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TL;DR Borrow money and give it to markets and those
employed in such businesses that are dying slowly to
make the job worthwhile.
Once it goes, its gone.... Once the job goes, it's gone. If we
want to preserve markets for
future posterity, we have to act now. (Furniture shops,
machine
tools etc)
The idea is to end suffering of those working in slowly dying
businesses and give the business some thing to make it
worthwhile.
- Borrow and give companies money for running tight
businesses
- Borrow and give people money who are employed by such
business with
traditional low wages and terrible conditions a top up in
wages.
If we don't do this, so many businesses are dying and are not
viable. Some of the reasons these businesses are not viable is
the fickleness of people, not things inherently wrong with
these company's profitability.
[link]
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Is it buggy whip subsidies that are keeping those horse
carriages around Central Park? |
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Smacks of a "let's all" and generally not a good idea, though
already attempted in a myriad different ways -- look up
American Express's Small Business Saturday as an example. |
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To paraphrase Charles Darwin, "Adapt or die". |
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In 1900, there were thousands of farriers working in cities in Europe and the Americas. By the 1930's they were nearly all gone, because of motor transport. |
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Ask the question "What are towns for ?". When retail moves to a distributed model, towns become partially redundant; some service industries will remain. |
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Is this satire of bank bailouts via Quantitative
Easing? |
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No, just a wish for a kinder, gentler, less harsh Universe. |
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We suggest that [chronological] tries moving to one, because this one isn't like that at all. |
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I suspect that any subsidising effort is doomed in the long
term. However, if you want to do this, it might be more
effective for local authorities to reduce things like business
rates or charges to market stallholders - ie reduce the
overheads as far as possible. For this to happen, the local
authority has to decide that it values local businesses for
more than just the direct income they provide. |
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The underlying problem is that "we" tend to value high-
street and market shops for intangible things like the sense
of community they create, or the increased life they bring
to town centres, rather than valuing them as actual
retailers. If that's the case, we need to find a way to pay
for those intangible things. |
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// intangible things like the sense of community they create, // |
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You can get the same thing much more cheaply from, just as an example, an online community website for improbable ideas ... |
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// or the increased life they bring to town centres, // |
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What is a town centre for once the retail element atrophies ? |
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City hall; a transport interchange; personal services like hairdressers, try-before-you-buy products like perfumes; performance spaces; vehicle services. Things that require equipment that isn't particularly portable, &&|| the physical presence of the customer. |
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But any enterprise that deals in easily portable goods can run much more cheaply on the Web. |
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It's not just the death of High Streets that's an issue. It's the corresponding loss of revenue streams to local administration from property taxes. A Mom and Pop store can't afford the clever accountants that allow multinationals to neatly avoid taxation; besides, they have a fixed physical location. |
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Hence the low-level (soon to be high-level) panic as revenue streams evaporate from between their dirty grasping fingers, with crippling consequences for any centralized bureaucracy. <Snigger/> |
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Alternatively, taxes should fund government make-
work programs for non-viable businesses. I propose
that suburban malls be fully decorated for holidays
and staffed with carolers and mall santas, work to
be done by people on unemployment benefits who
are otherwise unemployed. |
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//What is a town centre for once the retail element
atrophies ?// |
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Fair question. But, if you need a loaf of bread it's a pain to
have to drive several miles to a supermarket, or order it
online and wait, rather than popping next-door-but-two to
the bakers. Plus, you can't have a natter with the Tesco
bread-man, or say "hi" to the delivery drone. |
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People evolve slowly - psychologically, we're probably best
equipped to live in villages. Put people in a city, and they
either atrophy (like Canary Wharf) or else they form their
own pseudo-village around them - this latter is true in most
of the worthwhile cities in the world. And those pseudo-
villages are largely held together by shops and other
business. |
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It's now 2019, not 1959. It is ridiculous that we measure
and support things solely on the basis of cost, when we have
so much more *stuff* than we used to. We are wealthy
enough now that we can decide what kind of environment
we want to live in, and then make it happen whether it
makes a buck or not. |
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To the extent that's true, [MB], it's manifested in paying $5
for coffee and ordering in. What do you think the average
bill at Trader Joe's or a Wegman's (put in the UK equivalent
for either) is other than our willingness to overpay
ridiculously for the feeling of homemade, etc. |
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// you can't have a natter with ... the delivery drone. // |
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Obviously some sort of upgrade is called for. |
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// we're probably best equipped to live in villages // |
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Some are more adapted to caves; or perhaps swinging from the branches of trees .... |
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// We are wealthy enough now that we can decide what kind of environment we want to live in, and then make it happen whether it makes a buck or not. // |
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<Looks around hopefully for Flying Car that was due for delivery in 2005/> |
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Actually, the discussion is more about towns than villages. A village is a low-density distributed entity with minimum facilities, so the butcher-baker- candlestick-maker model actually works, given the "cost" (time, energy, fuel) of travelling to a larger centre for perishable goods. If you only need a couple of tomatoes, it makes more economic sense to walk round the corner to the village shop, or better, steal them from your neighbour's greenhouse (or even their kitchen cupboard). |
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A town, a large aggregation of sometimes competing outlets, selling non-perishable goods not required on a JIT delivery (like hot coffee), becomes progessively less viable. |
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Like all subsidies, the idea is doomed to failure for the usual reasons. Market forces are slow and inefficient - but inexorable, and implacable. The longer the equalization is put off, the bigger the bump when it happens - the Law of Diminishing Returns and the Law of Unintended Consequences will see to that. |
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//our willingness to overpay ridiculously for the feeling of
homemade// |
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I think that's a different issue. That's a case of (I assume)
large chains trying to look like mom-and-pop outfits. And I
bet most of those stores are out of town rather than in town
centres. |
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I don't want to get all dewy-eyed, but there are still plenty
of places in England (my parent's village, for instance)
where you can go to a local, independent butcher; a family-
run bakery; a family-run newsagent and a good, privately-
owned one-of-a-kind restaurant within about 100 yards.
And as you go along, you can also pop into the post office
and pick up the gossip, or stop off at an electrical retailer
who doesn't have huge arrays of fridge-freezers in his
warehouse, but who will sell you 2ft of electrical flex or a
single fuse. |
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In decent cities (I'm thinking of the human parts of London*,
say, or Birmingham) you get the same thing, even though
the "village" is just one of many that have grown together at
the edges. |
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There's a reason that "villages" are the size that they are, very much related to how far humans can or will walk; the availability of turnkey powered transport (i.e. not horses) has impacted that, but not much. |
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Neglecting adverse weather conditions, most such population centres have a radius of about 1km - the distance that can comfortably be walked in 10 minutes or so by an average person carrying a small payload propelled by the average amount of motivation. The same ergonomic factors define and limit the size of shopping malls and other such developments. |
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Human factors are biased in favour of a "village" being viable where a "town" is not. |
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As you point out, cities actually consist of multiple overlapping "villages" or neighborhoods. The big retailers understand this and use it in their strategy for placing their smaller stores. It's about the "sod it" effect; how far will you walk in the cold and the rain to get alcohol, and what price are you prepared to pay for it, before you say "sod it" and get in your car ? The answer is something under 1000m, depending on age, infirmity, and degree of alcohol dependence. |
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The food delivery agencies are also factoring this into their model. |
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What you end up with is a network of "supply islands " spaced about 2km apart to maximise footfall. |
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//What you end up with is a network of "supply islands "
spaced about 2km apart to maximise footfall// Yes, and? |
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I agree, but that's basically what I was saying - the size of
"unit" is roughly village-sized, be it an actual village or a
region within a larger town or city. |
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If you're saying that big, faceless retailers are capitalising
on this by setting up small, local stores - yes, I agree. And
that's not as good, in societal terms, as having a diversity of
truly local independent retailers; but it's not as bad as
having no local retailers. |
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Example: most of the small villages within 5 miles of me
have a local shop. Fifty years ago they would have been
independent shops; nowadays they're generally under a
brand like Co-op or Spar, but it still sort of works. The
shopkeeper will be local and will know his regular
customers, and it's not too bad. Plus, of course, they have
some access to the buying power of the brand, which helps
keep their costs down a bit. |
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Even "Tesco express" shops in villages tend to be run by
local people, and are less impersonal than the big
supermarkets. |
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hey, can we expect more HB productivity from our UK
brethren given the soon to be enacted 32 hour work week
and utility Internet? |
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No, because everyone will be far too busy wearing their one-piece silver jumpsuits and zipping from place to place in their flying cars (trying hard to resolve the ATC conflicts with the herds of flying pigs, of course). |
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//villages are largely held together by shops and other business.// |
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Coffee shops, pubs, clubs, and parks (with charming little shopping districts around them) serve this purpose in my area, with people willing to pay significantly more than the internet price for goods because they get to browse with other humans around them. |
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// they get to browse with other humans around them. // |
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What did you do ? Must have been something REALLY bad ... did you take a plea-bargain to avoid execution or something ? |
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We kind of already do this with universal credit |
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This is a really bad idea on so many levels. |
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But the others
have got in b4 me with that criticism so there's not a lot to
add about that. |
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So I'll go to the core causes of the problem you're trying to
address that you seem to be ignoring (one of them anyway). |
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The problem for high street retail is it's so much cheaper to
buy online & that's because they aren't playing on a level
playing field with online retail, online retail has a lot less
overheads ~ 'One' of the big overheads they avoid that lets
them sell
so much cheaper is tax ~ If they have even halfway decent
lawyers
& accountants advising them on corporate structure &
where to 'register' their company
they don't pay any tax at all. |
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So far more effective (& sensible) would be to simply
change the business rates & VAT tax models that let online
businesses get away with paying far less (or even none in
some cases) tax
than high street retailers. |
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My advice is follow the money to see the cause & having
seen it
do something 'appropriate' to fix it instead of just throwing
money at it willy nilly. |
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Google 'hollywood accounting' for an idea how they
can get away with paying no corporation tax on profits (but
that one's not exclusive to online). |
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// change the business rates & VAT tax models // |
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Correct. Cut those taxes to the bone, and then some, and a revival of "High Streets" is possible. |
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Of course, that means that huge swaths of bloated, useless, interfering bureaucracy can no longer be funded, and government will atrophy to a vestigial withered ineffective rump. How tragic. |
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<Accidentally deleted annotation restored> |
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es, having a "Local Shop for Local People" would work in your part of the world - as long as no-one tries to Touch The Precious Things ... |
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The point is that [chronological]'s proposal to skew the market in favour of retailers in larger-than-village urban environments is doomed to failure. |
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The village model can't support, for example, a pet shop; there isn't enough demand. So pet shops will probably survive in towns because customers want to see, handle, and be bitten by the actual product. But a town will be very unlikely to have more than one bakery - and that needs to be an artisan bakery working on high margin low volume - on the high street. "The Dreadful Algebra of Necessity" will see to that. |
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// the soon to be enacted 32 hour work week and utility Internet? // |
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Time to stamp on those rose-tinted glasses and look round at a bleaker, colder, less tolerant and more divided society. |
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Look forward to a hard border between the UK and Eire, then a referendum in England on scotch independence (Ballot question "Do you want to kick out those useless whiny jocks ? ") giving another hard border, then sustained crippling economic pressure on Eire to force them out if the EU too, and then it's time to blockade the Channel and North Ses and force the continentals to.their knees. |
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Not to mention no more foreign trawlers inside Englsnd's 1500km territorial waters, and there's going to be this really swingeing Airspace Tax for all flights across the Atlantic ... |
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I guess you islanders are not going to be assimilated after
all? :) |
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Many of them seem strangely reluctant ... |
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//Cut those taxes to the bone// |
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Or add a 'subsidiary online VAT bonus tax' on top of normal
VAT instead. |
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Say an extra 10, 20 (or
whatever would do the trick) % on all online purchases to
level the playing
field (or even tip it) in favour of the high street. |
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Then all those //bloated// //bureaucracies// can keep
their
jobs
too, not necessarily a good thing of course (them keeping
their jobs), but as they're
the ones (more or less) in charge it's a lot easier to see
them liking that
idea (or
at least not actively disliking it) & actually doing it. |
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// all those //bloated// //bureaucracies// can keep their jobs too, not necessarily a good thing // |
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Not a good thing at all, because they are purely parasitic; they are entirely non-productive and add no value to the economy. Those jobs must therefore be eliminated and the personnel reallocated to work that creates rather than consumes revenue. Any sort of bureaucracy just represents friction in the system- wasteful and damaging. |
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