Love Song to Costco
longreads.com
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To which I responded "That sounds like a well run company!"
Somehow they made that work out where all three of them won.
I think for semi-big purchases ($USD 200 to $USD $20,000) as a consumer Costco has huge value. The vendor vetting thing may not be as important when it comes to a bag of chips, but when it comes to a $4,000 gazebo or some $2,000 appliance I have really come to trust Costco's vetting.
How does that jive with selling Samsung (and LG) appliances? Samsung is easily the worst appliance manufacturer in North America across pretty much any appliance. LG's not too much better but supposedly their dryers and front load washers are decent.
For my recent purchase, I looked at wirecutter as a starting point and bought from Costco. Also I got a 3rd party extended warranty (since you never know with water-using appliances).
According to Wirecutter (NYT): "If you’re a member, Costco offers the cheapest delivery and installation of the big national chains, you’ll get an additional year of warranty coverage for many products, and it will help you make warranty claims with the manufacturer."
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/where-to-buy-appl...
It's been 6months. When should I expect issues?
Samsung/LG appliances (washer/dryer, fridge, etc.) usually last 5 years or less. Whereas a quality appliance should last 10 years or more. My source on this is friends who work in the industry plus the experience of family members who bought LG/Samsung appliances anyway.
> LG's not too much better
Any sources for these blazing hot takes? Or are we supposed to take your hearsay at face value?
I don't know this firsthand but I too have seen a lot of this recently. Even before COVID. I am specifically thinking appliances like refrigerators, oven ranges, and washer/dryers. Maybe some microwave ovens.
Maybe Samsung just outsells everyone else making the problems more visible but it seems a lot of people love complaining about Samsung.
They all seemed to think that LG had gotten its act together, though. I ended up with an LG fridge.
I had indeed heard the same about Samsung, and more generally designed service lives < 7 years across brands with better reputations.
I elected to buy all used but (good condition) late-model Miele appliances. They’re rated at 20+ years, they focus on reliability and repairability, and if you’re patient you can get them for less than even the cheapest Samsung etc models, especially when taxes are taken into account.
Not to mention they’re the best quality appliances money can buy. I definitely don’t need a paella mode on my dishwasher, but it makes me smile every time (and remember I paid $200 for it)
Refrigerators are a completely different animal as are dishwashers, etc. Despite my great experiences with LG washers, I'd avoid LG refrigerators. I've had good experience with multiple Bosch and Miele dishwashers, but mediocre experiences on all the new fridges I've bought in the last 10 years.
this kinda makes me... sad, I guess? Just how embedded the need to drive is for america. (As in, having to drive, rather than being able to)
Just such a different culture from what I know.
IIRC, you don't need a membership to:
• shop at the pharmacy
• buy alcohol
• eat at the food court
I believe the first two are due to govt regulations, and may only apply in certain states.
It's also much easier for anyone to shop at Costco with a spouse's/friend's membership card now that they have self-checkout. You used to have to worry about the cashier flagging you if the cardholder wasn't there, but now there's no one who even looks at your card.
Or how about don't be a liar/cheater and buy your own membership. It's not expensive and it pays for itself fast. Shame on whoever does this.
Also, once on a trip to Hawaii with my wife and extended family I had my arm around my wife in the Costco checkout line. I mentioned that "it feels so good and so right." My wife was at first flattered and then realized I was talking about the universality of the Costco experience.
To add another one, the same is true nationwide for their optometrists, you can get your eyes checked there without a membership but won’t be able to buy glasses. If you want a place to get your prescription without a hassle from the optometrist (who is legally required to give you the prescription but isn’t necessarily happy about that), Costco is a reliable option.
https://customerservice.costco.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8...
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/complying-ey...
Namely : Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Texas, & Vermont have laws that ban requiring memberships for the purchase of alcohol.
IIRC, Costco's lobbiests played a large role in Washington's privatization of liquor sales, and the final law did not include such a restriction.
For those interested, the break even on a 2% cash back membership is at the $2k/year.
Related to this, Texas also has "blue laws" which ended in 1985 other than the parts covering automotive dealers and liquor stores. So in Texas, liquor stores cannot be open on Sundays (nor can car lots). This is another reason Costco may be incentivized to not sell liquor within the member-only part of the store separately from the other requirements from TABC, because they are open on Sundays.
Anyway, grocery stores will turn off the beer cooler lights on Sunday morning and put a note with the time they will be able to sell it.
It's annoying, but I deal with it because my local liquor store only has two employees, and the wife is behind the register 12 hours a day 6 days a week. Sunday is the only time she gets off.
I'd definately pay $2.60 more to avoid the crazy people jamming Costco's parking lots trying to get that 20 cents off. I've narrowly avoided many people going anywhere they could at ramming speed while I was visiting a neighboring business.
I now avoid their neighboring businesses on every weekend as I value my life and car to avoid that whole scene.
It might have something to do with the age of their pumps. My Costco just put in new pumps and the long lines go really fast. I don’t know for sure what changed, but more people are tapping to pay now (or using the Costco keychain chip) and the pumps flow twice as fast than before. It has really made a noticeable difference. Before, I would spend 5-10 minutes in the line as well as pumping, and now it’s less than five minutes total when it’s busy.
The standard Gold Star Membership costs $60/year, and the Gold Star Executive Membership costs $120/year [0]. This is an additional $60/year (ignoring sales tax, etc.).
In order to break even, you need to earn at least $60 using the 2% cash back from the Executive Membership in order to cover the upgrade. This works out to ($60/year) / 0.02 = $3k/year.
[0] https://customerservice.costco.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8...
Can easily be a $8 per tank difference.
So technically it doesn't make any sense to not get the premium membership as long as you're willing to float them the difference for a year.
...and remember to ask for a refund.
That changed a couple years back.
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Costco-food-court-me...
By comparison at least, they are much freer with their money and don't have the same baggage about it. An example especially apparent for me is their willingness to spend on clothing, where I just can't bring myself to do it. Maybe just not having been brought up around parents who were ever dressed that nice, or allowed me and siblings to be. Or for example, their lack of concern about overpaying for small things, which yes in the bigger picture, who cares if you're overcharged for a drink once in a while?
I suppose it's because the information or concern about not having money was already passed down or imposed on me as a lesson early in life (whether intentionally or not). Sometimes I view it as an advantage as I see that my friends (those spending freely) will encounter those lessons when they get married, have kids, etc. and need to save. On the other hand, I wonder if I'm just handicapping myself with that baggage and not allowing myself to enjoy the freedom that a good income now brings, and living too much in the restraints of my family's past...
But then, I probably don’t pinch the pennies tightly enough. It’s hard to get the right balance.
Speaking more modern, it saves the mental effort of researching choices. Need something? Check Costco, buy if there, done.
Of course there are negatives associated with them, too.
They research/test the products before selling them so that they comply with their quality standards. So once products are on the shelves its likely that they are good.
This make buying decisions easier. Which is a much better shopping experience than having to read a dozen product reviews while shopping online.
I bought into the hype and got a Costco membership a few years back. One of the first things I went looking for was whole bean coffee (Peet's xmas roast). The local Costco had a bunch of coffee from Starbucks and Peets (meh quality to start) but only the painfully dark roasts and all of it was ground. Pre-ground coffee in bulk has a pretty limited use case (and relatively short shelf life).
Fast forward to last week and I went looking for a new fridge at Costco dot com. They prominently featured LG (ugh) and Samsung refrigerators. While some LG models seem to review pretty well I've never seen anyone say anything positive about Samsung, their service, or the serviceability of their appliances. I'm in the middle of dealing with a defective LG fridge and that's about the nicest thing I can say about LG's warranty and customer support.
Costco may have a permissive return policy and decent customer support but I would never blindly buy something without doing a bit of research just because it's at Costco. Especially with a big ticket item like a fridge I'd rather use my Amex anyhow.
For the hotel and travel stuff, they get a commission like other travel agents/channels.
Sales almost equal merchandise cost plus selling expenses. Membership fees add $984 million on top of that.
I have all Samsung appliances at my home. They are the best appliances I have ever owned. I can't speak to their service because I have never had a single issue with any of them.
On the other hand I have their phone(S21) and I'm very happy with it.
Congrats. I think you're in a minority. Our washing machine 'fabric softener' compartment started rusting less than a year after getting it. We had a long time and many back and forths trying to get them to acknowledge the problem. Their 'fix' initially was "don't use that". Finally - months later - they agreed to have someone come fix it, but it was going to be hundreds of dollars because we were "out of warranty". "But... we reported this to you with months left in the warranty period". "Well, tough luck" was basically the response.
My wife kept persisting - this dragged on for months - and eventually got some service rep to 'cover' this and a service guy came out. "Oh this is common - see this a lot with Samsungs in the last few years".
Relatedly, we had a dryer guy come out to fix the Samsung dryer. He indicated Samsung and LG were among the worst consumer-level brands for home appliances, based on their workload as service techs. But Samsung and LG have gigantic foot prints in the major retail outlets, so continue to get sold in to many households.
I've never had problems with Samsung appliances. Can't say the same for (supposedly high-quality) Bauknecht or Miele.
Whole bean? Just Major Dicakson in various quantities.
You could make an argument that the disposable cups will have a decent shelf life. 10 ounce bags of grounds won't though – that's kind of the antithesis of quality right there.
Their return policy is also very good. Obviously do not abuse this (or you are being a jerk). This means you can buy things without hesitation since you can easily return it should you run into an issue later.
> but the ones available are guaranteed to be fairly good quality
Yeah, right... Nope.
Must be different soviets that I lived in. The quality was often terrible (e.g. "chocolate" that did not contain cocoa at all, ugly clothes and shoes that would break down quickly, beer that tasted like piss etc.) and that is assuming the goods were in the store at all. Basic western goods, such as Levi jeans or can of Coca-Cola were celebrated as artifacts of an alien, infinitely more advanced civilization.
[1] I jest, I jest, but what is legal to be in store-bought chocolate in USA, based on things I actually ended up getting while visiting, was literally one of the ways communist poland cut chocolate to make "chocolate-like product" :V
There are some bulk stores with memberships, some of them limited to B2B sales, some accepting normal people as customers - places like MAKRO and Selgross - but they obviously are mainly a warehouse supplier for shops and companies.
I don't know how Lidl is in terms of selection in other countries, but especially with smaller stores the joke is that "every week something new" which refers more to somewhat random selection, and they tend to have lesser known brands (which, while not necessarily a bad thing, isn't also a sign of quality, and sometimes you really like the specific brand). Personally when I shopped more at Lidl (had one opposite of office), I compared the selection to "what recently fell of the truck and will stay till it's all sold"
When I talk to British friends, the idea of shopping at a Lidl seems to be sacrilegious to them. Still, when I went into one somewhere in Yorkshire before the plague, it was pretty much what I expected.
We love Lidl mostly because of the price. Almost everything was/is around 20-30% less than the stores around it. Much of this is from 'store brand' items, but the price diff is lower even against other 'store brand' pricing.
When they opened, they had a wider variety of items, including a wide variety of daily baked breads. That got scaled back a lot, as apparently there's not enough support/demand in this area for fresh breads outside of 'white'.
There's a weird circle of grocery stores that have sprung up in my area. Within a 3 mile radius, there's Target, Walmart, Lidl, Aldi, Wegmans, Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Publix and Lowe's (2?). It seems excessive to me, but the area is growing, and they likely wouldn't have invested in this area without a strong expectation of not losing money.
There's still a Lidl stigma around here. Many folks I talk to think of it as some 'poor person' shop.
I don’t know if I eat cheaper at Lidl but I eat better. The cheese and meat sections alone - I have probably twice as many charcuterie boards now that a Lidl moved in.
Aldi-Nord isn't that different, I'd say, at least not when free standing, in their standard layout. The only difference is the glaring white LED lighting they have. That is bRrRr!
Oh, and their electronic payment works fast. Had to use that recently for the first time in my life because I thought I had more cash on me. Wave card, enter pin, ZAHLUNG ERFOLGT! Phew!
(Yah Yah, I caved in, I know...)
edit: Aldi-Nord has better spices, though not all the times. Their Tandoori-mixture is very good, at least compared to the dozens of others I've tried. (In those small 80g aluminum cans) Ginger powder is also acceptable for me.
However, most of the times I just skip them, because I have 2 excellently managed Edekas available, and they have it all!
According to people from the former soviet block I know, the reason they got so good at fixing stuff is because the first thing they did after buying an appliance from a store (after it became available eventually) was fixing it because nothing ever worked as expected. I guess "nothing" is an overstatement but I still wouldn't use the soviet union as an example for great product quality.
Things have gotten more reliable across the board imo.
To me most basic thing would be great quality at that price level that I guess everyone else is also looking for. At deeper level by reducing choice it sets a familiar pattern of food I eat on daily/weekly/monthly basis. Or for clothes just like people wear brands and proud to announce it. For me it is I do not wear brands and similarly proud of the fact.
The store is mostly US/UK/Australian imports of questionable quality, prices far higher than local goods (which is to be expected when shipped long distance for one specific chain), and questionable desirability (e.g. sauces not used much in local cuisine, of far lower quality than local brands, in containers far larger while also more expensive per gram). Products Americans would want from home are also almost non-existent. So it caters to nobody.
I think it had a lot of novelty at first since it's a very "American" thing and kind of a fun trip, but I'm not sure of the longterm viability. There's only so much you can do with a store that sells oversized budget-brand ketchup at luxury prices and stale jars of nuts.
Never visited while I was living in the US, but I doubt it could beat Winco. Bulk, low prices, often local, and no BS membership fees.
Winco is solid though, and living near both is extremely convenient.
A lot of this is because the local Supermarket Duopoly avoids competing on price and makes great profits. People are looking forward to cutting their costs and also a flow-on as the supermarkets cut their prices a little to compete.
Similar to IKEA which is a year or so away. Easy to take for granted when you have it but the alternative is paying a lot more for similar to worse quality.
New Zealand has an educated, English speaking workforce, uses the English common law and actually has rule of law. They know how to do this. IKEA has stores in Vietnam, where all of those are much less true. They’re not going to learn much about international expansion they don’t know already. This is very different from a Canadian company opening up in the US, or a French one in Belgium. IKEA, and I presume Costco know how to do this already.
[1] many, many articles, but https://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/jul/28/retail.mone... is as good as any
https://www.icelandreview.com/news/food-prices-drop-thanks-c...
This article explains it better than I can: https://every.to/napkin-math/how-costco-convinces-brands-to-...
TL;DR: If you buy something like Grey Goose vodka, it's going to be the same product as the Kirkland Signature version on the shelf next to it. It is often literally from the same factory. Costco AND Grey Goose make more money by being able to sell to multiple market segments.
Read that article. It's genius and one of the many reasons I love shop at Costco.
I’ve been going to Costco since it was Price Club in the 1980s. I can explain why people love it. There’s an aura of mystery to the shopping experience because of the philosophy behind the layout. They basically want you to shop around the whole store because nothing is ever in the same place and product longevity beyond basic consumer staples is unheard of. In other words, it is unlikely the special product you find one week will be there the next. This kind of unpredictability goes against the grain of the reliability built into the shopping experience, and it’s what I find so attractive about it. Not only will you be exposed to something new and different, but you’ll have to settle for an entirely different product than the one you planned on buying because of the surprise factor at work. Obviously, this consumer approach won’t work for everyone, especially those who stubbornly buy the same thing every week or month.
Edit: you’re right, it sounds like they stole some of their ideas from Marden’s.
The first thing someone told me when I got to the US was to go to Costco, pay the membership and get an AMEX charge card for Costco.
If you are someone with zero credit history and want to buy groceries without having cash on you all the time, then Costco is a big part of the "welcome to America" package.
What Costco lacks in variety, it made up in quality and quantity (no, that's not a choice). The food is good, most things are sold at cost, gas is cheaper, diapers are cheaper ... everything with a Kirkland label is middle-of-the-curve good.
So Costco runs become a regular thing. Before you know it, it is like church - go there, show your membership and eat the wafers.
Not quite a religion, but something you still proselytize.
Making 4% back on gas is mega killer though.
That said, I do kinda miss the Amex and its automatic extended warranty.
[0]https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/31/pf/costco-visa-american-exp...
The Costco Visa also include an automatic warranty extension of 2 years beyond manufacturer.
AmEx not listed anywhere.
Maybe yours does something different, or it's an AmEx branded debit card, or you're not in the US and they do something different abroad, but no Costco I've been to since the switch has accepted any credit card that isn't a Visa.
In short, they give the appearance of doing ask if the things a business should be doing in line with the intent of the law, as opposed to just doing the bare minimum to the letter of the law, and doing what you are supposed to do is so rare as to be considered exceptional.
That makes it sound like cleanliness is not the norm in grocery stores in US.
By the way, where I'm from (EU), cleanliness is definitely the norm for grocery stores.
Some had obviously old/dirty fixtures, signage, and floors, some had newer cleaner looking equipment. The average in Europe was much, much “dirtier” than Americans on average will put up with.
“Dirty” in this context means not-new-looking.
I’d much rather not pay for someone to replace things that are perfectly functional.
But many consumers (especially Americans) prefer extremely well lit, very new looking equipment.
So I think you may have this exactly wrong. Europe has much dirtier stores, because it doesn’t value cosmetic polish as much as health and cost savings.
I assumed Costco had shitty employee treatment like other large chains. Its sad that this has become the default we have come to expect from stores and not even think about it.
I see a few stores have their evangelists, but TJ's are the most evangelical IME. Other places that seem to have their cults are Menard's and Buc-ees. I've never been to a Menards, living in the southern US, but I get the love for all the others.
Yet today I spoke English with a stranger, a woman born to Indian immigrants and she spoke with the same hand gestures I do.
The article used Costco as a vehicle for exploring the experience, and yet so some degree trauma, of moving away from your birthplace. I read it through the lens of a common belief that Asian families in particular are very close and don’t handle migration well.
I mentioned my story because it’s a contradictory example, but also because I believe that the belief that somehow “Asians” can’t handle family separation is not correct — I believe all people have roughly the same percentage of “gotta stay here” and “gotta go somewhere else” — it’s just human nature.
The last part of my story also relates to the Costco article: despite a lot of time there I never lived in India, nor, thanks to the laws and attitudes of where I was born did I speak much of any Asian languages with my mother yet decades later I, and some American woman of Indian decent whom I’d never met before, used the same body language and gestures while speaking. Where did that come from?
Great writing. Good read.
Also Costco + Internet (Amazon, B+H, etc.) are essentially 99% of my shopping here in Puerto Rico.
Visiting Costco, Walmart, etc. immediately after returning from war zones with limited supplies is a pretty shocking experience; I can only begin to imagine what it's like for someone new to the country who is actually from such a place.
Also, do people in China get out of the city to go camping for the weekend?
These are honest questions I'd like to have answers for.
Yes, I know there is one in Shanghai.
> Also, do people in China get out of the city to go camping for the weekend?
I am not sure about camping, but glamping is popular with young people.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/glamping-china-trend-...
Probably not around at the time that the article's author's parents emigrated.
There are people doing more of the outdoor thing in China now. Probably none going about 20 years back. Last time I was there, there were recreational bicyclists (ie. taking them off the back of their car) in the cities, as opposed to my first visits where many more bicycles for their comute than cars.
I was especially stunned with how bad was Chinese Macro, you must buy in bulk, but you will get higher prices than small Chinese shops, in Europe they pretend to be wholesale where you msut buy in bulk, but at least their prices are oftena bit lower, often can't really compete with Kaufland/Lidl/Penny, but in China they didn't even try.
Anyway by the end of my 5+ year stay in China I was doing already my groceries though the app, delivered to my 5th floor apartment without elevator.
OPPO is Chinese brand, so dunno exactly how is it worth mentioning they have stores in China.
Lots of stone path walkways which people will refer to as hiking, but isn't what most in Europe or the US would consider it to be. There are groups that build off old paths that connect villages or which were used for hunting. Some areas have really nice networks of trails, though, just not to the extent you'd find elsewhere.
"Numerator found that Costco's typical shopper in the US is an Asian American woman between 35 and 44 years old who is married and living in a city in the Pacific Northwest. (Costco was founded in Seattle and is based in Washington.) She typically has a four-year degree or higher level of education and earns more than $125,000 a year."
I'm not sure whether the income of the "typical shopper" was defined based on a median or mode, so there could well be a large variance of customers with a lower socioeconomic status. A separate article by Investopedia [1] also asserts that Costco mostly opens stores in affluent suburban areas, and originally targeted college-educated and financially wealthier customers.
So, Costco's customers are likely skewed to have a higher socioeconomic status, based on the location of most of its stores in wealthier suburban areas and findings from an analytics report (with some skepticism towards the article about the report, as the raw data and methods weren't shared, as far as I could see).
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-costco-shopper-demog...
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/061516/whats-...
What the heck does that mean? Am I supposed to believe that the most common category of people are that category, or that those attributes are the more common ones? I'm positive I see an almost even split of male/female when I go to Costco. Otherwise, that wording is jacked by any metric.
This is obvious simply by searching for Costcos on a map. Or the fact that any time your total is less than $100, the cashier and the customer joke about how lucky and rare the sub $100 receipt is.
https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-walmart-shopper-demo...
After being homeless a few times as a native born American I still feel like showers are the ultimate luxury.
I'm always happy to see immigrants with jobs in America and Europe but I can't help but wonder what can we do to make other countries as desirable as America?
Theres billions of people. Why aren't their countries desirable as well?
Why is North America and Europe the main destination for the entire world to wish to immigrate to?
Why doesn't almost any country in Africa South and Central America, Asia, and India continents have immigration problems and what can we all do to make it desirable for people to want to be in their homes?
Simply going out in a vehicle is magnitudes riskier in the country my parents come from. My whole extended family can afford maids, cooks, and drivers, yet they all moved because they wanted a lower volatility life for their children, even if it meant doing your own laundry, cleaning, cooking, and driving.
Without a doubt this seems like a big/major factor. But we have corruption in the US. Do we have less corruption because of enforcement of anti-corruption laws? Or do we have those laws and an expectation that they're enforced because of some other factors? Not rhetorical, I just don't know. Casually it seems like many European countries have the same or greater expectations and similar prosperity. When I read stories about Russia and the former Soviet republics it makes me think that there's so much mistrust and hopelessness that a corrupt government is taken for granted.
I have no idea whether or not the US is exceptional but if it is I wouldn't jump to describe it as virtuous. But I do wish I could understand what policies we could pursue that might make other societies similarly high trust.
Neither answer is complete. Laws and enforcement can only go so far. It is not feasible to police every single interaction between people.
My amateur hypothesis would be a combination of a wealth of resources, growth outlook, shared struggles, traditions and cultural outlooks that provide utility and propagate downstream, etc. Probably impossible to intentionally recreate. And of course, very possible to lose.
If everyone in society decides they want to screw each other, then no amount of laws will help. Unfortunately, in many societies, the game is very adversarial with dire consequences, and you have to play that way.
On the other hand, a society where people are mostly out to engage in good faith transactions can greatly benefit from reduced friction, enabling more transactions and each actor wasting less energy in preventing themselves from being screwed.
I think there's an expectation that at least egregious corruption will be enforced against; typically in a court of law, but if not, in the court of public opinion. But also, petty bribes are offensive to be offered or demanded. There's a sense that bribing your way out of a minor offense is a more serious crime than whatever the offense was.
There's still higher level corruption, regulatory capture and all that, and other cases of interested parties making decisions with conflicts of interest. Those are trickier than bribes.
Certainly this is a factor, but let's not forget the decades of destabilizing influence, coups, assassinations, wars, sanctions, and foreign policy promulgated by the US to keep some countries poor to maintain US interests.
Those are a huge portion of the immigrants to the U.S if not the majority.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
(Also, if you are comparing places, don’t forget to also consult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index)
The Democracy Index being done by The Economist and being used as a respectable index to look at is pretty funny, but in line with the status quo.
How many low end countries in these indexes have been used and abused by the western countries liberal/conservative political regimes The Economist, its ownership, and many of its readers love? Sadly, dozens upon dozens upon dozens.
And keep these current high trust societies trust from continuing to be eroded? On the front page of HN at the same time this article is.
Unfortunately, a lot of that can be undone by things like lack of resources, which means things like securing your own or your tribe’s future is more important than advancing everyone’s.
It is possible that those in developed, stable countries are simply lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time. As boundary conditions and parameters change, the situation can evolve or devolve with little control.
While the countries in Africa, Indian, Asia, and South America weren't.
That's one possible explanation.
Great book on the subject is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail It explores precisely this phenomenon - why certain places that have geographic proximity (Dominican Republic and Haiti, Nogales AZ and Nogales Sonora) drifted so far away from one another economically, why some places with vast natural resources (Nigeria) are undesirable while some other countries with limited natural resources (Japan, Singapore) are economic successes.
Because whenever they have political systems that promote stability or justice, those leaders are overthrown in favor of those who will obey diktaks of the IMF/World Bank/WTO which generally promote privatization and wealth concentration.
So other countries are desirable but have low social/economic mobility.
If you have resources, your government ends up either an corrupt, nepotistic authoritarian hellhole or a corrupt, nepotistic socialist paradise (until the oil/gold/diamonds/gas run out, at which point it becomes a corrupt, nepotistic authoritarian hellhole)
Most countries have the problem of corrupt, nepotistic governments that look after the insiders at the expense of the rest of the population - subsidies for their mates, tariffs on overseas imports the help your friend but screw an industry, etc. The simplest way of avoiding the most destructive consequences of bad governance is often to just remove the government from the equation.
simplistic reasoning, but IMF was funded in 1945 - what’s your explanation for the previous 20 centuries?
See e.g. National IQ and Economic Development: A Study of Eighty-One Nations, by Lynn and Vanhanen.
There is a superlinear relationship between average IQ and GDPPC.
Research precludes a predominant causal relationship from GDPPC to IQ (e.g. via Flynn effect); all that is left is that population intelligence causally precedes GDPPC.
If you have no assets, it’s also far easier to make money in a rich country and move back rich, rather than the reverse.
Yup, that would be pretty nice. If only America would let them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism
And yet, if you ask people actually from those countries, rarely will they pin Uncle Sam as the primary reason they're still not well developed.
I didn't see where the US interfered with Mexico's elections.
Those are a huge portion of the immigrants to the U.S if not the majority.
Some countries do have immigration problems and emmigration problems. If they're more desirable than nearby countries, but not nearly as desirable as US/EU, then they'll pull in their neighbors, potentially too much at times, but still have those with resources leaving when they can.
IMHO, things people are looking for are physical safety, political stability, economic stability and opportunity, legal stability (rule of law, predictable courts, timely access to courts, reasonable law enforcement).
The top reasons people I hear people say they come to the US are because it's unsafe for them where they live, or to have the opportunity to make more money.
But then again, perhaps this could be a meta-commentary about how American hyper-individualism makes everyone's worldview so small that they can not see anything but themselves, and yet this somehow "works"?
For all you or I know, this story has most of its upvotes by people who want to talk about or read comments about Costco, not the story of the article.
I don't mind reading the comments without reading the story. I mind people writing comments without reading the story.
> most (...) want to talk about (...) Costco, not the story of the article.
And that is incredibly shallow. If I wanted to read senseless comments based on the title of an piece, I'd just prompt GPT-3 for random wikipedia entries.
Edit: I’m not sure senseless comments even correlate more with not reading an article.
Let me try in another way: I don't think that wading through tens of comments saying "I like/love/dislike Costco" or "I prefer Wegmans/Kirkland/whatever" is the type of thing that hits the mark for being a place that "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
This would be for boring conversation already if the topic at hand was a discussion about retail stores, but it's made even worse because the post itself has so many more interesting things to be talked about, that engaging in this type of shallow talk becomes a nuisance to the ones that actually made just a bit of effort to read the piece and are ready for a more interesting conversation.
I am a first generation person, but I didn’t find the article interesting. I skipped all comment threads about the story once I saw they were similarly uninteresting to me. I enjoyed the Costco comment threads. A Costco opened up near me this year so I care about that. I don’t begrudge the people commenting about the story though.
> they were similarly uninteresting to me
> A Costco opened up near me
Me. Me. Meeeeeeeeeeee.
I do not want to sound (too) rude, but I hope you realize how shallow this whole exchange sounds?
You appear to have a consistent attitude that you are not only always correct, but every one not like you is intellectually beneath you. You have been rude through this entire conversation putting people down.
I could have an identical conversation with any one on a Jordan Peterson thread. With every single one of those fans similarly believing in their own uniqueness and superiority. The smugness. None of them are shallow ofc either.
I'm living on Kungsholmen for several years already if that matters.
Getting to Kungens Kurva from Thorildsplan involves one change and realistically takes a bit more than an hour to get there. Of course, you can't bring a huge box with your new sofa to a bus or metro and Ikea won't deliver bigger items too, so you have to deal with either renting a car or paying insane prices for delivery. Same goes for bringing larger items to manned garbage collection stations.
I don't rent a car because I feel insecure about driving someone's else car after many years without driving experience.
This makes car ownership a constant headache, I don't want to deal with this.
Appliances shipped from Costco.com are in their original packaging. They usually come with damages. I have had a couple items that I had to bring them back to the store to return.
Another thing is how they choose which items to sell at a particular warehouse. I used to visit one to buy a Sony Bravia 77" OLED and was told that the model was only sold at locations with high-income neighborhood.
Other than that, they have a way to get my money. It seems like we go there every week or so.
I also remember hearing stories about the first opening of a Costco in Shanghai. Given the rest of the comments here about initial openings in new countries, it’s funny to see how much of a cultural impact the brand has.
I shop at Costco for
- wine, single malt, brandy, cheese, and bread
- sea food, mutton, sardines, tuna, canned stuff, tomato and citrus fruits
- dog food and bird feed
And of course their food court pizza + hot dogs
Great place.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/costco-pay-benefits-glassdoor...
In addition to having a great curated product selection that one can trust, they appear to treat their employees well as they always have a great attitude and top-notch customer service.
But for me, it can never compare to Wegmans. At Wegmans, the store brand is always a sensible default purchase in a category, and often the best option in a category. The employees all seem happy because Wegmans has been one of the best blue collar employers in the country for a couple of decades now. The hot bar, burger shop, and sub shop are all fantastic: relatively cheap, and often better than any fast/casual alternatives in the area. They have a great beer selection, if you live in a state that allows beer sales in grocery stores.
Caveat: if you've only ever visited the Brooklyn Wegmans, or honestly any Wegmans outside of the core central-western NY zone, you're missing out on the best qualities of Wegmans. For whatever reason, the stores they've started in new regions in the past few years just don't capture the same Wegmans spirit. The creme de la creme Platonic form Wegmans will forever be Rochester's Pittsford Plaza location. If you're ever in Rochester, it's worth the visit.
However Wegmans has a weird inventory. Many things you could find in any New England grocery store like steak tips, salt-top rolls, or brown bread are simply missing.
It wasn't until I was perusing Wegmans' extensive cured meat department that I realized I was thinking of Wegmans the wrong way: it's not a grocery store, it's an ethnic food store, like a Super 88. But instead of being Chinese, Wegmans is a midwest ethnic food store.