Comment by otachack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by otachack | Hacker News Reader

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A margin of a dollar? I believe you should support your local store as long as you can afford it. It's more work, money, and time off your day but it's likely you waste the extra time Amazon convenience gives you with browsing HN, or the like, anyways. Local business also most likely have picked up curbside for convenience.

It's in Amazon's best interest to shutter all locals aside from what they own (Whole Foods, Amazon Grocery, etc). Their ultimate goal is automating everything they can to remove the human element and maximize revenue. You can see other businesses like Starbucks taking over as well in different fields. In my opinion it's a matter of time until Amazon starts their own attempt at local cafes.

We had presidential candidates in the US like Andrew Yang that recognize this effort and want to get ahead of it with UBI but I'm sure you know how that turned out. If the government isn't going to support local businesses in dire times, who will? And who wants to live in a boring world where there are no local shops?

How long should we go out of our way to protect horse and buggy manufacturers?

I say that as someone who runs a business focused around increasing customer engagement with local businesses in small towns, but honestly it would take a monumental effort to save so many of these "general store" type of businesses that a small number of people paying the "local" tax on commodity goods isn't going to cut it.

Local mom-and-pop stores need to be looking for ways to differentiate from their mega-competitors. It's possible, and many stores are doing it successfully. But hardware stores? Selling bolts? Their only customers are people who don't use Amazon (older/rural) or people who need that bolt right now and are willing to pay 2-3x retail price for it. Especially in a pandemic where Amazon/Walmart are allowed to be open with few restrictions, but mom-and-pop has to close.

Successful small business going forward has to offer something Amazon/Walmart can't copy. Authenticity, experiences, memories. Escape rooms were a huge success story, creating axe throwing and fowling and other group activities, and often those places opened their businesses in the empty stores of businesses that couldn't compete with Amazon/Walmart and went out of business. Live music is another place Amazon can't compete with. A beautiful river-front promenade with park benches and an ice cream shop and a coffee stand and a vendor selling popcorn from a cart with some people getting ready to launch their kayaks while others are fly fishing, Amazon and Walmart and big box stores and strip malls can't compete with that. That's downtown, small, local. That's high profit margin.

Rather than clinging to the past where shopping local meant paying high prices on commodity items, we should be looking forward to a future where shopping local means "I can't get this anywhere else". That takes innovation. Grocery and bolts aren't innovation, they're commodities.

This is a beautiful and profound take on a brighter future despite the huge changes we’re all seeing. It is very possible that while local mom and pop basic retail dwindles, it is replaced by more enriching social opportunities. People will have marginally more free time due to time saved running errands, and marginally more dollars to spend. hopefully more meaningful local experiences can fill the void.

A strawman from the onset in my opinion.

What happens if your country of residence enacts laws and/or regulations that make business unprofitable for Amazon (or the like)?

Better yet, what if enough people are put out of work such that there isn't enough demand for the economy of scale required for Amazon to remain profitable?

I assume you are technical, perusing this site, thus isn't a monolith, a single point of failure a significant risk?

Your perspective appears to be of wealth and privilege. What about those that can't afford a Prime subscription?

Sure. If it was only a single dollar. But do it for every purchase and it adds up.

In a way if you are relying on the "community" to help your business stay alive, then your business is clearly not creating enough value and shouldn't exist.

> then your business is clearly not creating enough value and shouldn't exist.

how do you factor jobloss and destruction of your community into this 'value'?

Theres a spectrum of differences throughout the country, but in my area Amazon is providing a better starting wage and vastly better benefits to hundreds of warehouse workers on day 1 than any small retail businesses can compete with in the area.

Shouldn’t you compare this to 25 years ago as the demand long of communities has been in progress for decades?

Fighting systemic changes by making individual decisions is quixotic, to put it nicely.

It doesn't matter what you "should" do. In aggregate, all the people who take the margin where cheaply available will outcompete all the people who don't. It's less about you and whether you can be replaced by a facsimile of you who does all the same things but this one thing differently.

At the margin, that facsimile is a superiorly-adapted species and evolution then takes its course. You have to modify the environment in order to make the unmodified you more competitive than the doppelgänger.

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