h a l f b a k e r y"Bun is such a sad word, is it not?" -- Watt, "Waiting for Godot"
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I suggest a store, or a dedicated part of an existing store, designed for people who require or prefer very economical meals. The meals could be packaged together; demos could be given in the stores on how to shop for, store, and prepare low cost meals. A variation of the Aldo store chain business
model would work well I think.
Aldi's formula for success
https://web.archive...g10,0,1651247.story
Aldi's formula for success: Small selection, low prices [Sunstone, Sep 10 2008]
(?) Grocery Outlet
http://www.groceryo.../mailer_oregon.aspx
Specializing in dented cans, overstocks, new items [Klaatu, Sep 12 2008]
(??) Hungry Man
http://heateatrevie...y/brand/hungry-man/
One Pound Of Food! [mylodon, Sep 12 2008]
Hungry Man
http://www.thecitru...s/hungry-man-meals/
One Pound Of Food! [Voice, Mar 10 2014]
Give them money
https://decorrespon...e/20798745-cb9fbb39
It works [Voice, Mar 10 2014]
Cashless economy food store
http://www.dailymai...ss-supermarket.html
will sell low-cost unbranded food in cheap locations aimed at people ‘on benefits’ and in poorly-paid jobs. [Sunstone, Oct 18 2014]
Senate speech
http://www.youtube....watch?v=rYqF_BtIwAU
[not_morrison_rm, Oct 18 2014]
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I've seen a few dollar stores that sell food, but mind you I use the term food loosely... |
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Good for students too [+] |
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Some of our overlords seem to think it's better to subsidy our middle and under classes than to make any attempt to help them improve their quality of life, in a lasting way. They want more economic stimulus packages and bigger government. I like my religion and my guns! |
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So hear this: we Americans should build our infrastructure so that some politician can't come along and get control over 'all the food' or 'all the money' in a recession. And this idea, and similar distributed, independent, private, always-low-cost food sources are the key to maintaining and improving the overall quality of life! |
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I imagine this store would sell:
1.bulk rice 2.bulk beans 3.artificial flavorings |
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so you don't see a sudden increase in demand for the cheapest most marginal food as a problem? Seems pretty regressive to me. |
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That was what it was like, in the olden days of long ago, at least in my part of the country. |
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Whoa, take a breath WcW. Drilling puts food on the table for quite a few people. |
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Although I do agree that pushing more cheap food, especially in the USA where there is so much cheap bulk food (and so much eating of that food), is not what some countries (i.e. the USA) need. |
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I used to be a Grocery Outlet and Costco regular. In Costco not only do you get cheap food (and lots of it) you get demonstrations of how to cook and prepare the food (i.e. put it in a microwave). So this is -- very -- baked already. You want cheap pre-packaged meals? Try a hungry man meal. |
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The negative aspect is a bunch of kids growing up eating processed cheese, potted meat, tv dinners, etc, and the food culture of the nation stagnating. Kids should be hungrier and a little more cultured, I say. |
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[rcarty] - Drilling and oil production is an industry, it employs people. A lot of them. It doesn't matter where the gasoline goes. |
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People in circumstances which require extreme economy may have difficulty getting to this dedicated store. |
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[rcarty] Well, just promise me your social welfare system won't be based off oil money. |
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[bungston] They can all live on top of the store, in small apartments. Society can move poor people into areas where they don't have to move very far for poor, low-quality food. |
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I think you are being sarcastic about moving the poor to food. Imagine a future where we wish we had done that. Or moved food sources to the poor. |
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A common analogy is Wal-Mart. Imagine a world without such discount sellers: would the people be 'ok'? How much would inflation have increased? Wal-Mart added much purchasing value to the dollar. To draw the comparison: really, really cheap stuff is sometimes 'nice' and sometimes a basic necessity to maintain the current standard of living. |
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Drill, baby, drill!! And about those rich elites... |
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imagine less obesity, less congenital disease, an increasing
rather than decreasing lifespan and an economy baised on
strong local economies. Right now this wonderful country
is considerably less wonderful because wealth and power
are funneled to plutocrats. If you believe that jobs and
industry are good for their own sake and that capital
should flow unregulated from the working class into the
pockets of a few capitalists then cheap poisonous food,
cheap poisonous toys, cheap poluting vehicles, cheap
crappy homes, and an expensive crappy government are
all very "American". |
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// moving the poor to food // |
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<Obligatory Soylent Green reference> |
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Walmart is a bastion of efficiency and if it were
only forced to pay employees well would be fine.
Local means inefficient. Inefficient means less
obtainable for the poor. Basically what you're
saying, [WcW] is that the poor should be forced to
pay higher prices. And the "poison" thing is
balderdash. There exist in today's world efficient
economies in which the poor have everything they
need and those economies should be emulated. |
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Employment is undesirable. Our goal should be
ZERO percent involuntary employment. If you
think work is good for its own sake you're cracked. |
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As for the idea, discount grocers are WKTE, and
I'm not seeing anything different from "make
discount grocers". Am I missing something? |
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No voice, what I am observing is that the average standard of living speaks to the real wealth of a nation. |
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//Employment is undesirable. Our goal should be ZERO percent involuntary employment. If you think work is good for its own sake you're cracked. // |
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I need some help here. So people should get everything they need free and not have to work to get it? Or people should all work for themselves? Or work for collectives or something. |
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Obesity is a direct result of selection pressures from a time - not that
long ago - when your species routinely struggled to get enough food,
and therefore eating massively when food was available was a
successful survival strategy. |
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It may be a while before natural selection starts to work in the
opposite direction, particularly if you continue to interfere (both
intentionally and unintentionally) in its mechanisms of action. |
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Something along the lines of "Crowd of kids - pack of lions - fat, slow
kid gets eaten first" should do the trick. |
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There was no missing un. Work is not good in
itself.
Many have dreamed of a utopia wherein mankind
is
cared for and coddled by robots and no one has to
work. That vision is getting closer. Zero percent
involuntary employment: A state of society
wherein
the only people working are those who want to
work. |
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//So people should get everything they need free
and not have to work to get it?// |
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The word "free" in that sentence is the problem:
it assumes that everything made has an owner
from the start. The world is already wealthy
enough for every human being to have all the food
they could want. Western countries are now
wealthy enough for everyone to have at least
basic food, clothes, and shelter. There doesn't
need to be any economic push and pull to provide
these things. There doesn't need to be a concern
about money for the basic necessities of life. That
idea became obsolete the moment society was
rich enough to ignore it. Capitalism works
wonderfully for many things but food, medical
care, and the like should not be withheld. They
cannot be morally withheld if there is a way to
provide them. |
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Without a fear of privation, of illness, or of outside violence there is no way for few to have power over many. Fear is the basis of the nation state. If you work against these fears you work against the aggregation of power and you threaten the entire structure of society as it exists today. Artificial scarcity, in food, shelter, and medical care, are the result of a system designed to make the vast majority of people joyless, fearful, obedient, and subservient. They have become the Virtues but actually they are shackles. |
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//Capitalism works wonderfully for many things but food, medical care, and the like should not be withheld.// |
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We-ell, I would rather day people shouldn't be prevented from providing for themselves. |
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Your utopia of people's every need being provided by robots, is completely unrealistic. Someone is going to have to maintain the machinery that makes the robots. Someone is going to have to design the new robots. Someone is going to have to manage the food distribution process. People don't do those things for fun. |
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It's very easy to give away other people's hard work, isn't it? |
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The notion that we work, create, or care "because we must" is the poison lie at the heart of all systems of power. That some people might work and other people might be idle isn't theft; the people who work aren't being robbed because other people are not working. That there are more people and less actual work over time is a reality. The plan that we should all work to build palaces for a few people because otherwise we would be idle is the false logic of a kind of slavery. |
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//Without a fear of privation, of illness, or of outside violence there is no way for few to have power over many.// |
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Yes there is. Celebrities have power without these things; they exploit a fundamentally different kind of fear, namely, fear of exclusion or of being uncool. Modern politicians and, in many cases, business people, operate on the same model. |
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If you deny the reality of external constraints, you don't create a free society without fear - what you create is a more inward-looking, more cliquey, more unequal, more corrupt and more divided society. |
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// a more inward-looking, more cliquey, more
unequal, more corrupt and more divided
society.// |
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objection! Economically it is more equal and the
poor need a decent standard of living more than
they
need to not be looked down upon. |
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// I would rather day people shouldn't be
prevented from providing for themselves.// |
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No one is proposing making any form of capitalism
illegal. I am proposing a system that would make it
unnecessary in certain more cases. Do you think
the non-tax-paying poor should be forbidden from
using the police, fire department, library,
museum, and docks? Are they stealing from you? |
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Weak tea. Celebrities? What about philosophers? What about artists of all stripes? Only people who are desperate for the comfort of a ruler of some sort are compelled by celebrities. It is a kind of feebleness, an impoverishment of culture that you are describing. |
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//Do you think the non-tax-paying poor should be forbidden from using the police, fire department, library, museum, and docks? Are they stealing from you?// |
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Well, to be completely honest with myself, I kind of do, but not in the way you mean. What I really object to, is the concept that food, shelter, power, social services, police, libraries, etc - should be universally available *in the absence of any obligations whatsoever*. That’s the rub. It’s shit like this: //That some people might work and other people might be idle isn't theft; the people who work aren't being robbed because other people are not working. That there are more people and less actual work over time is a reality. The plan that we should all work to build palaces for a few people because otherwise we would be idle is the false logic of a kind of slavery.// |
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Talk about poorly constructed, misleading arguments. The third sentence has nothing to do with what I said, or even the first two sentences, and is completely irrelevant (as well as being wrong, and a huge misinterpretation). |
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//the people who work aren't being robbed because other people are not working//. Yes they are. Why would they want to work, when they derive absolutely no benefit from it? Why not choose to be part of group B, the ones who are provided for? What you are describing is the very definition of slavery. In this scenario, eventually no one works, and we all starve to death in the dark. |
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I believe deregulation leads to excesses and institutionalised corruption far worse than regulated systems. I believe people should be empowered and have the opportunity to provide for themselves and it is the government’s job to ensure this is the case. I believe that there should be a safety net to provide basic support for people who are (*) unable to support themselves. I also believe it is a key function of government to prevent or impede excessive accumulation of capital by individuals (contrast with it being governments job to redistribute wealth). (* rather than unwilling) |
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What I don’t believe in is involuntarily taking wealth, productivity or rights from some people and giving them to others – in either direction. |
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The idea here is fine by the way, I agree with it (although it is pretty well baked, in various forms). |
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You're right, [Voice]; *if* what I described were the price for successfully eliminating food-poverty, then it would be a price well worth paying. The trouble is, it doesn't achieve that, *and* it has these damaging side-effects. |
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Thank you, [WcW], and I'll have a digestive biscuit too, if you've got any. |
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Regarding philosophers, I would say that, since 1968, the role of philosophers (in academia, at least) has been purely negative - the prevention of philosophy, if you like. The proximate reason for this can be identified in a footnote to one of Derrida's lectures from, I think, the early 70s. Its consequence is that philosophers don't exercise power over anyone any more, with the possible exception of other philosophers. |
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Regarding artists, I would say that the arts world is an excellent example of a sub-culture dominated by an emperor's-new-clothes, "fear of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person" power structure - and some of this attitude bleeds out into the rest of society. I think we discussed this under [theleopard]'s idea about a green frog on a tennis racket. If contemporary artists think they're fearlessly speaking truth to power, they're kidding themselves. The reason why the arts world works like this is that, in the absence of any external reference point for the value of an artwork, that value is determined by a fairly small community of like-minded people. Offend them, and you're finished. It's not a conspiracy. It doesn't need to be. It just functions like one. And - and this speaks to your point - it doesn't rely on any particular personal weakness of an individual. An artist can be at least average-tough psychologically, and still be constrained by this discreet system. Only a truly exceptional artist, who is really willing to suffer and sacrifice (Austin Osman Spare springs to mind), can escape. |
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I entirely agree with you that I am talking about a feebleness and impoverishment of society. I think it's only the aetiology that divides us. |
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Refers to Mel Brooks "History of the World, part 1" Senate speech. Link. |
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Having had the dubious pleasure of sitting through 3 years of economics lectures, I came up the monkeys and bananas economic model. The easiest way to get more bananas than the other monkeys is to rip them off. |
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For example, our current Dear Leader in the UK, got a very expensive education. This was paid for by his father's labours, which were setting up off-shore accounts so the rich didn't have to pay so much tax. So effectively he ripped off the poor. |
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//I don’t believe in is involuntarily taking wealth, productivity or rights from some people and giving them to others |
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Not an awful lot of point highlighting low income persons while the high income people walk away with $$$$$$ |
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Ultra Orthodox Jewish supermarkets in Israel work this way.
Their advertisements are "What you really need" or "No tricks". |
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Some of them sell during separate hours for men and women,
causing people from outside that community to stay away, but
some sell to everyone. |
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The store only holds the necessities and sells strictly certified
kosher food only, at substantially lower prices. |
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//Not an awful lot of point highlighting low income persons while the high income people walk away with $$$$$$// |
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Roger that, but the train of thought I was following was in response to a particularly feeble comment from someone else that "one person getting everything for free while another works isn't theft" - which is absolutely not the case because that is specifically theft, or slavery, or both. |
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I reiterate that I think this idea is a good one. It's just that discussions like this bring out the worst in everyone. That's right reader, you too are capable of slanted thinking, bigotry in one form or another, and arrogance, lots of arrogance. I despair at ever witnessing or taking part in an actual even-handed, enlightened debate or discussion about wealth distribution. I just don't think people (myself included) are capable of rational debate on this issue. |
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I get most of my food from Save-a-Lot. And the dollar general store, family dollar and the dollar tree. |
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Lot of dollar stores in Cardiff, are there? |
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In Kentucky they have a few. |
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