The why is because once you have a car, the marginal cost of using the car is only $0.40 to $0.60 per minute of travel. That means if you are running errands, it makes sense to shop at big box stores that can sell for 10%+ cheaper due to efficiencies of scale.

Hence Costco/Target/Walmart/Home Depot/Lowes/Best Buy/Staples/etc succeed over a small business that might be a walkable distance. You are already in the car going to and from work, what difference does a detour make.

You make a solid point, I’d only say you’re overestimating a marginal cost of a minute of travel. Unless you’re doing a long freeway trip (which is unlikely in the context of going to Target), your average speed will be closer to 30 mph. That means that you’ll burn less than 2 gallons of gas (closer to 1 in fact) per hour, and even at today’s gas prices, that will come down to less than $.15/minute. Maintenance and amortization, as a good rule of thumb, are around equal to the cost of fuel, so you’re unlikely to reach $.40/minute, much less $.60, unless you drive expensive, fuel inefficient car at highway speeds for extended periods.

The rest of your comment, however, I fully agree with.

IRS gives almost $0.60 per mile:

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-issues-standard-mileage-rat...

> The standard mileage rate for business use is based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile.

I also incorporate morbidity/mortality risks associated with driving, considering it is the riskiest thing people do on a day to day basis which very well could result in loss of income due to not being able to work and other costs.

I also expect inflation to keep driving up replacement cost of cars (and repairs).

Finally, I am under the impression that short distance start and stop driving is more costly via wear and tear than long distance highway driving.

I think they’re overestimating, but more importantly, they also include fixed costs in those figures, while the parent comment was talking about cost of a marginal minute once you already have a car.

I presume that a car would have to be replaced after it is no longer useful, so the replacement cost needs to be amortized over all the miles in the current car.

Yes, if you are looking for a full cost of driving, but not if you are talking about marginal minute of use of a car you already have.

And then you end up with huge parking lots and traffic problems because everything is so far away.

The most fascinating part to me as an immigrant is that when you go to a supermarket, the 50 brands of honey are all basically the same thing.

> You've got 50 different brands/sizes of honey available.

...and all of it is from three different companies?

Do people really make use of this choice? Or is more like companies conditioning customers?

I think consumers really do make this choice, and aren't very compromising. People have a high expectation for both the variety of products, and the variety of a single product.

As a result, the different people have very diverse diets, and it is unlikely that a small store would satisfy most of them.

For example, each week I shop from 2-3 different supermarkets that are 60k ft^2 each (6k m^2).

And an individual consumer probably doesn't take advantage of all the choices on a weekly basis but in aggregate they do. I have a couple of convenient supermarkets and I don't shop at both weekly but I recognize that each is better for certain things. And Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are even better for others although neither are close enough to make a special trip for the most part.

> I'm talking like, you want honey? You've got 50 different brands/sizes of honey available. Repeat for every expected type of product

This is one of the reasons I enjoy shopping at ALDI. When I want honey, I pickup the one and only container of honey and move on.

Shopping takes 1/4 of the time and requires no decision making other than reading a list I made earlier, so it's literally like a relaxing stroll.

> I pickup the one and only container of honey

You don't have at least forest honey and meadow honey? That seems rough.