The Food Thread

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rstrong
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Re: The Food Thread

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homerfobe wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 1:36 pm
The Internet continues to destroy ALL business with Walmart and Amazon being the key leaders.
I disagree.

Walmart made it big before the internet. It was entering towns, driving the local small businesses under, then leaving because no-one had jobs anymore to buy their stuff - before the internet. Globalization helped of course, but even then only so much. They have nasty practices that work independent of the internet or globalization.

Likewise look at the aircraft industry. Largely just Lockheed and Boeing, having absorbed Rockwell, Northrup, Grumman and countless others. The big cell phone manufacturers - Apple, Samsung, LG, HTC, Alcatel, Foxconn, etc. - and less successful ones like Microsoft and HP - existed before the internet. Many vacuuming up smaller companies. (And often vacuuming up previous industry giants too - DEC, Compaq, etc.)

The internet meant that some established companies had to adapt. Where they didn't - especially music distributors and book distributors like Barnes & Noble - it's not because they couldn't. They had all the advantages from the start. The problem was that they did it absolutely horribly. The music distributors and Barnes & Noble served up user-hostile crap DRM schemes with crap limitations and crap service. Amazon and the Apple store won merely by showing up.

The biggest exception is digital movie distribution replacing Blockbuster video. But the cable companies get a lot of blame for that, their own user-hostility driving customers to Netflix.

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Re: The Food Thread

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As much as possible I shop locally and shun the big box stores. A small businesses owner is more likely to be positively involved in the community than a minimum wage clerk or a warehouse worker far away. If it costs a bit more, I just consider it a hometown improvement tax.
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Re: The Food Thread

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homerfobe wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 1:36 pm
billy.pilgrim wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 12:55 pm
the interstate highway system and heavily subsidized air industry continues to destroy small business
The Internet is the world's largest monopoly. The Internet continues to destroy ALL business with Walmart and Amazon being the key leaders. One is simply trying to outdo the other. It wouldn't bother me if the entire online, Internet, and computerized infrastructure were to fail, permanently.

you still stupid
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Re: The Food Thread

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Vrede too wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 2:42 pm
As much as possible I shop locally and shun the big box stores. A small businesses owner is more likely to be positively involved in the community than a minimum wage clerk or a warehouse worker far away. If it costs a bit more, I just consider it a hometown improvement tax.
again, the interstate highway system kills jobs and communities. without it, even the Walmart crowd would buy local.
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”

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Re: The Food Thread

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The interstate highway system certainly enables long haul trucking and imports, but goods would somehow be shipped without it. I'm not sure that big box stores wouldn't have still arisen absent interstates. To me, they seem to be more a product of our energy gluttonous suburban-auto culture than the types of roads. Remember, Sears dominated both retail and catalog sales before there were interstates.
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Re: The Food Thread

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Vrede too wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 2:42 pm
As much as possible I shop locally and shun the big box stores. A small businesses owner is more likely to be positively involved in the community than a minimum wage clerk or a warehouse worker far away. If it costs a bit more, I just consider it a hometown improvement tax.
Agreed.

I just wish that Best Buy here in Canada would let me check stock at the local store. Sure their web site has that feature, but I've yet to figure out which browser it works in.

And unfortunately they're increasingly only stocking fast-moving stuff. I've been waiting to buy an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive VR headset and controls - and video card - for over a year. A $1200+ purchase to the first store willing to sell me one. PROVIDED that I can try it first, if only for 30 seconds, to ensure that it works with my vision and glasses.

I know they work with glasses for *some* vision problems, but not necessarily my own. And you can't return one after you open it. Best Buy has never stocked or demo'd them in any store within a 4000 kilometer round-trip drive, and neither does anyone else.

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Re: The Food Thread

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I thought that my local Radio Shack had escaped the wave of closures, but it didn't. Now, I only have big box and online options for most electronics. Asheville 45 minutes away might be better, but that involves both my time and burning extra gas.
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Re: The Food Thread

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Vrede too wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 3:00 pm
The interstate highway system certainly enables long haul trucking and imports, but goods would somehow be shipped without it. I'm not sure that big box stores wouldn't have still arisen absent interstates. To me, they seem to be more a product of our energy gluttonous suburban-auto culture than the types of roads. Remember, Sears dominated both retail and catalog sales before there were interstates.
I have no problem with - big and no problem with innovation. my problem is with subsidies of taxpayer dollars going to the industries and companies that are eliminating the business model that includes the middle class.

goods would be shipped, but cities would be supplied produce mostly grown nearby and brought into the city by the farmer - not this where the broccoli comes from calif and the steak from the Midwest and the salad from florida and the lemon from mexico and the peas from argentina, all fueled by this insane desire to eat everything out of season
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Re: The Food Thread

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Agreed. I do most of my food/cleaning/toiletries shopping at the Hendersonville Community Co-op. It stresses local and organic (which sometimes conflict), though it does sell and I do buy bananas year round.
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Re: The Food Thread

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billy.pilgrim wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 3:30 pm
goods would be shipped, but cities would be supplied produce mostly grown nearby and brought into the city by the farmer - not this where the broccoli comes from calif and the steak from the Midwest and the salad from florida and the lemon from mexico and the peas from argentina, all fueled by this insane desire to eat everything out of season
As I've mentioned before:
...1816 - the "Year Without a Summer" caused by Mount Tambora half a world away... That event led to the settling of the American mid-west, as many farmers left the east looking for better growing conditions.

But America is indeed doing something about it: Globalization.

Whether it's just America's crops that get buried or the world's crops get frosted out for a year, America will have everything in place - and the ability to outbid everyone else - for the rest of the world's exportable crops. It's the second and third world that'll take the famine hit.
A localized food supply is more efficient and better for the environment, but a globalized food supply has its advantages too. Like reducing the effects of local crop disasters.

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Re: The Food Thread

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Re: The Food Thread

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Vrede too wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 3:34 pm
Agreed. I do most of my food/cleaning/toiletries shopping at the Hendersonville Community Co-op. It stresses local and organic (which sometimes conflict), though it does sell and I do buy bananas year round.
For a variety of reasons, we usually buy local food when it's fresh, but we're not very diligent. I figure if I'm willing to eat Florida strawberries in Florida, it doesn't make much sense to refuse to buy them in NC. And I'm more of a globalist on trade anyway. I don't really put much emphasis on the "organic" part - not because I don't support the idea of organic growing, but because "organic" seems to have become more an issue of certification than actual growing processes. Mostly we like local stuff (wherever "local" may be) because it just tastes way better than a lot of chain grocery stuff.

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Re: The Food Thread

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O Really wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 11:16 pm
For a variety of reasons, we usually buy local food when it's fresh, but we're not very diligent....
Same here. That's why I aim for decent sellers like the Co-op for groceries. I can do that much, but don't have the patience and energy for much more. I hope that they do the diligence as best as is practical.
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Re: The Food Thread

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rstrong wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 3:49 pm
billy.pilgrim wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 3:30 pm
goods would be shipped, but cities would be supplied produce mostly grown nearby and brought into the city by the farmer - not this where the broccoli comes from calif and the steak from the Midwest and the salad from florida and the lemon from mexico and the peas from argentina, all fueled by this insane desire to eat everything out of season
As I've mentioned before:
...1816 - the "Year Without a Summer" caused by Mount Tambora half a world away... That event led to the settling of the American mid-west, as many farmers left the east looking for better growing conditions.

But America is indeed doing something about it: Globalization.

Whether it's just America's crops that get buried or the world's crops get frosted out for a year, America will have everything in place - and the ability to outbid everyone else - for the rest of the world's exportable crops. It's the second and third world that'll take the famine hit.
A localized food supply is more efficient and better for the environment, but a globalized food supply has its advantages too. Like reducing the effects of local crop disasters.
Again, I have no problem with big, or globalization, or whatever big business comes up with

Except that big and globalization and big business always require that the people who are hurt by big and globalization and big business usually have to pay to support big and globalization and big business in their efforts to grow and globalize.

It's wrong to spend billions to protect tanker and cargo ships bringing cheap goods from poor countries made by children, or slaves, or forced labor under workplace and environmental conditions illegal in our country into our subsidized ports to be off loaded onto heavily subsidized rail and truck to outsell locally made unsubsidized competition.

Cut out all the subsidies to these big businesses - including our taxes that go to support our highways that are being destroyed by increasingly large trucks and you will see that we can compete. Add the real cost of freight and a NC greenhouse grown strawberry competes with and beats that tasteless Homestead strawberry - without Saudi oil, highway destruction and overuse of the critical Florida fresh water supply.
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Re: The Food Thread

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Why are you getting Homestead strawberries when you could get Plant City strawberries?

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Re: The Food Thread

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billy.pilgrim wrote:
Thu Jul 20, 2017 10:17 am
It's wrong to spend billions to protect tanker and cargo ships bringing cheap goods from poor countries made by children, or slaves, or forced labor under workplace and environmental conditions illegal in our country into our subsidized ports to be off loaded onto heavily subsidized rail and truck to outsell locally made unsubsidized competition.
That already-running global food network meant that we've been able to greatly lessen the effects of famines.

The slave / child / forced labor problem exists regardless. Globalization tends to lessen it. Dictatorships that cut themselves of from the rest of the world tend to be hellholes, while globalized countries tend to improve. Even China, still officially communist, has vast amounts of free enterprise, is tackling government corruption, and has been experimenting with democracy at the local level.

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Re: The Food Thread

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I'm absolutely a globalist, but I don't want it to be just for corporate interests.
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Re: The Food Thread

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Vrede too wrote:
Thu Jul 20, 2017 11:59 am
I'm absolutely a globalist, but I don't want it to be just for corporate interests.
Yup. Corporations can move jobs overseas at will. They can buy goods and materials overseas. They bribe lobby to have trade in services included in all the hot new international trade agreements. Reopening NAFTA - in reality - is about including the corporate-favoring ISDS and IP rules that were going to be in the TPP.

It's a different story for consumers. Those who buy college textbooks and other goods from second world countries and sell them in North America at second world prices, can be bankrupted in court regardless of legality. DVDs come region-coded to keep the markets separate. YouTube, Netflix and other sites are heavily region-locked. Canadians who pay for the American Netflix selection get declared thieves by Canadian cable companies.

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Re: The Food Thread

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rstrong wrote:
Thu Jul 20, 2017 12:21 pm
... It's a different story for consumers....
And the environment, small business, workers, human rights, etc.
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Re: The Food Thread

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O Really wrote:
Thu Jul 20, 2017 11:33 am
Why are you getting Homestead strawberries when you could get Plant City strawberries?

is there a difference?

both are grown in sand pumped full of fertilizer. I would much rather have those little full of flavor strawberries grown seasonally anywhere in the SE during the short growing season

gives me something else to look forward to, rather than an everday tasteless pretty to adorn my cereal.
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