kind of a "invite everyone in your class/grade" and has naturally reduced a bit already as boy/girl only parties started. I think next year or two it will become more common to have "invite 3-5 good friends to an event" type of birthdays and that will reduce it…

This matches my impression that kids’ birthdays have become less of a "party at someone's house" thing and more of a small event-industry category

Yep, and I hate it. For our kids we’ve started just inviting a bunch of the kid’s friends and extending the invitation to each friend’s whole family and just having a chill house party. We also invite a friend’s family for the kid not having a birthday so they have at least one of their friends to play with too. Kids running around outside, inside, doing whatever they want while the parents all get to hang out and talk. We order some pizzas and other food, set out a few coolers of drinks and some adult beverages too, and it’s always a great time. It helps that the birthdays are in the fall in it’s usually really nice out still.

We also very clearly specify “no gifts”. We don’t have room for more stuff and they’ll get more gifts than they need from grandparents.

I’d say a majority of the parties we get invited to also are asking people to not bring gifts.

Re: The death of the brick and mortar toy store

#209

Post by triceratops »

mschuster91 wrote: post #76
salynchnew wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a rather inefficient use of resources. How long will a fund typically keep that on the books before they have to offload the asset or declare bankruptcy? At a certain point, that smells like a scam with a real estate business attached to it.

> That seems like a rather inefficient use of resources. Inefficient for society? Yes. But for the capital providers aka investment (and let's be clear: retirement ) funds and banks? Definitely not. The fundamental problem at the root of all of it is how the US does pensions. In contrast to most European countries that operate in a redistribution system, aka the current workers pay the pensions of the current pension…

> most European countries that operate in a redistribution system

The Netherlands does not. [1] It is also considered one of the best-run pension systems in the world.

> the current workers pay the pensions of the current pensioners in exchange for "IOU tokens", the US has everyone responsible for themselves

US Social Security works in the manner you described - current workers pay for current pensioners. This doesn't work great as we already know.

Making assets instead of workers pay for pensions isn't a bad idea per se. It makes no sense to load workers down with taxes to pay for seniors. The math only works as long as the population of workers grows or if you tax workers more and more.

Workers' labor produces ever-increasing surpluses every year. Use those surpluses aka higher productivity to support seniors.

1. https://ec.europa.eu/finance/docs/policy/191216-insurers-pen...

Re: The death of the brick and mortar toy store

#210

Post by triceratops »

mschuster91 wrote: post #144
alextp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side is redistributive pensions require an ever growing population and most European pension systems will go bankrupt within a couple of decades given current birth and immigration rates.

> The flip side is redistributive pensions require an ever growing population Stonk market based pensions require that as well! Someone has to work in the future and earn dollars so that he can give me these dollars for my stonks. And that falls apart when the working population drops - either due to demographics or because the world splinters apart and the age of global trading ends. Stonks are just as much IOUs as…

> And no, automation isn't a panacea either, because an economy not just requires workers to do work, but also people having money to buy things

Automation is the whole reason people have money to buy things. Before we had automation everyone lived on farms and sewed their own clothes. Only noblemen could afford to pay for clothes. Your intuition is plain wrong, I'm sorry.

AI may take away purpose if it takes away literally everyone's jobs. The wealth and productivity of the economy doesn't go away. It becomes more concentrated. De-concentrating it is a political problem.

Post reply on HN