Weird conclusion to jump to. GP did not suggest grocery stores staffed under threat of jail time anywhere.
Better public transit benefits everyone. Better urban design favoring walkable neighborhoods benefits everyone. Better zoning allowing neighborhood shops at street level benefits everyone.
Sure, as someone who is raising a family in a city, I completely agree. But the reason why stores leave is invariably safety issues.
In recent years there have been high profile closures of big brand stores in major metro areas for exactly these reasons. Proposals to address grocery store closures include regulating them in San Francisco with a lengthy 6 month notice period and other requirements. In Chicago the idea has been floated for government run grocery stores.
While the jump to call such moves "the moral equivalent of slavery" is a bit extreme, they do exist in the realm of compelled behavior and against liberty. In the case of SF it's with regard to making it more difficult to exercise the decision to close a store, which may require the operator to take financial losses for longer and incur additional compliance related costs. In the case of Chicago, it's using tax payer money (which is collected through threat of incarceration) to operate a service that's traditionally provided voluntarily by a private actor because it yields them benefit (profits).
https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2024/01/31/grocery...
https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press...
Did home insurance availability increased arsons in any significant number?
Or am I mis-understanding how home insurance would incentivize arson
Debatable.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2316730121
>We should at least give it a go for seven more generations.
Are you being sarcastic? Underclasses and the declining classes are both on the verge of revolt. Seven generations of status quo won’t occur. That’s a fantasy of someone who does not understand the problems severity.
Canada also have horrific city planning, so when I say people need to travel far I mean they need to spend up to 3 hours in some major (major for us) cities just to get groceries.
The US is a whole other can of worms, I don't know how to solve those problems. I'm also not as familiar with the nuances.
I can't imagine anyone in a major US city spending 3 hours. Maybe rurally, but even the so-called 'food deserts' in a big city like LA ... it's just a few miles.
At the end of the day, look... my mother taught in inner-city public schools. I know the problems these kids have. They're given meals and such (and they should be), but that is not going to solve a cheating father, a mother too depressed by said cheating to lift a finger to do anything (and maybe whoring herself out or doing drugs to damp the pain?), and a family that sees the child as a cash bag. I mean what are we possibly to do? You give the food and still the child doesn't get it.
I feel these policies end up failing because the policy makers are from whole families (And are likely extremely socially conservative in their own life) and can't imagine anything so debased.
> I feel these policies end up failing because the policy makers are from whole families (And are likely extremely socially conservative in their own life) and can't imagine anything so debased.
I feel like you don't know any better than these policy makers you are dismissing.
1:15 each way on the bus and 30min in the store
That doesn't sound plausible. Got some examples?
There's a shopping center with multiple markets and Walmart and Kohl's that the bus comes up along then turns away from on the way to work; I can use this as an example of shopping from home, as I can probably get 90% of my living supplies there. Ralphs, Target, Walmart, Kohls, Trader Joe's, etc are all here. The bus transfer here is not an easy one, though, as the bus timings overlap going in both directions, meaning you have to leave early and get back later (about 1 in 4 trips I can transfer without waiting. _Not_ good odds with an hourly bus).
0:00 5 minutes: walk to bus stop 1.
0:05 5 minutes: wait for the bus (best to be at the stop early in case your bus is early, though this bus is usually exactly on time)
0:10 10 minutes: take the bus to stop 2.
0:20 3 minutes: cross the street to get on the other bus
0:23 12 minutes: wait for the next bus 2, the previous one left while you were crossing (yes, seriously)
0:35 10 minutes: take bus 2 to stop 3 where the shopping center is
0:45 90 minutes: cross the parking lot to get to the store (5~10 minutes), then try and get all your shopping done in under 40 minutes so you can take the next bus back home. Nope, today you had to go to the supermarket pharmacy, which is a 20 minutes walk across the shopping center, wait for your meds, _and_ walk back to the cheaper market to do your shopping as well.
2:15 30 minutes: shopping is done a bit early. Yay. You have time to walk back to the bus stop and wait in the sun until the next bus 2 comes. Yay.
2:45 10 minutes: Bus 2 comes. Take it back to the transfer bus stop.
2:55 15 minutes: Cross the street again, and wait for bus 1 so you can get home
3:10 10 minutes: take bus 1 home.
3:20 15 minutes: Now you're a block away from home, carrying bags of groceries, _and you had to get off 2 stops early so you could use a crosswalk_, because there's no crosswalks on this street and people don't stop. Walk home.
3:35. Tadah. You're home. Just a bit over 3.5 hours!
Unfortunately, since you don't have a car, you're limited to buying what you can carry. I hope you're ready to go shopping again later this week! You have family? Oh, well then you'll be shopping again 3 times this week. Maybe even 4 times. I hope you like waiting in the sun/rain, LA Metro only puts up cover where they can make money off advertising, so all the bus stops we've used only have benches (except one, but that one's further away).
If all you needed was medication, you'll probably want to get your shopping done anyways, as this is otherwise a > 2hr trip just for that (remember, bus 2 is hourly, so you're spending an hour at the shopping center _minimum_, including walking to/from the bus stop).
There's five other stores across the street from the shopping center that you'd like to check out sometime, including a new grocery store, but it takes 20 minutes to cross the shopping center, then probably another 10 to cross the street and the parking lot in front of the other stores. Add the time spent in these stores, and you've just added another hour to your shopping trip. This is only _partially_ offset by crossing to the supermarket pharmacy, as that supermarket is nowhere near the corner, and keep on kind that anything you have to carry will slow you down more.
-----
Buses:
- Bus 1 goes EW near home, turns NS between home and the transfer point (about 10 minutes), then goes EW again.
- Bus 2 goes EW, turns NS between the shopping center and transfer point, and goes EW again.
- There _was_ a bus that went NS along the east side of the shopping center (which also would have dropped me off at home, cutting out the need for a second bus entirely), but this bus route was changed in 2019 to turn away from the shopping center once it gets to the NE corner.
- There's a bus that goes EW along the other side of the shopping center, but that's not helpful.
-----
You're forgetting about just how much convenience your car gives you _besides_ the ability to get to and from the store.
- You don't have to wait for transfers or make what is effectively two trips to get somewhere.
- You don't have to cross parking lots or go in and out of stores from the street (you can park up near the store, then drive to the other side of the shopping center).
- You can make a quick 5 minute stop on the way home without increasing your travel time by a full hour (because the bus only comes hourly).
- You don't have to wait outside.
- You don't have to hope that the bus was cancelled without notification (two weeks ago I was lucky to get a ride, as my once-an-hour bus was straight up cancelled without prior warning; if I didn't use the former-official Transit app to check times, I wouldn't have known, and would have been waiting at the stop for 80 minutes like one of my less fortunate coworkers did, or taking a different once-an-hour bus home with extra transfers and lots of waiting, to only get home ~10 minutes earlier)
- You don't have to only buy as much as you can carry on a single trip (I work in a grocery store, people can and do fill _multiple_ shopping carts to avoid having to go shopping a second time in a week. People can and do purchase groceries for elderly relatives they don't live with).
- if there's a detour, it only costs you the time it takes to make said detour. If the bus has to make a detour and you have tight timing, you might miss your transfer, adding 10-60 minutes to your commute.
- You're not dependent someone being willing to pick you up. When I was in college, a full bus would often just go right by without stopping, since there wasn't enough room.
- You're not dependent on your fellow passengers being rule-abiding or polite. Last year the bus driver stopped for an entire 50 minutes at a high school because the kids weren't being safe or quiet. Not that they're ever quiet, or that a full bus in general is quiet, but they were throwing condoms across an overcrowded bus and yelling, and the bus driver understandably didn't want to deal with it when _he couldn't close the door_, so he stopped and said those past the yellow line on the floor needed to get off and wait for the next bus. Instead, they made fun of him, continued talking loudly, and those near the door who shoved their way into a full bus refused to move. (The next month or so was _very_ quiet on the bus)
- general garbage is everywhere. The filth that people leave behind when they cram into a bus and then leave. The noise of competing music playing against each other. Having the choice to either get up and lose your seat, or sit with someone's butt in your face because another busy bus broke down and yours is the first/closest bus going in the same direction.
- All you want to do is go home and go to sleep, but you don't want to get the bus in your bed and this sweaty dude's been sitting here talking in your ear for 15 minutes now and you wish you hadn't offered him a seat, and as soon as he leaves you realize the person behind you is yelling on the phone and now you have a headache.
1. Healthcare is where you can see a doctor.
Source: I actually live there
The hospital seemed functional, at least.
Debatable.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2316730121
>We should at least give it a go for seven more generations.
Are you being sarcastic? Underclasses and the declining classes are both on the verge of revolt. Seven generations of status quo won’t occur. That’s a fantasy of someone who does not understand the problem.
I think you mean China's economic system, which was in turn based on the practices of the USSR. China's economic system is lifting millions out of poverty, but western systems are systematically dragging people into it. Poverty in the US has never been lower than it was in 1973. Since then, poverty in China decreased by about 85%.
You edited your comment. I believe it originally contained the text above.
I'm assuming the edit was due to the fact that the statistic was based on absolute numbers and was not corrected for US population growth.
I also think the US vs China comparison is basically apples to bowling balls. It's "easy" to lift a giant percentage of the population out of poverty when a large swath of your population is in poverty.
Not saying the US doesn't deserve some criticism here, but your comparison was not apt.
Not entirely true. When you look at the decrease of China's extreme poverty, it is almost linear up until the numbers got to essentially 0. Even if this were true, it should be easy for the US to lift people out of poverty, given that there is a huge number of poor people in America.
> Not saying the US doesn't deserve some criticism here, but your comparison was not apt.
My point more broadly is that China has spent 40 years going in the right direction and the west has spent 40 years stagnating and deteriorating. At any rate, my main qualm was with the text "and [our economic system] is still doing it [lifting people out of poverty] today". This is not true by any metric.
Are they roughly equivalent, so that you are comparing similar things?
I think it would add a lot of clarity to your comparison to name the metrics you are using.
But that point is a couple decades out of date by now and even then the situation was more complex than just "people in rich countries want cheap products, people in poor countries make them, therefore people in poor countries get richer, and people in rich countries get poorer".
You know money is just paper, right? When we give China paper in return for something of value from their country, that is a bad deal for them unless they can trade the paper and get some actual good in return. China runs a trade surplus, which means they give away more than they get back, so it is actually a bad deal for them. It's one that makes their country poorer because they are giving away more than they get back. Almost all economists agree that China's trade surplus is bad for its economy, is even worse for its citizens, and should be reduced.
People in China were lifted out of poverty through the creation of manufacturing centres. These cities and factories were built by the Chinese, not by the west. It is ridiculous for us to try and take credit for their advancement when all we have done is exploit them.
How does one export manufacturing? It is undeniable that that China has benefited from science and innovation, but these I would consider to be the fruits of all mankind. If anything, the west has tried its hardest to keep knowledge from China. China has only advanced by systematically breaking intellectual property law that the west set up with the intention of hoarding knowledge to ourselves.
> its not socialism pulling China out of poverty
As you would expect, since China isn't really socialist. That said, there is certainly something unique about China's approach that has cause it to be much more successful than many other countries.
> As western cash is exchanged for Chinese products, its no surprise then that as poverty has waned in China is has been waxing in the west?
It should be a surprise. You cannot eat money. China consistently runs a trade surplus. That means that they give other countries more than they get in return. It is surely a great critique of the western system that China giving us stuff for free made us poorer. That the rich and powerful of our own countries discarded their citizens in favour of cheap Chinese labour. And so the benefit of all this free stuff which China has given us is focused into the hands of the few, rather than the many. This is sad, but not inevitable.
> The same economic systems you praise resulted mass starvations due famine killing millions in the process of trying to raise them out of poverty
Exactly. Just because a system lifts people out of poverty doesn't make it good. Yet the western system fails to even lift people from poverty.
By not doing it locally and purchasing it from another entity like China? they mean the export of the action of manufacturing and the associated benefits
I suppose "coming up with the idea for something" is a good enough definition for exporting the manufacture of it, but it seems much simpler (and less egotistical) to say that "China used our scientific discoveries to advance itself" instead of "we exported manufacturing to China".
I mean... is it? I can think of a few times that something previously expensive is suddenly made very cheap, and there's always a class of people that really don't do that well.
The closest situation I can think of is when the west was dumping food in africa [0][1]. Which made it harder for local farmers to make a living and made the food problems worse.
Unless you're talking about switching to an autocratic system where the elites can turn down cheap things in exchange for the long term benefits of local production. And, in theory, China might be able to, in theory, do that. I don't know their elite culture well enough to say otherwise. But modern Western elites definitely seem too short sighted to give that sort of power, so the critique seems like it falls flat.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14iht-food...
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2006/10/13/6256274/u-s-european-subsidie...
Obviously this will be somewhat true in the short term, but there is no reason these people can't just retrain and start doing something different.
> Unless you're talking about switching to an autocratic system where the elites can turn down cheap things in exchange for the long term benefits of local production.
It wouldn't have to be autocratic. For instance, our system is not an autocracy, yet we chose to move manufacturing to China. Not every system that makes decisions is autocratic. People could just as easily vote to do something democratically if they know it is in their own good.
But consider what is really happening in these places. They have an economic system which makes decisions about the allocation of resources. In response to the addition of new resources, these systems decided to decrease production of local resources below existing levels, and hence make people poorer as a result. The issue here is purely one of distribution and management. Suppose in the trivial case of food being dumped in Africa, said food was instead sold below market rates, and the income from this was used to subsidise farms to bring their outputs to the same price as the aid. Local manufacture remains worthwhile, prices decrease, and supply increases. Everyone benefits.
I don't think it should be crazy to envision an economic system stable enough to allow people to benefit when you give them things for free. Especially since in the future, everything will be produced for free by machines. At that point, I should like everyone to live in luxury, rather than for everyone to be poor.
Yeah, no kidding. But why are they awful to begin with? I'd hazard that it's because families have been asleep at the wheel in teaching their children to be good citizens. The change for something like this comes bottom-up, not top-down.
You could try to boil it down to economics, but that's misguided. The markets are a terrible tutor of morality and accountability.
Fix the families, fix the society. Hold parents accountable. Teach morality in the schools. It's not slavery to do that. You're not harming anyone by teaching children to have a modicum of respect for their communities, elders, authority figures or eachother.
Look at the "morality" of America's wealthiest and most influental citizens, and how rarely they are ever held accountable for anything.
Our nation has been rotting from its head for decades, and telling the plebes to be better citizens is pissing into a firestorm and thinking you'll accomplish something.
We could provide better public transportation so that people could more easily travel to the grocers.
We could provide incentives for grocery stores to open in underserved areas.
> Reduce the burden of poverty. For instance, the poorer you are the further you have to travel to the grocery store. The people who often don't have the means to easily travel for food have to travel for food.
No one wants to work in these neighborhoods because they are invariably awful. At some point the risk of an employee being murdered / assaulted means stores close down.
There's no good answer for this, other than to keep doing what we're doing. Our current economic system has consistently lifted large numbers of people out of poverty historically, and is still doing it today. We should at least give it a go for seven more generations.
That's not to say we should do nothing, but large overhauls seem uncalled for given the data.