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Comment by lanevorockz | Hacker News Reader

Covid destroyed the local businesses and replaced them with Amazon ... Here the local butcher was gone after 140 year, local farmers market, local antique store and even the craft shop. At least we are consistent that everything comes from china now, almost like we don't matter at all.

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Cannot confirm. My local farmer's market in London is stronger than ever, and two new ones opened up at walking distance from my house in the last year.

Working from home and allowing people to sneak out of work on a Wednesday noon to buy groceries was a boon for farmers' markets.

Places with cheap products and places with good products are striving. COVID is accelerating the death of shops that sell bad products at high prices.

This decline started decades ago.

In the 21 years I've lived in the UK, dozens of large chains have shut down, including several large, iconic department store chains.

The reality is the shift online have been going on for more 20 years at this point, and it's not at all just Amazon, and to the extent Covid had an effect it was to speed things along a ton little bit.

There has been a big jump in online grocery delivery during the pandemic in the UK. I suspect many people are continuing with online delivery even though pandemic restrictions have eased.

The pandemic really exposed some of the supermarkets and retailers with no online delivery offering (at least in the UK) e.g. Lidl, Aldi, Primark. All the supermarkets remained open during the pandemic, but the ones without the online delivery option missed the opportunity to expand in the online grocery market.

That's true, but this is not where anywhere near a majority of retail collapses in the UK has come from. Most of the large collapses started long before Covid, and even most.of the contraction during Covid has been of businesses on a solid downward trajectory long before.

The decision (taken before millennials were born) to offshore as much work as possible was taken to undercut the wages and conditions of UK (and more generally, western) workers. The quarrel shouldn't be with China though - our politicians chose this because it made the wealthy wealthier.

also, the removal of manufacturing capability has enourmous Geo political consequences. the chip shortage shows the pain points. as did the incident with the evergreen ship and covid-19 as a whole.

outsourcing seems to also be partially motivated by undercutting the workers and focus on short term profits.

Quite the opposite in the town near where I live in Fife - the town centre has boomed since Covid. I suspect people popping out to shop during the day rather than commuting into Edinburgh.

It takes a long spoon..

the department stores have been losing business for 10 years now

covid is just finishing them off

> Covid destroyed

Not covid. The response to covid, which was a choice with tradeoffs.

Tomayto, tomahto, if Covid had not happened these stores would most likely still be in business.

If Britain’s leaders had decided not to have lockdowns, they would most likely still be in business as well. The distinction matters, because when evaluating lockdowns it’s important to realize that there are heavy costs.

Not really. Footfall was way down before the lockdowns started. People saw what was happening in Italy and stayed home.

Most white collar workers would lock down anyway.

Covid didn't destroy local businesses - ham-fisted (or maybe even intentionally malicious) policies destroyed local business. Considering Bezos' regular sociopathic behavior, I wouldn't even be surprised if it came out that Amazon lobbied various local governments to severely restrict small businesses under the guise of public health during covid. It's what Bezos does in the space industry and he even owns a media outlet (Washington Post) to push his agendas.

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