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I use to think Costco was like a low end Walmart that middle class Americans would go to so they could buy a bunch of cheap junk.
But it was my surprise to learn Americans over all wage levels go there. This smart attractive girl I know goes to Costco with her friends, most of my family also go to Costco to my surprise, as well as a bunch of celebrities.
I was wondering why people were so obsessed with Costco then I realized it was the manifestation of modern day America. Inside a strip mall, subscription fees, easy credit spending, cheap goods from overseas and factory farms, promotes over-consumption, and acts as a social meeting ground for a bunch of people.
It is very sad to see.
Don't take this the wrong way but what rock have you been living under for the past 20 years?
However your assessment is mostly correct. There is nothing much more American than a bunch of fatsos piling into their SUV and pickups to go buy pallets of ramen noodles and 55 gallon drums of mayo. It's no place you'll find me.
However your assessment is mostly correct. There is nothing much more American than a bunch of fatsos piling into their SUV and pickups to go buy pallets of ramen noodles and 55 gallon drums of mayo. It's no place you'll find me.
Since you don't go there, how did you formulate your opinion of it?
I use to think Costco was like a low end Walmart that middle class Americans would go to so they could buy a bunch of cheap junk.
But it was my surprise to learn Americans over all wage levels go there. This smart attractive girl I know goes to Costco with her friends, most of my family also go to Costco to my surprise, as well as a bunch of celebrities.
I was wondering why people were so obsessed with Costco then I realized it was the manifestation of modern day America. Inside a strip mall, subscription fees, easy credit spending, cheap goods from overseas and factory farms, promotes over-consumption, and acts as a social meeting ground for a bunch of people.
It is very sad to see.
Much of the restaurant food you eat began its journey to your plate at a Costco.
I believe they have an auto purchase program, which can save you money on a new car.
Usually the cheapest gas in town. Good deals on tires.
Pay less for the same groceries by buying in bulk. Whether or not one over-consumes is an individual choice.
Usually very good quality meat at a fair price.
I will never, ever shop there again. Not because of some faux disgust with a contrived stereotype, but because they covered for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department after one of their officers murdered a citizen in front of their store. The incident started with a Costco employee being a dip**** and it escalated to the murder of a veteran by the police. I canceled my membership over it and won't buy another. I use Sam's Club or the internet for my bulk buying now.
Location: Free State of Florida, Support our police
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I love Costco. I go 2x a week. For smaller items I will go to Walmart or Publix. I have everything I need in this pandemic because of Costco. I walked in the other day and got a 2 liter bottle of hand sanitizer. I am good for a year with that. The meat, veggies, milk, eggs, yogurt, cereal, clothes, tv's, booze ect ect ect. It can't be beat. My favorite store!
Both of these examples, despite being vastly different, are circumstantial.
I gave a bulleted list for the entire society and then described how CostCo fits within such a society. I am nowhere as wrapped in engineering outcomes as you are. I figure give 100% freedom a chance absent the meddlesome, involuntary tyrant 3rd party, and on net, individuals will move towards mutually beneficial outcomes.
You dismiss me because of the possible outcomes of pure voluntarism, your preferred engineered result is but one. You are a statist who wants all human behavior within your sphere of influence to bend to your will. I am a non-statist and figure billions of individuals operating in a voluntary society will have all manner of outcomes that adhere to billions of sets of rational self-interests. I am OK with entropy, you clearly are not because you still argue about how people will "misuse" their freedom by operating outside your preferred paradigm.
What you want is micro-balkanization along some circa 17th century tribal model, complete with independent culture, religion, philosophy, etc. And CostCo, being national, violates this "there can be no commonality between tribes" outcome. I am more simple. I see CostCo, or anything that large in scale, as simply providing trade a lot of people benefit from, else they wouldn't be so big. Voluntary association writ large, if you will.
The bottom line is you don't like freedom any more than a garden variety Republican or Democrat partisan, because like them, you don't like when people think or act differently than you, thus they shouldn't have the freedom to do so.
I gave a bulleted list for the entire society and then described how CostCo fits within such a society. I am nowhere as wrapped in engineering outcomes as you are. I figure give 100% freedom a chance absent the meddlesome, involuntary tyrant 3rd party, and on net, individuals will move towards mutually beneficial outcomes.
You dismiss me because of the possible outcomes of pure voluntarism, your preferred engineered result is but one. You are a statist who wants all human behavior within your sphere of influence to bend to your will. I am a non-statist and figure billions of individuals operating in a voluntary society will have all manner of outcomes that adhere to billions of sets of rational self-interests. I am OK with entropy, you clearly are not because you still argue about how people will "misuse" their freedom by operating outside your preferred paradigm.
What you want is micro-balkanization along some circa 17th century tribal model, complete with independent culture, religion, philosophy, etc. And CostCo, being national, violates this "there can be no commonality between tribes" outcome. I am more simple. I see CostCo, or anything that large in scale, as simply providing trade a lot of people benefit from, else they wouldn't be so big. Voluntary association writ large, if you will.
The bottom line is you don't like freedom any more than a garden variety Republican or Democrat partisan, because like them, you don't like when people think or act differently than you, thus they shouldn't have the freedom to do so.
My prescriptions are a direction society should move towards, not a strict model.
I am not against trade or development (or even some national brand), but I am against total globalization of society, and I'm against herd consumerism where mobility is used to drive people in and out shopping centers like cattle. As to why, its because of the long reaching affects. Human behavior is often controlled by centralized products and the specified types of tools available to repair and use them which coordinates society as one unite.
Your free markets could result into anything. We could become savages living in tribes, we could become a slave society where the majority of capital is owned and operated by a few people, we could become a highly advanced technocracy where investors direct society to a strict yet modern society, or it could turn us into a nuclear fallout zone due to rising tensions, or anything in between.
My point is your values don't correspond with how people will live or practice their freedoms, they are just policies. And policy does not determine who or what you are, it is rooted in your values as practiced by society.
Last edited by Winterfall8324; 04-24-2020 at 08:27 AM..
Your free markets could result into anything. We could become savages living in tribes, we could become a slave society where the majority of capital is owned and operated by a few people, we could become a highly advanced technocracy where investors direct society to a strict yet modern society, or it could turn us into a nuclear fallout zone due to rising tensions, or anything in between.
Yep, and what outcome happens would be based on the interactions of billions of people acting voluntarily according to their own self-interests. In your list of examples, all are dystopian in one way or another, because you believe that left to their own devices, absent your guiding central planner hand, people must choose some form of evil.
Thing is, in the 99% of everyone's daily lives where they are not actively being commanded by government, acting voluntarily and cooperatively according to self-interest works out pretty darn peaceful and normal. And in your engineered "vision" you think if the micro-balkanization occurs, this low level fragmentation will ensure that no dystopia is possible, since I guess micro populations are incapable of bad and only get that way when they...wait for it...wait for it....COLLECTIVIZE in larger herds?
Can you not spot your contradiction? My suggestion is pure non-state voluntarism and individual sovereignty, and let the Invisible Hand of all those countless individual interactions evolve organically into whatever. I am thus suggesting the most minute segmentation possible - the single individual. You say this will inevitably lead to one massive herd, so your idea is engineered sub-herds? So my desired outcome of the smallest grouping possible is bad because it will lead to herds, but your small herd idea is awesomesauce because a small herd will remain static forever, immune to any dystopian impulses?
You think a great deal of yourself, I'll give you that. Only under your benevolent guidance of the small herd model can society reach its perfection, eh? Individuals left to their own devices will always gravitate to a dystopian hellscape, but if you, central planner extraordinaire can but guide the micro-herd size, culture, economy, etc...well then society has a chance?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324
My point is your values don't correspond with how people will live or practice their freedoms, they are just policies. And policy does not determine who or what you are, it is rooted in your values as practiced by society.
I am not claiming my values match anyone else's. What I claim is that for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of their day to day lives, NAP, voluntary association and peaceful cooperation is the rule, regardless of whatever the involuntary 3rd party tyrant says or doesn't say. Based on that galaxy of available evidence about peaceful cooperation, I hypothesize that people are capable of self-guidance and evolving naturally without some tyrannical guiding hand.
According to this theory of mine, I don't see a large scale trade association like CostCo and its membership base as being antithetical to voluntary cooperation, mutually beneficial trade, NAP thinking, etc. It's just voluntary association writ large. If there are any anti-competitive features grinding your gears, I guarantee that every single line item you take issue with is a creation of government, protected by government, and only possible because of government.
I hope before I die that I read it the history books that the Fall of Civilization was caused by Costco...
Civilization is not dependent on a single merchant, be it for survival or death.
Winterfall thinks anyone operating outside his predetermined perfect society is a thrall to some consumerist, capitalist daemon, and only slaying the daemon can save them the horrible fate of not thinking/acting in a manner he finds proper. He fights for their souls, you see, which CostCo has stolen by providing them mutually beneficial goods and services that satisfy their rational self-interests.
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