A federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert • Hacker News Board

Re: A federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert

#91

Post by legitster » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 4:18 AM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #74

legitster wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I am saying this author does sound like they have any grocery experience or talked to anyone who does. The A&P case was from the 1930s. It goes without saying that the grocery industry is a lot different today than it was. Robinson-Patman was a pretty obscure law, and it probably wouldn't have had much effect either way on preventing the rise of the supermarket chains despite much of the conjecture in this arti…

i am skeptical. in germany, big supermarket chains squeezing suppliers is still a problem today. i see no reason why this should be any different in the US.

It depends on the chain. Aldi's, Trader Joe's exclusively use white label brands, so they have complete control of their suppliers. Walmart and Costco are big enough to have their own logistics.

But for most other supermarket chains, it's the suppliers that dictate the price. The stores essentially lease out their shelves directly to the distributors or manufacturers.

Re: A federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert

#92

Post by JohnBooty » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 6:35 AM UTC

shadowtree wrote: post #20

Consumers vote with their wallets that they prefer the big box stores. Reagan removed bargaining restrictions on big box stores, which lowered prices. Bad or good for consumers? Does it matter if you need to drive 8 or 11 miles (non-desert vs. desert) to buy boxed cereals and processed food? CostCo rides the same dynamic, at scale. CostCo deserts? Want to fix it, HN-style? Create a startup! But more regulation? Ffs.

This has been covered millions of times, it's almost comical.

Obviously it's initially good for consumers. Then, once competition is eliminated, it gets worse.

Re: A federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert

#93

Post by JohnBooty » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 6:38 AM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #19

llm_trw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only a democrat majority had been elected at any point in the last 40 years that could have fixed this.

Democrats are too busy trying to convince the american public that they are actually republicans for some weird reason.

Thank our two-party system, among other factors. Around election time they go after undecideds, who are generally centrist to the extent that they have any ideology or opinions at all.

Re: A federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert

#94

Post by piva00 » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 9:07 AM UTC

haroldp wrote: post #67

xivzgrev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it has nothing to do with location and everything to do with price. If large companies are allowed to flex their purchasing power then people go where the cheaper prices are. But there are limits, people only drive so far. So once a big chain has driven everyone else out they can charge what they want or maximize profits by extracting value (see comment on Unsafeway). Free market is good as long as monopolies can’…

Disagree. If most people lived in dense mixed-use neighborhoods where they could walk from home to 90% of the destinations they needed (work, school, groceries, restaurants, entertainment, dentist, etc) they wouldn't need to own a car, and the nominal difference in price between a small corner grocery and a distant chain mega-chain store wouldn't be enough to compel they to buy, park, fuel and maintain one. Restricti…

It's exactly how I live in Sweden, even though I'm in a suburb some 15km away from the centre of Stockholm, living in a house by the forest, I still have the option to go into the closest by independent grocer at the metro station or to the bigger grocer some 5-8 min away by bike.

When I need something quickly I just pop by the nearest grocer, they also have a different variety than the larger one further away. If I need to buy some more expensive items then I know it's worth it to bike further away.

It's a good balance, I have options and both grocers seem to be doing fine (the independent one is even expanding, new freezers/fridges, opened a whole new section for cheese, etc.).

Even though it's a suburb it's quite compact, and well planned. There are some 3000 apartments around the station (walking distance no longer than 10 min), while I live further out closer to the forest and lake (about 20 min walking) in a town house, there are many other town houses and some 5-10 min away from me there are some villas. Population of this suburb is around 13-14k people.

Re: A federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert

#95

Post by TimK65 » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 10:09 AM UTC

haroldp wrote: post #83

ocschwar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart is cheaper for the customer (modulo the expense of driving to a Walmart). But Walmart is also a lot cheaper for Walmart. One delta is larger than the other.

Walmart has been making around 2% profits for a decade. Do you think that Walmart is less than 2% cheaper than small neighborhood grocery stores?

No, but only because it illegally coerces its suppliers into giving it sweetheart deals with lower wholesale prices, and nobody is enforcing the law to stop it from doing so. As the article explains, the reason for most of the price differential between large grocery store chains and small independent stores is that suppliers, forced to artificially reduce the prices they charge the large chains, have to recover that loss by charging higher prices to small stores.

Also, traveling to a store that's farther away isn't free. The trip has a marginal money cost and, more importantly, a time cost.

Re: A federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert

#96

Post by TimK65 » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 10:14 AM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #94

haroldp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. If most people lived in dense mixed-use neighborhoods where they could walk from home to 90% of the destinations they needed (work, school, groceries, restaurants, entertainment, dentist, etc) they wouldn't need to own a car, and the nominal difference in price between a small corner grocery and a distant chain mega-chain store wouldn't be enough to compel they to buy, park, fuel and maintain one. Restricti…

It's exactly how I live in Sweden, even though I'm in a suburb some 15km away from the centre of Stockholm, living in a house by the forest, I still have the option to go into the closest by independent grocer at the metro station or to the bigger grocer some 5-8 min away by bike. When I need something quickly I just pop by the nearest grocer, they also have a different variety than the larger one further away. If I…

I live similarly (in the Stockholm suburbs), but I live near a metro station, and there is a reasonably good, not too expensive chain grocery next to the metro station. I get lots of things there, but there are a few things I need that they don't have, and for those things, I travel (by public transportation) to larger stores farther away.

On the one hand, haroldp is correct in that the automobile-centered infrastructure enables the coercion of people to travel farther to shop for groceries. But that point doesn't really contradict the article; this coercion is also enabled by the failure to enforce laws that are on the books. I'd argue that there are far, far too few independent groceries in Stockholm, for example, for reasons that have nothing to do with the transportation infrastructure and everything to do with the lack of effective antitrust legislation, or lack of enforcement (I actually don't know which it is).

Re: A federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert

#97

Post by TimK65 » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 10:20 AM UTC

asdasdsddd wrote: post #10

> Today, in fact, many Deanwood residents travel to a Safeway outside the neighborhood to shop. Isn't this the real issue? That we build on the assumption that everyone has a car?

Or the assumption that these people are traveling by car? That's by no means necessarily true; DC has pretty good public transportation, and there is even a Metro station in Deanwood.

Re: A federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert

#98

Post by piva00 » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 10:52 AM UTC

TimK65 wrote: post #96

piva00 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly how I live in Sweden, even though I'm in a suburb some 15km away from the centre of Stockholm, living in a house by the forest, I still have the option to go into the closest by independent grocer at the metro station or to the bigger grocer some 5-8 min away by bike. When I need something quickly I just pop by the nearest grocer, they also have a different variety than the larger one further away. If I…

I live similarly (in the Stockholm suburbs), but I live near a metro station, and there is a reasonably good, not too expensive chain grocery next to the metro station. I get lots of things there, but there are a few things I need that they don't have, and for those things, I travel (by public transportation) to larger stores farther away. On the one hand, haroldp is correct in that the automobile-centered infrastruc…

> I'd argue that there are far, far too few independent groceries in Stockholm, for example, for reasons that have nothing to do with the transportation infrastructure and everything to do with the lack of effective antitrust legislation, or lack of enforcement (I actually don't know which it is).

Completely agree with you, there are far too few independent grocers and I make a point to shop at them to avoid only ending up at Coop/ICA/Hemköp/Willys. Also because my local independent grocer stocks very different products than the big chains, there's a lot of ethnic ingredients (Arabic, Ethiopian [including fresh injera], Korean, South American, and so on) that are entirely missing from the ICA Maxi close by. At least the one around me has found a good niche to compete.

When I moved to Sweden 10+ years ago a friend of mine told me his retirement plan was to save enough money to open a grocery store, I thought he was joking but he did that 2 years ago and it is actually quite profitable to be a Hemköp franchisee...

Re: A federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert

#99

Post by binary132 » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 12:39 PM UTC

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised on a startup forum, but it does surprise me how even in $CURRENT_YEAR, people are this motivated to uphold Market Darwinism Truth, in defiance of all the evidence that markets at the scale of the United States are dominated by power.

Re: A federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert

#100

Post by mindslight » Tue, Dec 03, 2024, 5:31 PM UTC

haroldp wrote: post #68

mindslight wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you discovered a proof of P == NP, or are you just choosing to assert it to go on a message board commenting spree completely disconnected from the real world? If markets worked the way you are implying, then the problem would already be solved. In reality, the inefficiencies matter a lot .

> In reality, the inefficiencies matter a lot. Which is how big stores attract customers with lower prices, provided they already have cars to get to them.

I was talking about inefficiencies due to "free market" optimization being a mere heuristic that finds local optima rather than global ones. So it can be completely rational for individual customers to be basing their purchasing around such a dynamic, to the point where even adding some energy (eg investment capital) can't get the optimization unstuck, while still having longstanding structural inefficiencies when looking at the larger scale.