Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

> We don't want a corporate, faceless box store coming in with no stake in our community.

Who is “we?”

If the community wants Washington General, then they’ll shop there. If they want the lowest possible prices, they’ll shop at Dollar General.

What it sounds like is that Washington General wants effectively a tariff on Dollar General so people won’t shop there. Because if it’s strictly “what’s best for the community,” then the community will decide what they value.

It sounds like Washington General doesn’t want the community to be able to make that choice. If nobody shops at Dollar General, then they’ll close it down. Not that it matters, but I despise Dollar General-type stores: generally cheap junk, so I personally chose the more expensive specialty store: but I can easily afford to do that. The Dollar General ICP is a person that doesn’t have a lot of disposable income. So it’s a bit arrogant to suggest that people without a lot of money should be subsidizing someone’s business just because it makes people feel better. That’s a luxury many people don’t have.

Dollar General is a mega corporation that can operate on an entirely different level than local stores. They pay their workers less and the profits go out of state. On a store-by-store basis though, Dollar general is a fragile establishment, management will not hesitate to abandon the location if they are spending too much money propping up the store. And the overhead for these stores is higher than it needs to be - they build way larger stores and parking lots than they actually need. The local dry goods store has grown only to the size that it requires, and those profits go towards its own survival. It provides cultural value, economic opportunities, and is more likely to improve the lives of people living nearby.

Strong towns (who made the article) is a grassroots nonprofit that finds concrete ways for US cities to curb the effects of urban sprawl. One of those ways is to acknowledge that inviting huge commercial ventures into your small local economy is like bringing a giant mammal to roam free on a small island nation. It's probably going to affect the ecosystem in ways that don't suit the environment.

They can also operate at a loss until they drive out all competition, and then raise prices - so that you probably end up at the same prices as before (or worse) - but with a much worse quality product (i.e. how they achieve better margins).

Or open up more stores then the region can support, remove the local competition, and then close theirs stores as uncompetitive. The small town (population < 2000) my Mom grew up in is currently supporting their IGA as well as the Dollar Store, but my understanding is that they're in better shape then a lot of their small town neighbors.

One or two successful businesses makes a huge difference at that level. If something happened to their one large employer, a food factory, then they'd really be in trouble. The other businesses are restaurant sized at the largest.

> They pay their workers less and the profits go out of state.

Almost every local retail business I know of pays less than larger businesses, simply due to not meeting the 50 employee minimum that subjects businesses to a host of other labor laws such as ACA and FMLA.

You're right - what I should have said is that a local store owner is getting the direct profits of their labor. I admit that one of the short-term benefits of a big box store coming to town is that their lowest paid employees get more protections. This comes at the cost of being held at arms length from the actual power structure of the company and makes the dollar general's business practices more unsustainable.

The NIMBY mindset cares about "neighborhood character" more than poor people, at least in general.

Edit: Ah, I see the source now. It comes at basically everything from . . . a particular point of view.

That’s a pretty dishonest reading of this topic. Do you think DG “cares” about poor people? Do you think people might worry about poor people being exploited and ending up worse off?

Or is this just a “Label X is my whole entire personality so anything that isn’t Label X must be horrible and the only people in favor of it are actually evil” terminally online thing?

Uhh . . . that's a pretty dishonest reading of my reading.

I have no inclination that DG as an institution "cares" about poor people. But neither does an institution whose goal is solely to fight suburban sprawl and ensure "neighborhood character."

StrongTowns hammers on about minor things like whether or not storefronts face the sidewalks, whether or not there are chain stores vs mom-and-pops, etc. But if I'm paycheck-to-paycheck, it matters a lot more that I have an opportunity to buy things for cheap than it does whether I'm getting my stuff from a chain store or a local business. Middle-class people have the luxury of being picky about where their things are sourced from. Poor people need to put food on the table regardless of whether or not it comes from Dollar General or Wal-Mart. I support local businesses when I can, but I am also a middle-class professional, not someone making minimum wage.

As an example, I have a great farmer's market I get stuff from in the summer. But the price of vegetables or meat there is like twice what it is at Safeway. If someone is poor, it matters more that they have an opportunity to buy healthy vegetables and chicken for cheap that it is that they're buying locally-sourced organic free-range vegetables and chicken for twice the cost, or else you're just furthering the obesity epidemic.

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