News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
The other issue is what's going to keep prices low at these stores?
A hugely important piece of history here is the Robinson-Patman Act. I'll throw a bit of AI slop for context, but it's consistent with what I know. Basically, the direction to the FTC to stop enforcing this act is what created food deserts and Walmart.
From the 1930s until the early 1980s, the Robinson-Patman Act was enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), ensuring that suppliers offered similar pricing to all retailers, regardless of size. This allowed independent grocers to compete effectively with large chains.
A classic example of this is the story where Walmart almost put Vlassic pickles out of business.
https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know-2
https://archive.is/KYd9U
Ugh, that's a depressing read, and I already knew the story. Tl;dr: Walmart kills brands. The Walton family gets richer. Everyone else suffers.
For me the biggest question is: "Will these City-ran grocery stores, be able to complete with the Walmart juggernaut?"
Yes, initially the city-ran stores will be placed in "food deserts", but if the program is to succeed it need to go toe-to-toe with Walmart. Otherwise, the program won't be able to reach the people who need it the most.
... and based on the article you posted, I'm sure Walmart won't take this lying down. Walmart will have no second thoughts or remorse to sacrifice their suppliers in order to compete (thus, keeping customers flocking to their store).
It doesn't look like there are any Walmarts in NYC. Honestly they probably don't care about this, their model is big box stores that sell everything. You can't put a big box store in NYC.
There aren't, and most of the big box stores are about a third to half the size of their equivalents outside the city
In the article, it’s says 1) they will direct the subsidies away from privately owned stores to spend on the city grocers, and 2) the city will pay rent and taxes on the store.
I don’t know how well it will work, or if some chain tries to mess with their price, like you mentioned, but I’m excited to see it in action and see what happens.
No matter what, I appreciate that he is actually trying something to combat a problem.
The easier way would be to make a law that mimics Robinson-Patman and actually enforce it within the confines of NYC.
But hey, I'm willing to see what happens.