Comment by iambateman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iambateman | Hacker News Reader

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I _love_ Strong Towns but I want to push back against this article.

Strong Towns is a leading voice on YIMBY, but this is reminiscent of the common arguments I hear from NIMBY folks..."they shouldn't be allowed to build here because ____" is definitionally NIMBY.

While I don't love Dollar General or shop there very often, I have a hard time understanding why it's a "swindle." The reason people shop there is because the store provides what they need at a lower price. If I can buy the same milk for $3 from DG or $4.50 from Grandma's Really Adorable Milk Store, I'm going to Dollar General. No swindle here...that's just a better deal.

> “We feed off of what they don’t do, they can’t do,” the owner of Mike’s Hardware & Supply explained.

Great! Do that. Outcompete them on what makes you distinctly valuable, and if you're right, people will pick you. I go to my hardware store instead of Lowes because I know there's a 70-year-old guy who knows more about my project than I do, and I'm happy to pay an extra couple dollars to ask him questions while I buy a socket wrench.

Now, I get that government subsidies tilt the scales...but rather than yell that it's unfair, let's elect politicians who are ready to build incentive programs to provide similar (or better) subsidies for small businesses who provide fresh food and other goods which are crucial for local communities. Small businesses may need to gather together in some cooperative or union-type organization in order to present a more unified bloc to the political class but that's just the nature of living in a big country.

Big business is here to stay, whether we like it or not. And people are _choosing_ those businesses because they think they provide good value for money.

> While I don't love Dollar General or shop there very often, I have a hard time understanding why it's a "swindle."

In the case of Dollar General specifically, it is literally a swindle, with high levels of violations of deceptive pricing laws (higher prices at checkout that marked) — and which has followed up on those by removing customer-facing POS screens in many stors, high levels of weights and measures violations, and — swindling a different side of the community — labor and occupational safety violations.

That may be the case, but that’s not the point the article is making.

Obviously if they’re breaking the law, they should be held accountable.

I have mixed feelings about local small businesses. Like you, if I have the time, I go to a small hardware store about 40 minutes away instead of the Home Depot, which is within 10 minutes. I usually use Amazon as a catalog and then try to find a different on line outlet that sells that item. Usually, shopping at local stores involves an afternoon of driving around from store to store looking for what I want. Then I discover nobody sells what I want or they sell the same Chinese crap you would find on Amazon at twice the price.

> I get that government subsidies tilt the scales

it's not just the subsidies that tilt the scales, its also efficiency of scale with the chains being able to do more/cheaper because they are a big chain. and it's really hard to fight that, or even argue against it because it is more efficient.

the only thing a small local could do to compete on that front would be able to exploit local features that the chains don't know about -- tailoring inventory to local taste, making deals with other small local producers -- but once you start doing that it's more like the local is evolving into a different niche of 'serve regionally-specific needs' while the bigbox is 'serve generic needs'

I don't have the reference, but apparently there used to be US laws requiring producer / manufacturing / distributing companies to sell to all grocery stores at the same price. Because of this regional and local grocery stores could buy inventory at the same price that Walmart does, and because of that there were a lot more local and regional grocery stores.

At some point (under Regan?) the US got rid of these laws, Walmart in particular realized that it could compete on scale (and aggressively negotiating Walmart-specific deals), and that's a huge part of why we don't have as many smaller grocery stores anymore.

I don't have the article handy but if anyone else knows details about this I'd love to hear more.

(Bonus points for a LMGTFY answer :) )

Robinson-Patman act of 1936? Wasn't got rid of but they stopped enforcing it?

I've noticed DG stocks oddball sizes of packaged foods I've never seen anywhere else, not even at gas station convenience stores. It's usually their "large" size, and significantly smaller than the "large" size at other stores.

Next time I'm in there I'll check the unit price on those. I'm betting it's pretty bad, because usually if a business is doing anything distinctive like that, it's to screw people.

There's a minute or two in this video(1) about DG from Wendover Productions last year that discusses this. Apparently they're so powerful they can get better deals from suppliers than Walmart and even get custom SKUs ($1 sizes of Tide Detergent, for example) from them to be the product on shelves in DG. Kinda crazy.

1) https://youtu.be/vQpUV--2Jao?t=318

Dollar stores are generally more expensive in the long run than other stores. They make their money on higher per unit margins and/or vastly lower quality of products.

No. In rural areas dollar stores are the cheapest around. I guess you are not familiar with small town prices. In urban areas dollar stores are more expensive than Walmarts--but there is something to be said for getting in and out of a store in 5 minutes vs 20 minutes in a supercenter. But a Dollar General is still going to be cheaper than Walgreens.

Being YIMBY for everything is just as absurd as NIMBY for everything. If you're not making the call on a case by case basis for what you think will be best for the community and you, then you're just being dogmatic.

>Strong Towns is a leading voice on YIMBY, but this is reminiscent of the common arguments I hear from NIMBY folks..."they shouldn't be allowed to build here because ____" is definitionally NIMBY.

I've come to the realization that strong towns are basically just moderate NIMBYs.

On a scale from 65yo California suburbanite to Ron Paul they're basically the suburbanite but they're but they're self aware enough to realize if they push too far, ask too much, destroy too much wealth, that they'll bring the whole house of cards crashing down.

Ultimately I think it's best to just shitcan all pretense of local zoning, let the states regulate the stuff they do (i.e. hazmat processing and junkyards and the other truly unsightly things that NIMBYs always pretend they are the only line of defense from) and let the developers and the businesses and residents deal with the opportunities and the fallout that arises. Sure, there will be some losers but everyone will lose a heck of a lot less than they do with the status quo wherein only big interests can actually do much of anything.

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