The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store
japantimes.co.jp
japantimes.co.jp
There were way too many convenience stores that were open in the middle of the night, though (and apparently this is a requirement on the franchisees). There was a 24/7 convenience store on the first floor of my hotel, and then another one down the block, and then several more within a two block radius. There's no reason they couldn't all coordinate better so that each individual store is only open through the night a couple times per week. That would make a lot more sense. Most customers would still be able to reach an open convenience store, even in the middle of the night, within a few blocks walk. It'd be nice if stores had posted the hours of nearby stores so you'd know where else to go if the one you wanted was closed, but that's probably unnecessary now in the age of apps (I had no problem finding opening times for places on Google Maps).
Fun fact: in most of the world, medical personal like pharmacists can't go on strike.
Similar with doctors in hospitals, as long as emergency service works fine strike is allowed.
The majority of what a pharmacy provides is repeat customers anyway. Despite regular customers planning badly pretty much all the time, the majority gets their medicine for a minimum of various weeks.
The participation of the strike in Netherlands wasn't high. It was pretty last minute idea by one frustrated worker. The reason was the increase in the aggression towards the people working in a pharmacy.
Source: I know someone working in a pharmacy.
What kind of aggression?
It's probably an oversimplification but it is painfully evident when walking around metro areas of Japan.
The first ice cream vendor sets up in the center of the boardwalk, to minimize walking distance to all available customers. The second vendor sets up immediately adjacent, to take half the customers, who will stop at the nearest cart instead of walking another 2m. The third vendor, sets up on the opposite side from the 2nd, and then the first loses all their customers. So the first relocates to the other side of the 2nd, and they lose all their customers. Then the 2nd relocates to the other side of the 3rd.
The vendors should really cartelize, divide up exclusive territories, and collude to drive out newer competitors. But whenever the cartel breaks down, or none is active, the individual vendors are constantly trying to cut each others' throats by taking market share from the others. Each ice cream vendor cart needs a certain length of boardwalk territory to remain in business, so any two colluding vendors could force another to move by bracketing the target on either side. The game gets increasingly complex as you add more players, and more so when adding a second dimension, such that the vendors have a territory area, rather than a length.
Secoma is pursuing a strategy of claiming territories too small to support a greedier store, such that 7-11 can't carve away pieces of it without destroying itself and making no gains, whereas 7-11 is pursuing a strategy of sacrificing some of its stores to destroy all of its competitor stores, so that the survivors can divide the secured territories amongst themselves.
The game is like Go, but in real life. Instead of a grid on a board, the moves are putting a franchise store location down on a map. Pieces that are surrounded are removed. Scoring is by profit rather than by territory.
[0] In the qualifying round of Price is Right, 4 contestants try to guess the retail price of an advertised product, as closely as possible, without bidding greater than the actual retail price. The winner is then allowed to play one of the prize-awarding games.
You incorrectly assume their primary goal is to provide service to customers.
Their primary goal is to maximize profits, and in a saturated market the only way to do that is by trying to take market share from the competition.
If being open at 2am provides 1$ an hour of profit, that’s still profit.
The vending machines are amazing. One other thing I would like to import: the widely available, clean bathrooms all over the place. That was super nice.
I loved how some of the vending machines and convenience stores sold hot canned drinks. I've never seen that anywhere in the US. Now the hot canned coffee wasn't actually good (I had to try it), but it was interesting to have that as an option. There were also plenty of vending machines that would make coffee for you (which I didn't use because I opted for free coffee in the hotel in the morning and cold green tea thereafter, which I must say was delicious).
Also: canned mixed drinks! Japan is truly living in the future.
When cities start industrializing, one of the first things that consistently pops up are food vendors on the street taking up public right-of-way. Food preparation is a skill that doesn't need education, people working the long shifts of industrializing societies need to eat quickly, and new city-dwellers miss their regional foods, so poor provincial migrants quickly start hawking whatever they can sell on the street.
As cities grow up, they start viewing street food vendors as unhygenic nuisances. Some cities license them (New York's street carts), others try and corral them into more formal, permanent setups (Singapore's hawker food centers), and some just attempt to ban them altogether (tried in Bangkok.)
Vending machines are a unique response to the Japanese need for quick food; they're small enough to fit on tiny Japanese streets, they have no labor requirements in a country suffering from unskilled labor shortages, and there's no need to waste time doing the Japanese customer-service pleasantries with an inanimate object.
The American future would be the food truck. Food trucks have changed the dining scene in many areas, because a food truck and a permit is significantly cheaper than commercial leasing. And it works in the American context because American cities are full of wide streets with loads of parking, and there's lots of cheap labor to staff trucks with. But it would never fly with Japan, the same way Japanese vending machines would probably get vandalized in their first week on an American sidewalk.
Exactly: this is the same reason the wonderfully-appointed and utterly spotless Japanese public bathrooms are completely impossible in America. They'd be filled with graffiti, the washlet and other devices abused and broken, and dirty toilet paper left on the floor and urine sprayed all over within hours.
We've had those in the UK for years. No respectable lady would dream of boarding an intercity train without a M&S gin and tonic in a tin!
https://fortheloveofgin.co.uk/5-of-the-best-gins-in-tins/
https://thetab.com/2016/05/27/tested-best-supermarket-gin-to...
That's not just a Japanese thing. There was a minor and extremely silly political controversy a while back where someone took a photo of the British shadow Home Secretary drinking a canned mojito on a train.
Taiwan has them in train stations but nobody would trust them if they didn't have a chart on the wall with a detailed report of the weekly water quality inspection.
The airport in Beijing has a hot water dispenser but I've never seen anyone use it.
I didn't have any problems drinking the tap water in Bangkok for a week, for example.
Also, the smell of chlorine, when you turn the tap on, is enough for me not wanting to try it.
This tip tends to work for all countries, not just Japan. Look for green parks on Google Maps, especially named ones, if you're trying to find water fountains.
You just have to find the one type of can that doesn't have added sugar or milk. Once you know those nothing beats pulling a warm can of black coffee from the machine.
Really, the first company to introduce these on stations here in the Netherlands (or anywhere these don't exist) will turn a handsome profit if they stick to the Japanese formula for 自動販売機: small cans, low prices, decent selection, warm coffee, and located on train platforms. The novelty factor of the warm cans will take care of initial promotion.
But leave out that one warm corn drink.
I'd say pulling a bottle of warm lemon / lime tea was even better, especially with travel-sore-throat.
> low prices
Aside from providing warm drinks, that's the big ticket right there: IME, european vending machines are basically predatory, they're way overpriced for what they provide and rely on necessity or impulse rather than just doing good business.
Japanese vending machines are omnipresent, well-stocked, with good selection of useful stuff, but more importantly you don't feel like you're throwing money down the drain when you're buying from one. The prices are obviously higher than in a 'mart, but they're not "$5 for a bottle of coke" overpriced.
Absolutely agree: I don't remember the last time I bought something from a public vending machine (or even seeing someone else doing so) here in Spain.
Prices are anywhere between 2/3 times the price you would buy at a supermarket, an Airport shop kind of markup: whatever you get tastes bad as you feel swindled.
When I was in Japan it was rare if I didn't get something from a machine any given day.
A supermarket can coffee will cost maybe 60-100円 for what you pay 120-200円 in a vending machine.
I was tracking the prices of vending machines pretty closely in Japan, and if you didn't jump at the first one you saw and waited until a more out of the way one, you could typically find almost anything in the 100-120 yen range. My favorites were the "100 yen special" machines where most or all items were 100 yen. The prices were in large red lettering to emphasize the deal. Prices could go up to 160 yen or higher in the vending machines in tourist areas, especially the ones inside ticketed attractions.
100-120 yen was around the price you'd pay for those same drinks in a convenience or grocery store, with the only exception being bottled water. You can find bottled water much more cheaply in the grocery stores than anywhere else, well under half the price by volume. This is a pretty universal rule of travel that I've found holds true everywhere.
Regardless, if you’re in a place where vending machine prices are lower than usual, it only means that the store prices are lower still. There’s no magic here; the vending machine operators are making a healthy profit.
It did bother me that I could never tell what the actual size of the drink was going to be. Is it in kanji, or is it just not listed at all? I definitely had a situation where I was expecting a full normal sized bottle of green tea but got a smaller one.
edit: by soft-serve, I mean any of the thinner ice cream/frozen yogurt alternatives as opposed to the (usually very thick) real ice cream.
Yes, I imagine these machines would have to be pretty robust to maintain those temperatures in Japan's hot climate.
1: The fermented beans compensate for the lousy fibreless bread, and it sure beats rice for breakfast. The mustard is a must-have though.
There's just something about being brewed potentially months ago, and then kept at an elevated temperature for many days, all the time in an aluminum can, that doesn't lead to good tastes. It tasted metallic. And interestingly, it was actually hard to hold (and even open) at first, because it was hot, being an uninsulated aluminum can that was in a heater. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I could even hold it firmly in one hand without having to juggle it around a lot.
A few years ago they were all public and free to use at any time. Then English signs saying “Close the door. Don’t make a mess. Don’t stand on the toilets. Don’t do (xyz common sense thing)” started popping up. Then I saw a few saying “please alert staff if you’d like to use the toilets and we will give you a key”. Now most conbini in Tokyo suspiciously have two separate offices and zero toilets. If it’s an area with mostly foreigners, your chances of finding a toilet really fall off a cliff.
It was nice while it lasted, I suppose.
Don't forget how almost every public restroom even has a washlet.
But we can't have these things in the US. Americans can't even be bothered to flush the toilet, and like to scrawl graffiti on bathroom walls. The only way we'd have the super-clean public bathrooms of Japan is to keep them locked, or have a pay-per-use scheme with cameras monitoring them to see who pees on the toilet seat without cleaning it.
Although I'll pass on the camera monitoring.
It's great that we could find something to eat at 2am when jet lag messed with our eating schedule and nothing else was open except the four 24-hour chain restaurants, 6 full-service Izakayas and a late night curry shop within a 5 minute walk. What would we have ever done without a choice of 6! different convenience stores within the same area?!
Oh and on the way there's vending machines literally jammed into every available urban crack that can fit one where I can service most of my beverage and a few food needs.
I couldn't figure out how these places earn enough money to keep the lights on given the competition, now I guess I know.
The late night pubs do exist, sure, but a lot of them stay open to capture any foot traffic from people missing their last train around midnight. Most don't serve full menus at that hour and it's usually a skeleton staff (short of, say, a HUB or something... but those aren't going to be open past 2, short of Roppongi & co generally).
Japan (really Tokyo, I guess) stopped being truly 24-hours post 2011 earthquake. After the power issues around the country, I noticed a lot of places never returned to their same livelihood. It's a shame, was fun while it lasted.
I'm mostly commenting at this point because the misconception of Japan being this constantly-on always-good-food crazy ass heaven is really tiring to see these days.
Really? This surprises me, given that the population of Tokyo has only continued to rise since then, and Tokyo wasn't nearly as badly affected as many other parts of Japan. How long did the power issues last following the earthquake, and why would they still continue to have effects so many years later?
I wonder if any developed countries middle class is faring well currently?
From what I saw, the whole place looked middle-class, and like everyone was doing fine. I think I might have seen one homeless person the whole time I was there (and I'm not sure about that; they were just begging, and didn't have a bunch of stuff with them); I saw more poverty in Germany, and I see far more in the US.
Japan's middle class might not have as much disposable income as it did in the 1980s, but from what I saw, it wasn't doing badly at all. It certainly looks a lot healthier than the US's middle class.
Things are a little better in purchasing power per capita terms [2], but not by enough to make a difference.
[1] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
[2] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
Yet in 2012 it was $800B more than in 1995?
From your graph it has been mostly been stable.
If that's not what you meant, I would recommend wording it differently in the future.
Regularly see elders in my local Yoshinoya. The Beef-Salmon set is good.
Peek in a McDonalds and you'll see old people too. Doesn't make it good for you.
The OP isn’t being literal, but the point is correct: Yoshinoya seems great if you’re a tourist and you’ve had it once or twice in your life. But if you live there you begin to associate it with missed trains and late-night binge drinking. I had to be pretty wasted to eat gyuudon - even an old onigiri from a sketchy conbini was preferable.
Are there people who eat there regularly? Sure. There are people who eat Burger King every day, too.
The OP’s broader point about Tokyo not being a magical 24/7 wonderland is extremely well-taken. Tourists spend some time in Shibuya or Shinjuku and extrapolate incorrectly. Hell...even Shinjuku can be a hard place to get a good bite at 3am on a weekday night. Most places there close shortly after the last train (~midnight).
That's just Tokyo and it's a very biased impression. Most places in Japan don't have that kind of density of combinis. I there there are about 55 000 combini in Japan, and there's probably 20% of that in Tokyo alone so you were in an area that's not representative of japan as a whole. In most other other cities there's rarely more than one combini at the same place, and you would not see 5-6 of them just by walking 5 minutes.
> I couldn't figure out how these places earn enough money to keep the lights on given the competition, now I guess I know.
Of course they earn money. They sell products with a high markup (like 30% more than everything you find in a supermarket), they have their own lines of products with even higher profit margins, and there's usually a density of population that guarantees a minimum of business viability anyway. Never seen a combini owner that was poor or having a hard time to make ends meet.
As a consumer honestly there is little to complain, they ARE very convenient.
But grandparent is correct: a lot of items are expensive for what they are (some of the "fresh" meals cost as much as a eating in a normal ramen/noodle place on the street), so you pay for the convenience.
That's only in Sannomiya. Go in Suma, Nada, Rokko, you won't find that many combinis within a very short walking distance. The city center is appropriate for this kind of density because there's 3 different train lines (and 4 if you consider the metro) stopping right at the same place transporting hundreds of thousands of people every day.
But there were about 4 7/11's in a two block radius, Lawson's, Family Mart... All over.
I know so well because for one thing I tried to walk most of the time to wherever I went, and for another I enjoyed experimenting with different snacks/desserts every night from conbini.
I live in a prefectural capitol in Southern Kyushu and yeah you're right - we only have 3 convenience stores in 5 minute walking distance. That's in a residential area and not in the central district where there are more.
I lived in a similarly sized city in Sweden and there was literally one single 24/7 convenience store in the whole city. And I think it closed.
> Never seen a combini owner that was poor or having a hard time to make ends meet.
Well obviously, they quickly become ex-owners. We have 3 convenience stores near our apartment that have shut down in the past couple years. They wouldn't shut down if they were profitable.
I could be wrong but that's probably because Sweden has a far too low density of consumers to support this kind of business.
I think the differences are less superficial than that. Cost of labor certainly ties into it but also work culture (Japanese people tend to get out of work late)
Agree 100%. I never believe anything that a business owner says in the news.
The density of Manhattan is ~73,000/sq mi[1], whereas Shinjuku is merely ~48,000/sq mi and Shibuya is only ~38,000/sq mi. Note that Manhattan is much bigger than Shinjuku or Shibuya so this should actually work against Manhattan in these statistics.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan
Edit: added [in the US].
[0] https://www.starbucks.com/store-locator/store/13918/43rd-bro...
For example, if there is an opportunity to increase efficiency, or reduce costs or environmental impact, it would be relatively easy to deploy this throughout an entire franchise, as compared with heterogenous stores.
As for the issue of opening hours, labour shortages and demographic trends (the population is aging and decreasing) are significant. I am only aware of two likely solutions which are not mutually exclusive: (1) immigration; and (2) automation, ie. robots. Increasing the fertility rate might also address this issue, but seems less likely to happen.
This situation in Japan seems unusual, usually a business would only stay open late if there was actually a reasonable amount of demand at that time.
If execs were forced to work whenever some of their employees work, their imagination about who likes what would change dramatically.
> Last year, when Fukui Prefecture was hit by the heaviest snowfall in decades, it was discovered that a 7-Eleven franchise store was banned by the parent company from closing temporarily even after the store owner’s wife fell ill from overwork.
> He lost his wife in May last year and he “was on the verge of falling ill or dying from karōshi (death from overwork),” he said.
It summarizes for me how extreme the relation is between franchise and the owners, how little escape they have from that abusive bind.
The franchisor is basically uniformly in favor of more locations since the franchisee bears most startup costs and the franchisor gets an effective call option on their cash flow.
(It’s also not clear to me that convenience stores are oversupplied relative to demand; there are probably some geographic mismatches but in e.g. this neighborhood in Tokyo you can find 3 in a Us city block and they’re self-evidently very viable. Which you might ask “How is that self-evident?” and I’m left to say “Trust me.”)
I was under the impression opening a convenience store cost $50,000 or more, not an investment to make lightly IMHO. A few visits will tell you if the owner is working 16 hours a day 7 days a week, and you can estimate markups by looking at prices on the store shelves. And that's without looking for franchisees complaining online, or asking them in person.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/12/7-elev...
[1]: In the major metropolitan areas.
There was definitely an explosion of convenience stores across Adelaide - perhaps 2010 until 2015? But they then all shuttered in quick succession.
Like many things in Japanese society it seems to be because "this is the way it's done".
7/11 also has a brand promise. It includes, prominently, “If you need it, 7/11 is open.”
The LTV of a conbini regular is very, very, very high and the brand does not want you to sour on it for reasons specific to Store 6548 in May 2019.
I suspect it's true for diners, for instance, and New York bodegas. Insomniacs drinking coffee aren't paying the bills, but they'll come back for lunch or breakfast.
Bars also often seem to stay open as late as they legally can, even if it's just the bartender and the town drunk on a typical night.
Pharmacies too. People are more likely to fill their prescriptions at a place that never closes.
Even if it’s not profitable to be open, there’s always some work that can be assigned to take load off the day shift.
And if shelves are stocked overnight or deliveries are received at night, there were some people there anyway already.
There are many examples of franchises allowing flexibility within the brand while still adhering to the brand ideals.
It sounds like 7-11 corporate for JP is uncompromising to a fault and unwilling to meet owners halfway.
McDonald’s can maybe change its menu, and close at odd hours. They can’t, however, have their Big Macs taste different in Paris, London, or Riga. Nor can they remove the Big Mac from the menu outright, and serve only vegetarian spring rolls. That’s their brand promise, and they will not compromise on this.
If 7/11 has “we’re always open” as their brand promise, they will not compromise on it, even though they might be willing to meet owners halfway on other issues.
It’s not a great situation, especially for the poor guy pulling near-useless all-nighters. It seems understandable, though, why it’s happening.
The "meeting owners halfway" part is called a contract. Presumably, staying open 24 hours is part of that contract.
Source: went for a wee in a McDo in Belgium last week, place was predictably disgusting.
(I admit there may be some residual rose-tinted-ness to my opinion here, after staying on a Greek island years ago; after days struggling with the idiosyncratic local toilets (stinking holes in the floor; dirty paper in a bin, not flushed) the clean porcelain throne in the McDonald's in the capital was like an oasis in the desert...)
Which seems odd, given how cheap plungers are in comparison to service employees.
Maybe I'll have to start frequenting them more and reviewing their toilets ;)
Owning a convenience store is a hard proposition
McDonald's is probably one of the better ones. But you're still beholden to them. They often own the land under the building, if not the building itself. They tell you exactly what you must do. They tell you when to remodel. They make you buy from their suppliers. They can decide to open another store a mile away from yours.
But longer term I think the worst franchise to be in will be car dealerships. Once EVs become mainstream, the service revenue will fall by about 80%. There's just so much less to go wrong. How will dealers be able to pay for the overhead of their giant buildings?
I think the real threat to the incumbents is the risk of having only the 3rd best or worse electric drivetrain.
We might be in a winner-takes-all-ish market, like cell phones.
The local 7-Eleven also went bust yesterday, together with their other store just a few blocks away. That corner of the city has plenty of other stores so it can't be easy to keep afloat. Town only has about 100 k people. (North Sweden)
Rule of thumb: the easier it is to obtain a franchise, the less it is worth.
> But quantity can’t obscure what one Chinese energy journal last month referred to as the industry’s “Quality-Gate” scandal. The numbers are damning. In 2018, Chinese manufacturers recalled 135,700 NEVs for a crushing 10.8 percent industrywide recall rate. Already this year, another 23,458 electric vehicles have been recalled.
> Batteries are the most common source of problems. Some don’t perform as advertised. Others drain unusually fast. Still others run dangerously hot. More than 40 NEVs spontaneously combusted in China in 2018.
> Other issues include faulty motors, faulty transmissions, faulty odometers and bad odors (a problem to which Chinese consumers are particularly sensitive). Most notably, according to market research firm J.D. Power, problems are far more common in Chinese NEVs than in traditional Chinese-made cars.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-20/qualit...
E.g. "no second franchize store in 1 mile radius" (of course this could differ from place to place based on market and population density).
In fact, I've been surprised for some time that there hasn't been a greater development/proliferation in this area. It would seem that a large (room-sized) refrigerated vending machine offering a range equivalent to a small convenience store is already highly technologically feasible, and would probably be far more cost efficient (smaller footprint, much lower staffing requirements) than running a convenience store.
Lawson seems pretty fine being on their own.
how is this even possible? That would be almost 17 hours a day, 7 days a week for a 30-day month.
> One Monday night in late March, only 10 customers came to the man’s store in the three hours before dawn, and the sales during that time were a little more than ¥6,000. The store will be in the red if he hired someone for night shifts.
Smart management would close the store during those hours. Of course, the franchise doesn't care for smart management - when the operator eats the loss.
In a way, you’re almost just like an employee of the franchisor, but without any of the benefits and a lot more liability. But it’s a great relationship for the person selling the franchise.
But as long as they can make other people pay for their business decisions, that will, of course, not happen.
The point is to diffuse risk, standardize the brand, and allow local owners to decide the things which don't affect the brand, in the service of their own interests (including whether or not to continue operating the location).
A franchise where the owner bears a small minority of the risk might as well just be centrally owned.
eventually, 7-11 will be known as a place where you're likely to encounter sick children lying on chairs at 10pm because the franchisee's family is living in the store. eventually that might actually damage the brand enough that they'd remove some of the stipulations.
It's mentioned in the article actually, in the later section on Mitoshi Matsumoto; he closed early and made more $$$.
It seems they like the owner exhausted so they cannot do the things which makes sense. E.g. to sell the food which is close to the expiry date instead of throwing it out. Yet another example from the article.
“We will let the owners (of franchise stores) make the final decision (on whether to shorten operating hours),” said Seven-Eleven Japan President Fumihiko Nagamatsu.
There is a 7/11 near the Sapporo Zoo that is closed early in the evening.
Yes, it's true that there is a huge problem with overwork for the franchisees.
But those stores aren't there (just) for you.
Imagine this scenario: you're over 80, living on your own and not very mobile.
The fact that there's a 7-eleven within 100 metres that sells a large variety of foodstuffs and essential items in single portion sizes allows one to maintain one's independence, which is a godsend. Try that in LA!
Japan values social-cohesion. Many of us who live here long term do too.
Edit: admit there's a problem for the franchisees.
After the local village shop shut down, the railway station 7-eleven started sending a van into the village once a week on a Wednesday afternoon so that the old people in the village could get their groceries.
No work is rarely the trade-off issue in Japan. They operate for quite different margins and labor practices than eg the US.
They haven't had an unemployment rate over 5.5% in 40 years. The typical rate has been 3% to 3.5% for the last 30 years - a time in which they've suffered from perpetual economic stagnation and zero net growth. It's around 2.5% right now.
Japan is losing population while simultaneously having an extraordinarily low unemployment rate. Automation is the only path forward, they should be pursuing it with as much vigor as possible. If you're Japan, as your population contracts, the ideal is to wipe out all convenience store jobs and push the labor force higher up the ladder whenever possible.
Well, they could always do more immigration. Its not like they don't do some already, and I think the Japanese will become much more open to it in the future.
For example, you get points for JLPT N2 (previously only N1) and for patents you only need one (previously three, if IIRC).
That seems badly exaggerated, unless I'm missing some horrible comments. As for "Even for HN": this is the kind of putdown of the community that I feel compelled to respond to, since no one else will. Yes, people post unpleasant things to Hacker News, often without realizing it. But the overwhelming majority of users here are far from empathy-deficient, and relative to the rest of the public internet, particularly not. You might be running afoul of the paradox of HN being a non-siloed community, which I wrote about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19931510.
Putting down or dissing the community that you're participating in is actually a subtle form of vandalism: why should we bother taking care of it if it sucks so much anyhow? It's also a way of keeping one's distance from others: I'm not really part of this icky group—I'm here, but I'm better. Actually anyone here is as much a part of it as anyone else, and while many things happen that make one cringe, so do many things that bring out good in people. We should focus on the latter, because what we focus on grows, and the community's image of itself is pretty shaky. On HN, we also value social cohesion, and that involves bridging a great many wide divides. Only so much of that is possible, but it's precious and deserves taking care of.
Edit: sorry if it feels like I'm picking on you personally. That's not my intent at all. Your comment was otherwise excellent and the information you shared made this thread much better. I'm sorry to distract from that by responding to the least relevant bit. I hate doing that actually. But it's sort of a death by a thousand cuts thing, so we have to respond somewhere.
This:
> It's also a way of keeping one's distance from others: I'm not really part of this icky group—I'm here, but I'm better.
is a brilliant way of putting it. Completely nails the impression. It's a passive-aggressive, condescending way of pushing yourself up by putting others down.
If you want to be a better moderator of any internet community you'd do well to study how it's done here.
Capitalism doesn't care about people or the distress they feel during transitions. It's very effective at generally raising up the living standards of all people, but can be pretty inhumane at times when dealing with certain groups of people who's skills and services are becoming obsolete.
The only choice really is retraining and switching careers and having social safety nets. The other alternative, socialism, just spreads the pain across the entire world.
Our only realistic chance at reducing global poverty anytime soon is via capitalism. Sucks for this 7-11 owner, but that's how it goes.
The core of capitalism is competition. This may result in higher quality and larger choice, but if these are sufficient enough it will in the end result in lower prices. This has to be done through efficiency but will also result in lower wages.
I think unconstrained, uncontrolled capitalism will result in 90% of the global population working very low income, replaceable jobs, or being completely replaced by automation.
I think that's likely; after all, capitalism already replaced the jobs of 90% of the developed world population with automation and other efficiencies: that's why most of us no longer work in agriculture.
Now, was that a net negative development?
I think there's a compelling argument to be made that in this century, with forces like globalization and automation removing a lot of the leverage which labor had, modern capitalism is going to result in a net negative economic state for a vast majority of people.