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Small Town America vs. Big Box Stores

strongtowns.org

71–79 of 79 posts

Re: Small Town America vs. Big Box Stores

#71

> We don't want a corporate, faceless box store coming in with no stake in our community. Who is “we?” If the community wants Washington General, then they’ll shop there. If they want the lowest possible prices, they’ll shop at Dollar General. What it sounds like is that Washington General wants effectively a tariff on Dollar General so people won’t shop there. Because if it’s strictly “what’s best for the community,…

The NIMBY mindset cares about "neighborhood character" more than poor people, at least in general. Edit: Ah, I see the source now. It comes at basically everything from . . . a particular point of view.

That’s a pretty dishonest reading of this topic. Do you think DG “cares” about poor people? Do you think people might worry about poor people being exploited and ending up worse off?

Or is this just a “Label X is my whole entire personality so anything that isn’t Label X must be horrible and the only people in favor of it are actually evil” terminally online thing?

Re: Small Town America vs. Big Box Stores

#72
This is what the neo-liberal economic program has been doing all my life. "Free-trade" and globalization just mean that companies deploy lobbyists to DC and state houses to write legislation that picks winners and losers, erect barriers for some and tear them down for others, and concentrate wealth in the hands of a tiny few while spreading enough of it around to the professional managerial class and petit-bourgeoisie to keep the whole machine running. Blue-collar workers were put in direct competition with low wage workers overseas while white-collar workers were protected from foreign competition, unionization declined under constant attack, and middle-class wages stagnated while coastal and urban elites pulled away. Middle-class people were mollified, however, by rising living standards courtesy of cheap goods delivered by long supply chains connecting far-flung places with big box stores that landed right on the outskirts of their little towns, by the good graces of their hardworking counterparts toiling away in those far-flung places, and by large trade surpluses and easy money. And, it did have social consequences: the withering of small town life, the atomization of community, and the working-class revolts of the last 20 years as the machine started to sputter.

It's important to note that it doesn't have to be this way. This isn't the natural order of things. There IS no "natural order of things." This is a choice. You're free to like that choice if it suits you, but nobody is obliged to like it, and if you don't there is a tried-and-true program for forcing other choices: organize, unionize, and galvanize.

Re: Small Town America vs. Big Box Stores

#73
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That specific mechanism is an example of corrupt/stupid politicians being a drain on the city’s economy, not the big box stores.

Did any of the article that I didn't include in my comment impact your opinion?

Not the opinion of who is at fault for giving away taxpayer subsidies to big businesses.

There are, of course, drawbacks of only have a handful of highly efficient businesses led by a handful of people. While buyers get lower prices (at least initially), they also lose more and more leverage in the marketplace and are exposed to risks other than higher prices.

Re: Small Town America vs. Big Box Stores

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm familiar with chain auto parts. They all try and cater to local needs. A store in Texas is gonna have more varieties of A/C stuff on the shelf (we're talking retail parts here, not vehicle specific stuff you buy at the counter). Stores in the rust belt are gonna have more exhaust stuff, etc. I'm only familiar with Napa from a management level and they're kind of the odd one out but as far as the other chains go w…

Vastly different business model than Dollar General. DG customers, by definition, have to take what they can get. If you don't like what NAPA has, you can go online or to another store.

No, DG customers can shop elsewhere. Everything they sell is available at Walmarts, supermarkets, convenience stores, hardware stores, drug stores, online, etc.

Re: Small Town America vs. Big Box Stores

#75
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed DG stocks oddball sizes of packaged foods I've never seen anywhere else, not even at gas station convenience stores. It's usually their "large" size, and significantly smaller than the "large" size at other stores. Next time I'm in there I'll check the unit price on those. I'm betting it's pretty bad, because usually if a business is doing anything distinctive like that, it's to screw people.

Dollar stores are generally more expensive in the long run than other stores. They make their money on higher per unit margins and/or vastly lower quality of products.

No. In rural areas dollar stores are the cheapest around. I guess you are not familiar with small town prices. In urban areas dollar stores are more expensive than Walmarts--but there is something to be said for getting in and out of a store in 5 minutes vs 20 minutes in a supercenter. But a Dollar General is still going to be cheaper than Walgreens.

Re: Small Town America vs. Big Box Stores

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vastly different business model than Dollar General. DG customers, by definition, have to take what they can get. If you don't like what NAPA has, you can go online or to another store.

No, DG customers can shop elsewhere. Everything they sell is available at Walmarts, supermarkets, convenience stores, hardware stores, drug stores, online, etc.

My understanding is that dollar stores tend to pop up particularly where mega-retailers like Walmart are too far for basic supplies. That's obviously not universally true, but for many Americans it's not as simple as going to another store - another store might be a 60 minute round trip that costs $10 in gas that they don't have.

Re: Small Town America vs. Big Box Stores

#77
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“it wasn't a NIMBY vs YIMBY thing -- both wanted development” This distinction isnt the most important point here but this is very much NIMBY-ism. Blocking a development because the community has different opinions about what should be built, particularly opinions they don’t want to fund via their tax dollars is basically textbook NIMBY-ism.

in this particular case you're probably right, especially for the people opposed to DG on 'local character' grounds. but it's not like YIMBYs literally say "yes" to every development. there's also DG opposition on the basis of creating sprawl on the outskirts of town, and that's the type of opposition you'd probably hear from the strongtowns-loving YIMBY types. they are strongly opposed to the types of developments t…

The principled approach to YIMBYism is to say yes to (or rather, to not artificially stand in the way of) every development (within reason). Otherwise you're just another NIMBY with slightly different opinions about what types of things you don't want in your backyard. Generally speaking the market is pretty good about sorting out what what developments provide value on its own without interference from the loud minority of people who want to vote on everything with their voices rather than their feet.

Re: Small Town America vs. Big Box Stores

#78
post #45
post #7

> "we're not against change, we're not against business, if you want to open a nice little coffee shop and bookstore, but Dollar General just isn't quite a good fit." this line stood out to me because it mirrored a lot of debate in my small rural community when a dollar general proposed moving in (spoiler alert: DG won). the debates around DG had a way of exposing some previously-unseen class and economic divisions i…

People are generally in agreement against lower wages and higher property prices, but when it comes time to sell the store, they're gonna sell to the highest bidder. If that bidder wants to put in something that has the effect of putting more locals out of business and lowering regional wages, it has the effect of extracting wealth from the local community. But that's the next generation's problem. I want my cheap st…

> People are generally in agreement against lower wages and higher property prices

Neither of those are economic policies. People are very much in agreement that they want cheap goods, high wages, high property values, low housing costs, walkable neighborhoods, and free parking despite many of those things being in direct opposition to one another or even completely contradictory. You can't just say "people universally want this obviously good thing, therefore we should ignore everything else in order to achieve that one goal".

Businesses in a competitive market don't "extract wealth", they create it. When I buy something from Walmart it makes both me and Walmart wealthier, because I value the thing I bought more than the money I spent to buy it, and they value my money more than the product sitting in their inventory. When I work for Walmart it makes both me and Walmart wealthier, because they value my labor more than the money they spent to employ me, and I value the money they're paying me more than the time I spent to make it.

What creates poverty isn't "wealth extraction", it's market inefficiency. When you artificially pull money out of the market through taxes and waste it on something worth less than the money itself is (which unlike private individuals or businesses you as the government can afford to do indefinitely, because you didn't earn that money through a voluntary transaction, you took it by force) that results in wealth being destroyed rather than created.

Are markets perfect? No. Markets are a stochastic system so there will obviously be inefficiencies at the margins. Markets also don't work when there's no competition, and they are only concerned with efficiency, not loftier ideals like morality and compassion. But so far creating wealth is concerned, markets are unmatched.

Since you seem concerned with the "long-term economics of a community" rather than the long-term economics of the world as a whole though, things are a little more complicated. Saying that we should favor local businesses over businesses foreign to the community because we want to avoid sending money out of the community is essentially the same argument made by those in favor of tariffs at the national level; that even if free trade is more efficient as a whole it's not in the local community's best interest for it to be importing more goods than it's exporting. There's some truth to this; spending more than you make isn't sustainable long term. But I don't think artificial barriers to trade are a good solution to this problem; you need to address the underlying cause of your community/country's exports being unable to compete in the wider market.

Note also that retail businesses in a local community are not a closed system regardless of whether the business itself is local or foreign to the community. If I buy $20 of goods from Mom and Pop's general store, they probably still had to buy those goods from somewhere outside the community. The fact that the retail business itself is local doesn't really change that; there's still wealth flowing out of the community which has to be replaced by something of equivalent value being exported; otherwise the community will be unable to sustain itself long term.

Re: Small Town America vs. Big Box Stores

#79
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NIMBY mindset cares about "neighborhood character" more than poor people, at least in general. Edit: Ah, I see the source now. It comes at basically everything from . . . a particular point of view.

That’s a pretty dishonest reading of this topic. Do you think DG “cares” about poor people? Do you think people might worry about poor people being exploited and ending up worse off? Or is this just a “Label X is my whole entire personality so anything that isn’t Label X must be horrible and the only people in favor of it are actually evil” terminally online thing?

Uhh . . . that's a pretty dishonest reading of my reading.

I have no inclination that DG as an institution "cares" about poor people. But neither does an institution whose goal is solely to fight suburban sprawl and ensure "neighborhood character."

StrongTowns hammers on about minor things like whether or not storefronts face the sidewalks, whether or not there are chain stores vs mom-and-pops, etc. But if I'm paycheck-to-paycheck, it matters a lot more that I have an opportunity to buy things for cheap than it does whether I'm getting my stuff from a chain store or a local business. Middle-class people have the luxury of being picky about where their things are sourced from. Poor people need to put food on the table regardless of whether or not it comes from Dollar General or Wal-Mart. I support local businesses when I can, but I am also a middle-class professional, not someone making minimum wage.

As an example, I have a great farmer's market I get stuff from in the summer. But the price of vegetables or meat there is like twice what it is at Safeway. If someone is poor, it matters more that they have an opportunity to buy healthy vegetables and chicken for cheap that it is that they're buying locally-sourced organic free-range vegetables and chicken for twice the cost, or else you're just furthering the obesity epidemic.

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