Quote:
Originally Posted by mr ploppy
I don't know where you are, but where I live about half the shops in the town centre are boarded up. Most of the remaining ones are either chainstores or bargain/2nd hand shops. That's where "increasing competition" always ends up — with the number of competitors diminishing.
You end up with most of the consumer money going to large multinationals who dodge their taxes in order to cut prices. And then taxes need to rise for everyone else to make up for the shortfall from all the businesses who used to pay their taxes before they closed down. So in real terms it ends up costing more than it used to before you let it happen.
Then there's the people who can't physically get to the large out of town stores, or don't have a computer to get what they need on the internet. "Society" includes all of those people too.
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That's a pretty sweeping generalization and you've made a lot of assumptions (e.g. that competition leads to fewer competitors generally, that a few larger competitors pay less taxes overall, etc.). I think you've generalized the experience of your particular town to the entire world, and grossly oversimplified the complex politics, economics and societal factors that have probably resulted in your town being, in technical parlance, a "crap hole".
Everyone complains when a Walmart moves into their town, but no one ever thinks about the cost to consumers of blocking that Walmart and forcing everyone to pay higher prices to subsidize the mom and pop stores. Again, maybe instead of complaining about multinationals, we should raise taxes for everyone and give all small business owners a "thanks for trying" subsidy; that would be more efficient than blocking the Walmart, probably be cheaper, and spare everyone's feelings.