(07-26-2022, 10:00 PM)kalakoa Wrote: I simply can't afford to support "local" merchants who charge 3x Amazon prices.
That's the rub. Having owned a retail store myself I remember seeing big box stores selling stuff at retail that was lower than what I paid for the same product wholesale... not counting what I paid for shipping. It literally would have been cheaper for me to buy stuff from a big box store than getting it from the same distributor they did.
They call it "economies of scale" but another way of phrasing it is that "the system" is geared towards grinding small businesses out of the equation so that consumers have no choice but to buy directly from the elites. Hawaii's new $18/hour minimum wage law will do a lot to facilitate that. Imagine the economics of comparing a couple of high school kids making $18/hour that show up to work only when they want to against Bezos's warehouse robots that don't get paid, don't require workers compensation insurance, employer contributions towards payroll taxes etc etc that really make an $18/hour employee cost twice that. 3x Amazon prices might someday be a bargain at a local business.