Continuing in a-couple-days-of-headache-half-bakery-rambling, I was thinking about how Sbarro and Krispy Kreme and lots of other big companies are on the edge of collapse, and was thinking that it was a really good thing. Obviously it’s not a comment on the fact that people aren’t buying pizza or donuts. I mean, maybe they’re not buying as much, but they’re still buying plenty… What it is a comment about is that megacorporations are not sustainable business models.
So I think — I hope — the end result of all these giant companies and giant franchises collapsing is that they will be replaced with locally owned and locally branded businesses, which are far more nimble and able to survive market fluctuations, to say nothing of the fact that a local business keeps money in the local community and keeps money from evaporating higher and higher up the class system. I definitely think the same thing will happen in farming as factory farms collapse and we see the return of the small family farm. Fingers crossed.
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You need to throw Starbucks and their rotgut coffee in there too. Went to Seattle once and i swear there’s an intersection with a starbucks on each corner. What about Walgreens and CVS every 500 feet. I fail to understand the logic of that except: Better living through better Chemistry.
A lotta peeps doing a lot of ‘legal’ drugs.
Hey Shannon, what’d you use for the eye covers? I might want rip that off this year, if you don’t mind.
apparently one big box store just filed for bankruptcy
https://www.blogto.com/city/2008/10/big_box_bankruptcy_a_sign_of_things_to_come/
Cool… I have little to no sympathy for big businesses.
I don’t like the idea of my purchases subsidizing million dollar CEO salaries and shifting profits from the local community into distant shareholders hands. The resurgence of the local economy will have profoundly positive effects in the long run (although I appreciate it temporarily sucks for people who work retail in these jobs).
Hopefully we also see local manufacturing take off… I’d rather see that than seeing money flowing out of communities into foreign factories with a lower standard of life and environment, and into all the costs of shipping…
It might be fair to make a distinction between places like Krispy Kreme a Sbarro and places Like WallsMart. If you con’t care for the crap they are serving up at those food places, you can go elsewhere. Big Box places like WM, Target and Home Depot are far worse. They undercut and can run at narrower margins than the Mom&pop stores. Places like KK and Sbarro are likely to be franchise locations and their failure directly hurts small business owners that bought into them. Maybe poor product choice? I’ve never eaten at either.
I’m just concerned that the majority of the population will keep shopping at big box stores “to save a dollar”.
Like Scienkoptic said, they have the ability to keep cutting prices, which is one of the reasons why some of their large supplier companies will eventually file for bankruptcy. They will keep gathering more and more companies under their wing.
I guess they will have an eventual collapse, everything that gets too big for their own good does at some time. The question would be when…
Shop local, people!!
I have my fingers crossed, as well! I plan to start my own small farm. :)
While I agree that the corporate world is, in short, a realm of evil, I find it necessary in a progressing world…much like death.
I have the unfortunate location of a small, narrow-minded town that’s got a perspective barely out of the Civil war. We have rebel flags in my town, just down the street from me, put up by a small business for display. For everyone passing through town to see.
What happens when we depend on small, locally owned businesses? We become limited to the ‘approved’ items of the beliefs of our immediate locals. I most certainly would not be finding zero gauge plugs or even most likely any safe piercing jewelry at all here.
I think that going back to the portrait-like portrayal of small-farm families and honest businesses would be crippling for a world that is still, in many places, struggling with intolerance. Specifically towards alternative clothing styles and modification.
Maybe not…but the ma and pa pawn shop down the street from me most definitely isn’t sellin’ no devil man-yoo-els, like Harry Potter.
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