Also the ease of buying stuff increases, so more stuff needs to be produced and transported.

It's been pointed out to me that how much stuff you buy is usually a function of your income, it may not matter how you get it.

it is, but its not linear - the proportion of incomes spent falls as incomes get higher.

Yes and also spent on more durable items.

A weak function is also a function. Also if your income is higher you probably buy stuff that is more expensive.

I would not underestimate the amount of resources necessary to support this brick-and-mortar stores model. You need to deliver those goods to each shop, then handle the returns of unsold items... Not to mention costs of employees (and their costs) — but that may be debatable, of course (creating jobs).

Yes, there are logistics behind shops. It is going to vary a lot with what you buy and from whom. Food is likely to be delivered from somewhere local AFAIK so its not going to simplify the logistics.

Buying from a shop does not necessarily mean driving to the shops: at the moment (and in some places I have lived in in the past) there are quite a few things I buy from local shops I walk to. In some big cities I would take public transport to buy anything that was not heavy (and really heavy things would be delivered anyway, of course).~

The point of want to make is that its not invariably true and in many cases it is not obvious it is true - you need to know how the supply chains work.

I just ride the bus to the mall. I also walk to the grocery store.

> Food is likely to be delivered from somewhere local AFAIK so its not going to simplify the logistics.

Delivered restaraunt food in urban enough areas sometimes from ghost kitchens, large commercial prep kitchens but making the full meal, instead of the restaraunt, but this may have died down after the pandemic.

But I wasn't taking about food delivery, more Amazon delivery van full of products vs something on the order of 1 million tons of vehicles driving to the store. Amazon vans can do 300-500 deliveries during Christmas, and personal cars have gotten heavier. It's vastly more efficient except where you could take the subway or something. But in large Urban places with subways the van may only have to go to a single building to drop off hundreds of packages in some cases so may still win out vs hundreds of subway trips.Couldn still win out,and especially if factoring in human time.

Big delivery trucks to a few rural stops might not be efficient, but when you order from rurally your packages might get dropped off by something like a Camry making 10 deliveries, I've seen that from Walmart orders, or a smaller US mail truck.

Return rates of brick and mortar are about 8-10%. Where as online and approximate 30%.

In addition to this the trash contributed to selling drop shipped Temu garbage.

There is tons of empty capacity back to the distribution center for returns

True, but its not efficient in terms of my time. It may not be true for all systems? The goods will also (hopefully, as the alternative is worse) be resold so there will be a second trip out.