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Since according to Bill Ackman the presence of a place you can buy eggs without a 100% markup is going to plunge NYC instantly into a Mad Max / Escape from New York style hellscape, what gangs are we all joining?
Personally I'm thinking the one of slightly sexy cultists who worship bodega cats.
How about you comrades?
People will buy [groceries, which usually rely on abundant shelf storage space and refrigeration and the trust of name-recognition and the advantage of a fixed, predictable location] at below-market prices and resell them
I'll be part of the gang that buys up produce to resell it, but to keep it from spoiling, stores it in brine and then carts it around on rickshaws at zero cost to sell in the black market, proving this abstract model of economics right.
This gang is known as
the Pickle Ricks.
Get out.
I'm joining the Atom Cats. I want sweet power armor.
One of the best patches of all time.
If Zorhan does half the shit these out of touch billionaires think hes going to do, i'll move to nyc in an instant
Also lmao that alot of the bad effects they are warning about are already happening under capitalism
These people are going to do this. They will send people to steal from these stores and make a silly ebay listing. If that doesn't work they'll send people to poison the food in the stores. NYC is going to need a lot of help from leftists to make these projects work.
I am definitely going to pay shipping and handling costs for 3 boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese and a 1-pound pack of chicken breasts. Public grocery stores will never compete with this.
Any day now, the eBay stores will start accepting food stamps.
Yeah, we're gonna need some kind of community safety plan for each one of these stores worked out with the people who live around them or something
Stores will sell goods at below cost
People will steal from stores without fear of reprisal
Spoken like someone who definitely understands why people steal food to begin with.
Also why would there be no reprisal, its still illegal to steal from there. Or are you saying the cops just won't give a shit because its not private capital? Hmm?
People steal more food the more affordable it is :very-smart:
What you don't realize is Bill Ackman literally dumps his actual, evil plans straight onto social media through himself or surrogates. This guy has unlimited resources, he's a billionaire.
This isn't a hypothetical it's an actual plan to destroy this as a possibility. Inject "we will pay people to x" in front of most of these bullet points. They pay people to sabotage this and create this city-wide food desert so they can destroy any spark of socialist hope and make the citizens of NYC beg to be saved by the oligarchs.
i'm not even joking. These guys have such egos they can't actually do smokey back room planning they just put it all out there and laugh at us because we can't do shit about it.
Or maybe not even laugh, they just don't see a need for secrecy because they have never known as single obstacle to anything they do in their entire living memory.
(i'm not saying everything is a billionaire conspiracy but always look at stuff like this as trial balloons. even if they don't hand out cash to shoplifters there are other ways to arrange things to fail)
The guy who tweeted this doesn't understand economics and especially doesn't understand microeconomics of grocery stores.
You are not going to have a small-scale player enter the industry to disrupt it. You need a large facility, and you need bulk logistics. Every item sold carries the embodied labor cost of how much time people's hands are touching it. If you are just buying items off the public grocery shelves one at a time, you are (at least) doubling your shipping labor, tripling your stocking labor by unstocking and restocking it, (at least) doubling the point-of-sale labor, and using incredibly ineffective logistics by loading up a van instead of a semi trailer. You would be making a negative profit. Retail purchase as a supply method really doesn't hold a candle to wholesale. Not to mention that the inelastic good of food is extremely cheap, and the only food items that would respond to market dynamics are inelastic ones.
I work in grocery/retail, and understanding these things is part of why I stay at this job.
Even if you make the huge assumption that food gets sold substantially below equilibrium prices, buying and reselling is not just a matter of pushing a button, like it is on the stock market, and it doesn't necessarily make sense to try to chase after that discrepancy. I kind of wish these fuckers would try to do something like this and invest a lot of money into it because it would fail very quickly and very consistently. You'd need to pump a huge amount of money to keep it afloat, and that money would go into hiring lots more people, reducing the reserve of labor and driving up labor prices. You'd also open yourself up to "oops, I bought 8 items at the BigAppleMart on 53rd Street but 2 of them were 'damaged' in transit in my car" and "oops, I got held up by a gang as I was pulling in to the JohnGaltMart and they stole my entire cargo, please hire private security at a 1:1 ratio of actual GaltMart employees"
oh i know it's all BS (i also been in the industry for a long time, from stocker to manager with access to financials and back again, and now nascent union organizer... shh that one is a secret)
that's why I said they are just laying out their plans for sabotage. these plans aren't realistic. they are designed to stoke fear into chuds and "personal responsibility" libs but have no basis in reality. nobody is going to actually make a criminal cottage industry out of this.
I kind of wish these fuckers would try to do something like this and invest a lot of money into it because it would fail very quickly and very consistently.
oh you know they are going to try, just to make a point and try to make this fail. it would be ironic if they create some kind of sabotage based grocery chain and drive up everyone's wages. right now the industry is so brutal. our DM came by to try to figure out why all the good people are leaving and get ahead of unionization/wild cat striking. meanwhile i've been letting everyone know what their actual effective wage would be if this were an entirely worker owned company.
but i digress and yes I could see Ackman and his cohorts doing some ridiculous, fumbling moves by throwing money at this in an attempt to destroy it and just wasting money. because they are so, so bad at the very system they benefit from. it's more likely they'll just have Zohran killed or deported
I will join The Order ob Beanis 
NYC will be engulfed by beanis plants completely and everyone will be forced to truly live the bean.
Honestly surprised it took this long to get a benis response.
“Poor porky will be unable to compete”.
Why are porks entitled to comfort and somehow comfort is good for porky but the workers should be subjected to austerity?
I’ll tell porky what he regularly tells me. “Uhhhh, kiddo. That sounds like a YOU problem!”
Agreed, now let's repeat it while they have to walk out onto the ice or face our spears and maces made from deconstructed anti-homeless architecture.
There are 17 states with Alcoholic Beverage Controls who operate state-run liquor stores. I guess it's true that private liquor stores are unable to compete, because they're illegal, but there hasn't been a liquor shortage in what, 92 years?
Not to mention thousands of military and diplomatic commisaries.
The military commissaries are now struggling with frequent liquor shortages as a result of a Pete Hegseth
Chuds: BIDEN MADE EGGS TOO EXPENSIVE, TRUMP WILL FIX THE ECONOMY
Also chuds: WHAT? YOU CAN'T JUST SUBSIDIZE GROCERIES, WHAT ABOUT THE SMOL BEAN BUSINESS OWNERS?
warriors... come out and plaaaaay
It's funny he thinks he lives in a world where people aren't currently stealing from grocery stores.
I've definitely increased the amount I steal from grocery stores since November
Porks are unable to blame themselves.
The current cost of living crisis is literally because there currently are shortages, and porky’s been publicly laughing and rolling in dough.
Not one of them have thought “ok, maybe we pushed our luck.”
idk, the moonrunners, maybe the electric eliminators
Sucker for a shiny jacket.
Combatribes had some of the absolute best gang names so I will be joining the Motorcycle Nuclear Warheads or the Slash Skate Screamers
True. I remember two bosses call Salamander and one that I think was unfortunately just called Swastika.
Motorcycle Nuclear Warheads reminds of that guy from Snow Crash.
I'm gonna join whatever crew doesn't instantly kick me out for doing the beer-bottles-on-fingers bit from the Warriors
Don't worry, there's gonna be an entire crew just of people doing the beer bottles on fingers bit from the Warriors
Funny. Everyone wants to be all "people will blame capitalism when bad things happen" but then can't understand that the problems they're worried about would literally only happen because of capitalism. Ugh, liberals.
Smh you commies want to blame capitalism for all your problems just because it's the system creating all the problems, while free thinkers like me know it's actually a secret marxist trans cabal or something.
Yeah, but once Zohran's New York falls they'll all be hiding in a fortified version of the New York Public library, using the books for heat instead of knowledge, and surviving on pigeon meat from the rooftops. Them broadcasting printed out Reddit posts via the emergency alarm system will be annoying but they won't be much threat anymore.
So... What actually causes the food shortages?
Private grocery stores cannot compete and go out of business.
And the public ones just, don't expand to take over the demand because well... erm... I mean... I suppose they can't because... well... THEYRE EVILL SOCIALLISTS! STARVATION IS THE POINT! THEYLL STARVE US ALL BECUASSE COMMNUNISM WORSE THAN HITTLER 5BAJILLION DEAD!!!!!
Ah, I see. Only having one brand of tinned tomatoes is WORSE than death anyway.
Something something the private sector is more efficient.
Man I hope NYC turns into Necromunda
Imma join the gang that worships gasoline and bullets... wait...
Yea my guy you are right. Scalpers, thefts, food shortage, all of these are problems solved by capitalism
People will buy goods at below-market prices and resell them
The markets understander has logged on.
Once they open these stores, absolutely everyone will buy their groceries from Shady Joe's Discount Foods of Unstated Origin! Especially the people who can afford food from private stores.
Especially when there's the government run stores even cheaper RIGHT THERE.