I’m not sure if I have to write this in large print, but that is entirely my point.
ETA: just because I will have to spell this out for you: if a company owes more loyalty to shareholders than customers, then customers owe the company nearly nothing.
You are of course, welcome to boycott the boycott, and spend all your money at Kroger.
But, you cannot require that others shop there, if they disagree with their policies.
If people don’t want to patronize a company that makes decisions that they don’t like, then they don’t have to. I don’t understand why your opinion on whether their reasons are good enough to satisfy you matter.
I think what he’s really advocating is that residents should neither spend money on groceries at either Kroger or its competitors. Whether he notices any irony in this position is up for debate.
Instead of putting all this energy into punishing a company for closing an unprofitable location, why not direct that energy into fixing the problems in the community that lead to the store being unprofitable? Then the people are living in a healthier community and stores in that area can be safe and profitable.
Win-win.
No one is proposing putting a govt mandate. Any pressure is coming from the private sector. I don’t know why people keep making some sort of claim that it is the govt that is forcing this. The solution to a free market failure is a free market solution, we are free to market our dollars as consumers. The only way to prevent consumers from voicing the opinions with their wallets is to create some sort of govt mandate that requires people to shop at these stores.
To have the govt force a location to stay open is unfair and unconstitutional. Consumers demanding that it stay open is enshrined in the very first amendment.
And there are times when the market utterly fails, and we need to recognize that, and prevent market failures from harming people. The only way to do that is to point out when it is failing.
Kroger is the biggest grocery store chain in the US. They have more than a bit of leverage themselves. If they find themselves in a position where they want to keep stores open in unprofitable areas, whether due to their corporate ethics, or do to pressure from consumers, they can lobby to get tax incentives or other susibied that will help to make those stores more economical to run.
You are correct I cannot force people make sound, well-reasoned decisions. I can, however, point out that their behavior is irrational and counterproductive. That’s not an opinion. By advocating for a boycott they are advocating for sending money to stores who didn’t even try and for making poor neighborhoods even less attractive to investors.
If you are using your mind reading powers to come up with “what he’s really advocating”, you need to get them calibrated. If you, like most people, don’t actually have mind reading powers, then you are pulling this assumption straight out of your ass.
Nope. Thanks for playing.
If it were the case that your local corner grocery is of the same size and impact as kroger, you may have a point. As kroger is the biggest grocery chain in the US, you are the one that is completely missing the point.
I made several points that you quoted and then proceeded to not even attempt to counter. Because you can’t.
I must say, over the last few weeks I have really become acquainted with your posting style of both lacking any reason and familiarity with the concept of humor.
Well, that is a bit fair, you made some really stupid claims and conclusions, and it is hard to counter stupid, even if I really felt like it. You are much more full of stupid than anyone has the time to counter every stupid claim and conclusion that dribbles from your pie hole.
Your point was that anyone who holds kroger responsible for its actions is being irrational. That’s the only point you have made, and it has been countered by everyone pointing out rational reasons to hold a company responsible for its actions.
If you want to advocate that companies may not be held responsible for its actions, that people are not allowed to call for more responsible corporate citizen hood, that’s your right, but I find that to be very irrational.
You condemn me for telling Kroger what they should do with their money, but have no problem telling other people what they should do with theirs. You think you can tell them they have to spend money at Kroger.
I’m not even calling your a hypocrite. I’m just pointing out how your attack is self-defeating. We’re both talking about what people should or should not do. That’s the nature of this sort of discussion.
I am aware of your legitimate argument against boycotting. I’m not saying I agree, because that would seem to take away literally the only tool available in a free market to provide consequences for bad actions. But I can at least see room to argue over it.
But that was not the purpose of my post. The OP revealed something very disturbing about himself in that exchange, and I was pointing it out. He doesn’t believe in helping others unless it also benefits him.
I had originally sat here and spent forever trying to explain why this is a bad thing, but surely most of you understand that, and anyone who doesn’t isn’t going to be convinced. I already gave the main reason: society is stronger when we work together for a common good rather than only look out for ourselves.
The OP clearly doesn’t get it, however. But I don’t think going on about how awful this is would be any more convincing. I have never successfully argued a Randian Objectivist out of their evil views, and I don’t expect I will be able to now.
What I can say is that it shows that the problem is more fundamental than whether someone should support a boycott, and boils down to “Is helping others a good thing?” If you don’t think so, then no wonder the guy is attacking Jesse Jackson. He’s trying to help out the less fortunate, even though it doesn’t affect him directly!
With the powers of perception that you demonstrate with your utter lack of capability of comprehending basic ideas and sentences to the point where you just have to make up stuff about what others are thinking or motivated by, I will take your pathetic attempt at an insult as a complement.
Many thanks, my good friend.
Sure, you are absolutely free, as a citizen and a consumer, to make any criticisms you like, and to shop wherever you want.
But the background principle isn’t that different. If you, as a private citizen, believe that the way to fix a market failure is to pressure one particular company to maintain a money-losing enterprise, then not only are you stupid when it comes to public policy, but you’re abrogating our broader societal responsibility to deal with this problem. You’re basically saying to one single company: You fix this problem, so that the rest of us (including other grocery chains) don’t have to.
But again, consumers demanding that it stay open and lose money is not a reasonable way to enact social policy. I actually happen to believe that the government, and we as a society more generally, have a responsibility to intervene in areas where market failure has detrimental consequences. Part of my point is precisely that, if the closing of a few Krogers leaves these people without adequate nutrition, then there should be a solution that helps them without placing the burden for that help on one particular enterprise.
I don’t particularly feel sorry for Kroger; they’re a massive company, and they certainly don’t need my help. But why does Safeway or Vons or Ralphs or Aldi or Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s or any one of a dozen other grocery chains get a pass here? Presumably, the closing of the Kroger stores will leave a big empty space; why not pressure other grocery retailers to fill that space with moderately-priced and nutritious food?
Thanks for refuting a point I never made. In fact, if you look at my post, you’ll find that my very first point was to acknowledge that we need to be willing to recognize and deal with market failures.
Do you hear what you’re saying here? You’re advocating a system of subsidies and/or tax breaks for what you acknowledge is “the biggest grocery store chain in the US.” When you say that such things would “make those stores more economical to run,” you’re advocating a system whereby the public provides direct or indirect subsidies to a massive private corporation in order to help shore up its profit margin.
Your whole position is an odd set of paradoxes. You want to punish Kroger for closing these stores by boycotting them, which could well lead to declining profits and the closing of even more stores, which would most likely also be in poor and under-served neighborhoods. And you also want to reward them with public subsidies and tax breaks. You criticize Kroger for not being willing to lose money on a few stores, but you want to help them make money in those locations by transferring public funds into their corporate earnings statement. You’re the sort of anti-corporate activist that corporations like Kroger love.
I’m not arguing that there are any easy solutions to this problem, but it seems to me that arguing that Kroger should keep money-losing stores open is pretty much the least sophisticated and most simplistic and impractical solution possible.
Brevity being the soul of wit, you can’t even call me stupid without using too many words.
Not exactly. I am saying that if you want to make a profit off of the public, then you have some level of responsibility to the public as well. Is it entirely on them? No. But are the part of the current problem that we are dealing with? Yes. Do we at least need to acknowledge that this company is performing actions that are harmful to the public? I think so.
Is the only solution for Kroger to keep their doors open unprofitably? I don’t think so, but as there actually are no other solutions that are being offered at the moment, it is one that should be explored, even if not ultimately implemented.
I agree with that as well, but we don’t have a govt that provides any sort of intervention in those areas, having decided to leave it up to the free market. One thing or the other needs to go. We either need to hold private enterprises that operate in the free market accountable for the externalized harms, or we need to acknowledge that the free market has failed, and that the govt needs to intervene, not in small steps that barely address the problem but in a real way that actually solves it.
I don’t see the latter happening, as long as we are operating under the current pervasive paradigm that the free market knows best. So, if the free market knows best, then the free market needs to be informed by consumer choices. If those choices are to not patronize a company that makes decisions that are harmful to the public, then that is a rational and necessary step.
Because they are not as capable and have the resources to do so. Besides, it is not about getting people to move in, it is about someone making the decision to leave the market. Before there were super/hyper markets, you have smaller corner gorceries. They may have been not as nice as the kroger, and have as much of a selection, but they did offer healthy foods. The hypermakrets came in and drove those smaller groceries out of bueisess. Not such a bad thing if they are replacing that service with something better. But now, after driving the competiion out of buesness, they pull up roots and leave, the leave nothing behind to service the market that they took over.
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Thanks for refuting a point I never made. In fact, if you look at my post, you’ll find that my very first point was to acknowledge that we need to be willing to recognize and deal with market failures.
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I think that is because we are in agreement on that. I wasn’t refuting a point, I was bolstering.
I’m floating it as a possible solution. If other groceries want to move into the space and take the same subsidy, I’m all for that as well. Thepoint is, is that it has been determined that the free market is not able to service these areas. So, something needs to be done to incentive someone to service these areas. If the money goes to kroger, that’s fine. If it goes to trader joes or safeway, even better. If it goes to John Smiths’ independent local grocery store, I personally find that to be ideal.
Nah, I’m not looking to punish Kroger, just to let them know that there are consequences of their actions. If I don’t like their policies, I don’t have to shop there. If I prefer the policies of safeway to target, I can shop at safeway rather than target. That doesn’t mean that I am punishing target, it means I am rewarding safeway.
I am looking for solutions, I’m not looking for someone to blame, or to punish. I am not afraid of using public funds to subsidize or even reward private corporations for being a good corporate citizen. There is not paradox here, it’s simple and straightforward.
And I am not arguing that Kroger should keep money losing stores open. I am arguing that the free market has failed to deliver the goods and services that communities need. I am saying that using pressure to get Kroger to keep stores open would be nice, and that using fiscal policy and incentives to make it attractive to them would be better, and that using such policies to attract even more and a wider selection of local independent grocers would be best.
But, first, we have to agree that there is a problem to be addressed at all, and many are using the fact that some people have come to a solution that is the only solution that ordinary people have any control over, even if it is less effective than solutions that can come from people with more power over govt and commerce, as a distraction from the fact that there is in fact a problem that needs to be addressed.
OK, UR dum
Way to not read anything I have written. Yes the situation in Memphis does not directly effect me. I do things to support Detroit which faces similar challenges. I don’t live in Detroit. I have to spend time and money driving to Detroit. Usually the items I purchased are more expensive than similar items I can get elsewhere. I do it because it helps to revitalize a lower income blighted area.
I’ll spell this out nice and slow. Two Krogers closed in Memphis earlier this year. They were old stores that were losing money – millions. JJ is now advocating for everyone to boycott Kroger. Kroger is not operating in these neighborhoods. Neither are the stores owned by companies with the 93% of the grocery store market share that isn’t Kroger. He doesn’t like that Kroger isn’t operating in these Memphis neighborhoods, so he wants you to spend your money at…companies that aren’t operating stores in these Memphis neighborhoods. So let’s punish a company that doesn’t operate there by patronizing a company that also doesn’t operate there. He is championing an irrational act.
Furthermore, like any investment, investing in a new store comes with risk e.g. that the new venture will fail. By advocating for boycotts of companies that close failed stores, JJ is increasing the risk of opening new stores, especially stores in economically marginal neighborhoods. Which is counterproductive if you want to increase the availability of groceries in these neighborhoods.
To top this all off, new grocery stores operated by not-Kroger have opened nearby. Like across-the-street nearby. Kroger closing these stores did not create a food desert. They were displaced by another company, presumably with a better business model for the customer base. So there’s nothing to see here. But there probably is something to see elsewhere, even if there isn’t a new food desert in Memphis. I care about people having access to fresh food. Maybe you do too. If that’s the case, then we can talk about measures that actually increase food availability. I already mentioned some examples upthread – housing policy, EBT, etc.
Way to prove your point after that thesis, Einstein.