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Comment by powera | Hacker News Reader

What a load of BS. To just pick on one point:

* There are only 250 Duane Reade's total (according to Wikipedia), there can't possibly be 400 in Manhattan.

* Duane Reade as a chain is intricately associated with the city of New York, at least from the point of view of a San Franciscan. It is the local culture.

* What's wrong with not having to walk a mile to go to a drug store? Having more locations helps build smaller neighborhoods.

Nobody grows up wanting to own and operate their own drug store anymore. So chains do it instead.

And I don't see how this is different than 50 people opening their own boutiques and destroying neighborhoods through gentrification. But I'm guessing the author would have a different opinion on that.

also: this is the CEO of kickstarter? Isn't it slightly self-serving for him to say "people should be trying their own crazy things that they could never get money for before kickstarter"?

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And don't forget the hypocrisy of bashing money-worshipping, when Kickstarter (which is now a for-profit corporation, by the way) is run by profit-maximizing algorithms. Strickler sounds like the typical caviar socialist.

We want Kickstarter to be similarly in sync with society. Earlier this year we became a Public Benefit Corporation. This means we are legally obligated to consider the impact of our decisions on society, not just our shareholders. It’s very different from the expectation that for profit companies maximize shareholder value above all. It acknowledges and embraces that you are a part of a larger community.

Right there in the article.

"In the United States, a benefit corporation is a type of for-profit corporate entity, authorized by 30 U.S. states and the District of Columbia[1] that includes positive impact on society and the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals. Benefit corporations differ from traditional C corporations in purpose, accountability, and transparency, but not in taxation."

Perhaps clearer language to use here might be the distinction between "for profit" and "solely for profit".

there are more than 400 duane reades in nyc. after a merger/acquisition, walgreens and duane reades are cobranded in nyc (and i believe all will soon be duane reades). they're also in the process of buying rite aide too, so that number will greatly increase v soon

I guess that funnily enough, the big irony of the text is that to do this: "people should be trying their own crazy things" a lot of this is only possible because the cost of certain things have been brought down by consolidations

There's nothing special in a pharmacy. It's a cookie-cutter business.

Build something truly new and innovative, don't try to compete for profit shavings and established markets unless you have 5 aces up your sleeve (like, drone delivery of prescription or something)

Pharmacies might be cookie-cutter businesses in your experience, but in a place with the density of NY, why should they be? Why can't there be a compounding pharmacy that specializes in pre-natal care, so the pharmacists and technicians are exceptionally well versed in various remedies for things like morning sickness, swelling, any sort of ailment that pregnancy can bring, who know pregnancy better than any doctor in terms of what products work best and in what combinations, in addition to stocking an assortment of complementary non-prescription items, all chosen because they are uniquely suited for the kinds of issues pregnant women specifically have.

Ditto cancer. Ditto orthopedics. Ditto MS and musculoskeletal problems. Ditto pediatrics. Communities exist around all of these things because people need a place to find that information and get their questions answered. Why couldn't that place be the exact type of business that exists to address people's health needs?

It could be a business built around serving the needs of a minority (yet significant) population exceptionally well, instead of being a bland cookie-cutter store that serves everyone pretty much okay, unless something goes wrong and the 22 year old pharmacy tech who has never even had a conversation with someone with your particular health concern remarkably doesn't know how to help you.

Pharmacies are a complicated issue because of regulation

But you have 'regular' grocery stores in NY and also the small ethnic product ones.

hey look, an appearance from the amazing mr. strawman, capable of ignoring an argument's essence in favor of contradicting lesser points to appear correct, yet totally out of context! Amazing!

Well, I'm claiming that it's fundamentally a self-serving and dishonest narrative, so I kind of have to contradict the lesser points to prove the narrative wrong.

As a different narrative, I don't see drug-store chains as a sign of communities dying, I see it as a sign of communities getting bigger. In a big city, there are lots of different chains, and in the small city that might have one drug store, they have a chain drug store and the community can focus on other things. Having a "local drug store" doesn't make a community. And having people raise millions of dollars for new episodes of a TV show from the 90s (MST3K) doesn't do anything for local communities.

“having people raise millions of dollars for new episodes of a TV show from the 90s (MST3K) doesn't do anything for local communities” dude you just strawman’ed again

OK, so to be nice and avoid haha jokes about logical flaws, I'm reading that your argument is this --> that the article is "fundamentally a self-serving and dishonest narrative".

The only point you offer that relates to your actual argument is the author of the article is the CEO of kickstarter, so his promotion of less monolithic industries is ultimately self serving given that he profits off them - which is an interesting one but I'd contest that with the history and focus of kickstarter and their lack of employing any monopoly strategy.

By limiting entries to simple projects, not allowing anything purely political / fundraising driven, Kickstarter allowed for a vast sea of other crowdfunding sites to exist without ever threatening to take them or their market share over, despite Kickstarter being the site that popularized the crowfunding concept. The opposite of say, Uber's domination strategy, or a lot of other companies for that matter.

So... if I trust any company to express themselves without being self serving, it would be Kickstarter, for the reason that they had an opportunity to be the only major crowdfunding site, and chose not to based on what the founders wanted the company to be about.

Well, let's forget about Strickler's caviar socialist hypocrisy for a moment, then: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest". That's what the ignorant KS CEO doesn't get.

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