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jeff bezos presents: partially automated terrestrial consumerist communism
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Sep 13, 2018 11:42
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| # ? May 11, 2024 07:39 |
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What we need is for everything to be owned by one monopoly. And for that monopoly to be employee owned.
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Sep 13, 2018 14:11
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As long as I get to be the little hat, that sounds good.
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Sep 13, 2018 14:36
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You're fooling yourself if you think you're not the shoe.
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Sep 13, 2018 14:48
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this broken hill posted:shamazon  got'emparagon1 posted:What we need is for everything to be owned by one monopoly. And for that monopoly to be employee owned. And then broken up because competition is still pretty useful.
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Sep 13, 2018 15:38
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serious gaylord posted:Yes they can. But Amazon has access to all the sales data so they can see that Mom & Pop's Hardware store are selling a metric poo poo ton of one specific hammer for $19.99. So Amazon go off, use their bulk buying power to get a much better deal from the manufacturer of that hammer and sell it for $15.99 under the amazon basics label. Explain why that is bad? Profit that used to go to Mom & Pop's hardware store and the hammer manufacturer was redirected to consumers.
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Sep 14, 2018 03:16
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Depends on if the mom and pop stores were better for their workers, or provided more income overall to more people, or since we're talking about Amazon, just provided a work environment free of peeing in bottles and trash cans. Consumers can't consume if they're out of work. If we lived in a society with a large safety net for the people displaced by consolidation then you could make an argument that everyone being served by one giant, heavily regulated or controlled company would be good, but we don't live in that world yet.
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Sep 14, 2018 04:09
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That sounds like an argument for better worker protections, unions, and higher minimum wage, not an argument for breaking up Amazon and hoping whoever inherits their business ends up being nicer out of the goodness of their heats.
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Sep 14, 2018 04:53
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I'm not arguing to break amazon up, I'm arguing that it's not always best if Amazon pushes everyone else out of business.
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Sep 14, 2018 05:50
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John Lewis, the UK’s largest department chain store, and owners of Waitrose the supermarket of the middle classes, just posted a yearly profit of a whole One Million Pounds.
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Sep 14, 2018 06:53
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learnincurve posted:John Lewis, the UK’s largest department chain store, and owners of Waitrose the supermarket of the middle classes, just posted a yearly profit of a whole One Million Pounds. Considering how inefficient UK shops are I’m surprised it’s a positive number in the first place.
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Sep 14, 2018 07:52
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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learnincurve posted:John Lewis, the UK’s largest department chain store, and owners of Waitrose the supermarket of the middle classes, just posted a yearly profit of a whole One Million Pounds. It's hard to make money in supermarkets the margins are razor thin, and now they're under pressure from delivery services too.
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Sep 14, 2018 07:57
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Foxfire_ posted:Explain why that is bad? Profit that used to go to Mom & Pop's hardware store and the hammer manufacturer was redirected to consumers. Because when they have forced all these mom and pops hardware stores to close due to undercutting them amazon then raise the price either back to what the consumer was paying to mom and pop or far more usually, higher. Monopolies are bad friend.
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Sep 14, 2018 08:13
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pseudanonymous posted:It's hard to make money in supermarkets the margins are razor thin, and now they're under pressure from delivery services too. Um. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/11/tesco-reports-28-rise-in-profits-for-last-quarter “Retailer makes profit of £1.64bn on sales of £57.5bn in ninth consecutive quarter of growth”
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Sep 14, 2018 08:14
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learnincurve posted:Um. Yeah, that's not a very good margin.
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Sep 14, 2018 08:22
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learnincurve posted:John Lewis, the UK’s largest department chain store, and owners of Waitrose the supermarket of the middle classes, just posted a yearly profit of a whole One Million Pounds. I think part of this is UK-specific and not a general industry trend. Large grocery store chains in the U.S. are still doing very well. The worst thing to happen to them is that some Walmarts are now grocery stores as well, but that just sort of shows that grocery stores are still profitable to move into.
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Sep 14, 2018 14:21
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:I think part of this is UK-specific and not a general industry trend. They're really not. Why do you think the industry is massively consolidating and chains are going under?
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Sep 14, 2018 14:25
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pseudanonymous posted:They're really not. Why do you think the industry is massively consolidating and chains are going under? Total sales, net profit, and gross income have all gone up every single year (except 2008 to 2009 for an obvious reason) in the U.S. grocery market for the last 30 years. Individual retailers might have problems, but the overall market hasn't had any major issues. Retail space devoted to grocery sales hit a record high in the U.S. in 2017. You can argue that the future might not look good, but the grocery industry in the U.S. has been steadily growing with essentially no interruptions or loss years. The main concern in the U.S. grocery market is that they might be expanding too fast and follow a fate similar to department stores; where they are overstretched and when there is a major downturn they can't cover it.
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Sep 14, 2018 14:32
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I strongly think that there are far too many options in groceries. Exhibit A is the yogurt aisle. How can this not lead to tremendous waste?
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Sep 14, 2018 14:49
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Beachcomber posted:I strongly think that there are far too many options in groceries. Exhibit A is the yogurt aisle. It depends on what you're selling and where, but... it does lead to a tremendous amount of waste. In addition to daily purges of stuff the day before it hits the sell by date, there's a fair amount of stuff that just slips through the cracks. When we had a sloppy dairy clerk in charge, I'd pull a shopping cart behind me while I straightened up dairy at close. Sometimes I filled it with expired stuff. Sometimes I filled two. We throw away spectacular amounts of food, and we're not even that large. We carry SKUs where we've thrown away more than we've sold, no exaggeration.
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Sep 14, 2018 15:14
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Beachcomber posted:I strongly think that there are far too many options in groceries. Exhibit A is the yogurt aisle. Something like 40% of food is wasted globally according to ReFED https://www.refed.com/?sort=economic-
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Sep 14, 2018 15:36
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Food waste is a big thing, yeah. I'm not sure variety causes it though. It doesn't help that anything done to save waste costs more labor in a business thats always keen to cut costs. Still, a lot can and is done. Composting, egg consolodation, food pantry donations, these should all be SOP for the industry.
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Sep 14, 2018 15:57
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Beachcomber posted:I strongly think that there are far too many options in groceries. Exhibit A is the yogurt aisle. https://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-clear-lake/
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Sep 14, 2018 16:11
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learnincurve posted:Um. 3% margin on 60b isnt great man. Not a lot of room for error there When a retail company expands to a new location even when the new store is not open payroll is still spinning, having such a low margin means its a rush to get every new location cash flow positive as soon as possible.
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Sep 14, 2018 16:12
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LeoMarr posted:3% margin on 60b isnt great man. Not a lot of room for error there 3% is above average for grocery stores too. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/margin.html This lists the average margin by industry and grocery stores (see Retail - Grocery) is 1.62%. There are worse industries out there, wireless is apparently 1.01%, hell some industries like oil/gas exploration, and shipbuilding are negative. Lots of other industries around 2% as well. So grocery stores are definitely on a thin line, but I guess it could be work.
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Sep 14, 2018 18:03
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Is it not long time tradition for food stores to run small margin? Everyone need food, but also many places to buy it. Outside of small rural area most everyone can make choice of some sort so it is hard to massively raise price. And many product have markings and marketing campaigns of a manufacturer's promotional price. So most food prices stay close to costs with a little more, and store tries to skim some off top with particular product being overpriced when they can. I believe even notorious company like Walmart end up running in 1% 3% range of profit margin most of time. Additional, do not trust that "mom & pop" stores ever were home of great employee treatment. Quite often worker's rights laws are less enforced or different altogether for the small business versus the regional national chain. This is more strong in some country than others, but always they get away with things from sheerly too small to notice.
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Sep 14, 2018 18:40
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learnincurve posted:John Lewis, the UK’s largest department chain store, and owners of Waitrose the supermarket of the middle classes, just posted a yearly profit of a whole One Million Pounds. Someone told me part of the reason for this is the company is focusing on paying off it's debt to put in in a better position for all the uncertainty that's coming with Brexit, so some significant part of its revenue is going to repayments instead of profit. I haven't seen any articles which actually confirm that though.
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Sep 14, 2018 19:14
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So I think I'm going to miss Sears when it's gone. Washer broke, was able to get a replacement part the same day by just running to the Sears outlet.
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Sep 14, 2018 19:42
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there wolf posted:So I think I'm going to miss Sears when it's gone. Washer broke, was able to get a replacement part the same day by just running to the Sears outlet. I got a Washer/Dryer for Black Friday and foolishly didn't know the installers need New Everything to hook it up. Grabbed the hoses I needed and called up their service line -- guys were installing everything a day later, at no cost.
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Sep 14, 2018 20:24
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Reveilled posted:Someone told me part of the reason for this is the company is focusing on paying off it's debt to put in in a better position for all the uncertainty that's coming with Brexit, so some significant part of its revenue is They confirmed that on the Radio 4 news. Also their price matching policy has led to more reductions than they've had to do in previous reporting periods.
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Sep 14, 2018 20:28
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Beachcomber posted:I strongly think that there are far too many options in groceries. Exhibit A is the yogurt aisle. I work at Walmart, for 2 years my primary job duty was to throw away food in the produce section. Some of it was donated to a local food bank, this was the preferred method of getting rid of unsellable produce because donating to a charity is cheaper than paying to haul it away garbage. Most of it was garbage though, no food bank wants or will take moldy smashed up tomatoes. I think I would throw out a couple hundred lbs of food per night if I wasn't pulled off to do something else. IIRC I read something that said it costs the store a few hundred bucks to have the organic waste bin emptied. I think throwing away so much food bothered me a bit at the start, but I quickly stopped feeling bad about it. People don't go hungry because there's not enough food being produced or too much of it is wasted, they go hungry because of poverty and systemic distribution problems. Its entirely within our power to make sure no one goes hungry even if we keep on growing/wasting the same amount of food.
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Sep 15, 2018 16:13
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Personally I'm fine with wasted food if it's going in the organic waste bin to feed pigs/make compost. People aren't going to eat product past it's best by date anyways, and trying to make them sounds like one hell of a headache.
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Sep 15, 2018 18:35
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Personally I'm fine with wasted food if it's going in the organic waste bin to feed pigs/make compost. People aren't going to eat product past it's best by date anyways, and trying to make them sounds like one hell of a headache. I didn't save it, but I read an article about how a significant cause of food waste is people thinking that anything that hits the due date needs to be tossed in a bin. I fully agree with this... OtherworldlyInvader posted:People don't go hungry because there's not enough food being produced or too much of it is wasted, they go hungry because of poverty and systemic distribution problems. Its entirely within our power to make sure no one goes hungry even if we keep on growing/wasting the same amount of food. ...but the article made a compelling case that people are overly sensitive to expiration dates and that it leads to a lot of wasted food and milk. Just as a small example, I went to make a sandwich yesterday and, not having eaten one recently, my only tomato was half rotten. Nevertheless, the other half was firm and fine, so I disposed of just the bad bits. I had never really thought about it, but apparently a lot of people also get rid of produce, bread and cheese that has the tiniest bit of mould on it for fear that a little spot of green ruins an entire slice of bread, for example.
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Sep 15, 2018 22:37
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Don't mold spores permeate the entire package? So by the time there's visible mold spots, the rest of the loaf is suspect
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Sep 15, 2018 23:35
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I'm pretty sure throwing away mouldy or stale bread is not the cause of worldwide food insecurity. We should definitely find ways to reduce food waste especially at a wholesale/industrial level, but there's lower-hanging fruit than getting people to try and salvage mouldy bits of bread.
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Sep 16, 2018 00:08
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Yeah, the bigger problem is throwing out food weeks before it actually goes bad, among other things.
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Sep 16, 2018 01:43
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jivjov posted:Don't mold spores permeate the entire package? So by the time there's visible mold spots, the rest of the loaf is suspect
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Sep 16, 2018 02:00
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JustJeff88 posted:I didn't save it, but I read an article about how a significant cause of food waste is people thinking that anything that hits the due date needs to be tossed in a bin. I fully agree with this... The biggest reason is actually people won't buy food that looks "wrong." Like if you grow carrots in your garden you'll start noticing that carrots with two prongs or that are a bit twisty happen quite a lot. However you never see that at the store. Why? Because people want perfectly straight carrots all about the same length so a lot of ugly carrots just get discarded as unsellable before the store even sees them. PT6A posted:I'm pretty sure throwing away mouldy or stale bread is not the cause of worldwide food insecurity. Yeah, once you see mold anywhere on a loaf it's spread through the entire thing. It isn't just spores but the mold itself growing through it. The only time individual food waste matters in any appreciable way are people that order food at a restaurant or make it at home, eat like 1/3 of it, then throw it out. I saw that all the time when I worked in a restaurant and could only think "what the gently caress are you doing?" It's impossible to totally eliminate food waste but really a lot of people don't even think about the food they throw out. It's absurd.
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Sep 16, 2018 03:50
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Food waste anecdote, Mrs 'tor is the secretary of our kids local kindergarten and one of the reliable fundraisers is the Bunnings sausage sizzle. So we by like 60kg of snags and on the day there's a storm so before 7am the store cancelled it for safety reasons and gave us another date, so the wife and the president (who's vegetarian) take the snags back to woolies and get a refund and old mate comes out and takes 'em all. The pres' asks what they are gonna do with that many snags (it's a special order) and he says they will just throw them all away. They can't guarantee the safety of them anymore so *shrug* in the skip. Can't even give them to a soup kitchen or w/e. The president was p worked up over the whole ordeal poor thing. That's my story.
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Sep 16, 2018 04:11
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| # ? May 11, 2024 07:39 |
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Personally I'm fine with wasted food if it's going in the organic waste bin to feed pigs/make compost. People aren't going to eat product past it's best by date anyways, and trying to make them sounds like one hell of a headache. It isn't. The 'organic waste bin' just means they get to dump it in a particular part of the landfill. ToxicSlurpee posted:The biggest reason is actually people won't buy food that looks "wrong." Like if you grow carrots in your garden you'll start noticing that carrots with two prongs or that are a bit twisty happen quite a lot. However you never see that at the store. Why? Because people want perfectly straight carrots all about the same length so a lot of ugly carrots just get discarded as unsellable before the store even sees them. Mostly those don't even make it to stores these days. Part of the whole marketing push behind 'baby' carrots is that they're basically cut with a waterjet from carrots too unsightly to otherwise sell. Those too unsightly for even that will go for juice, or cattle feed rather than ever going to retail.
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Sep 16, 2018 04:44
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