One large supermarket, that is part of a chain, for a town might be more efficient, but I bet two smaller, independent, supermarket would lead to a nicer experience.
Hell even just cracking down on vertical integration and having the one, independent, store would be much better.
These problems usually boil down to the idea that corporate power is some how right and proper, but government should be avoided at all costs.
Governments are how the little people tell the faceless corporate bureaucracies that they are doing a shitty job.
Indeed. I'd even generalize further and say isolated from any of the details which would could lead to positive changes that are actually in line with their thinking. Whether that be they are too far removed from the details or for byzantine reasons the details never make it to them.
For a grocery store. That's insane bloat.
> reached a point where anybody with real power to make changes has been completely isolated from the public. It's just powerless workers being yelled at by a powerless public. I don't really know how we fix that.
Just get groceries delivered.
The grocery store near me has been bleeding workers the past few years and it's reached the point where there are consistently long checkout lines filled with annoyed shoppers even on non busy days. I could complain about the wait to the workers, but what would that do? I could complain to their shift manager, but so what, they don't do the hiring? Maybe I could find the grocery manager, he would probably want more help, but he doesn't control the budget. Now we're at 4 layers of management, the store director, who could increase hiring, but the regional manager wants to juice the numbers for his bonus so maybe I could reach out to the state director...
What i'm getting at is it seems like corporate bureaucracy at so many places has reached a point where anybody with real power to make changes has been completely isolated from the public. It's just powerless workers being yelled at by a powerless public. I don't really know how we fix that.