First the government eliminated the small farmers and small independent business such as grocery, gas station, and pharmacists. Who is next?

[Kelley1]

Neighborhood Grocery Stores Were Everywhere

Downtown was full of small independent business along with a few chain stores. There was a drug store pharmacist for almost every doctor. Independent full service station was in every neighborhood. There were lots of independent appliance stores. Moreover, most food was produced by millions of small farmers.

Now they are almost all gone. They have been replaced by huge conglomerates and franchises; all operating on the same model with poor service. That is the result of numerous laws and over-regulation making it almost impossible for small businesses to compete and comply.

[Lliam]

It's true. One of the purposes of the covid mandates was to close small businesses.
The climate change scam is harming other businesses.

The government over-regulates small businesses and rewards giant corporations.

WEF policies are being supported and implemented by our government without our consent.

What's next is a continuation of low CO2 regulations, spraying us and the environment with toxic aerosols in the form of chemtrails, bombarding us with EMF radiation, poisoning our food with GMOs and agricultural poisons, mandating harmful vaccines, and implementing CBDC.

[BCA6010]

All of them eventually, but they really want to take down the smaller, non-corporate news and podcast industry most of all.

[Drewtate]

Homeowners and the Middle class. People who want to be parents.

You will have nothing and be happy

You will eat the bugs.

[Kelley1]

You are telling it like it is. I have already made my choice, otherwise, I would have voted your reply the most helpful opinion.

[Drewtate]

Imagine a cashless soceity where the government taxes every transaction. For instance you give your God child $100 for their birthday and the government takes $10 of it.

[blueonblack22]

Kamala’s beyond asinine communist “price control” idea would bankrupt many small chain and independent grocery stores, cause food shortages and in the long run make everything even more expensive and difficult for the consumer.

Grocery stores only make 1-3% profit margins on selling good commodities. The inflation on prices is due the skyrocketing transportation costs (thanks to Biden crushing domestic oil and energy production) and more expensive labor costs.

The amount of gaslighting and mental gymnastics bullshit the democrats are doing on this beyond insane.

[RavVid]

I'm not so sure it is due to gov't regulation but more consumers voting with their $'s for wider variety of products, cheaper prices plus predictability. With our equivalent of home depot I know exactly where things are in every store.

What evidence is there that statutory regulations are the problem rather than me going to home depot instead of the hardware store a couple of streets down? I am pretty interested in this cause I like mum and dad stores.

[Surely]

Large businesses can gobble up the smaller ones in a few ways. They can under cut the smaller ones or just buy them out. Plus they have a bigger voice in government. While the public sits back and enjoy the lower prices. Even though most of those items are cheaper made. The public only looks at the bottom line. So they don’t protest the invasion of big corporations. That run the smaller ones out of town. By not supporting their home town businesses.

[goaded]

That's the result of not enforcing anti-trust laws for decades.

Just four companies in the U. S. control:

85% of beef processing

80% of corn seed distribution

77% of fertilizer production

69% of grocery sales

Wondering why food prices are so high?

Minimal competition means maximized price-gouging.

[exitseven]

Yes, I try not to shop at the big box stores but it is difficult sometimes. There is a small hardrware store in town and sometimes I can find what I need but often they do not stock it so I end up at home Depot anyway.

There is a main highway that runs through my town. There must be 10-12 strip malls on that road and all of them have at least one vacant storefront after Covid.

Covis screwed up a lot of people , not from the disease itself buy because of the lockdowns.

[Syntosi]

Lady, that was not the government. That was capitalism, or rather the fault of the corporations that now occupies their locations. You bring up that laws and over-regulations make it impossible for small business to compete or comply? That is not how any of that works. Large businesses succeed because they can do things cheaper, spend more money on developing new technologies and also suffer larger losses without going bankrupt.

A basic premise of capitalism is to win over your competition, and when a business loses they close down. Small and medium scale businesses are on a losing streak against large corporations. That is all there is too it. In a society without regulations to help the small guys they will lose against the big guys. The only one who can stop this is the government be specifically implementing regulations and laws, the thing you are blaming in the first place. Ironic is it not?

[Kelley1]

Your ignorance is astonishing. The large corporations buy the politicians to pass laws to eliminate competition. A typical example is requiring you to complete a full cosmetology program before you can legally braid hair. Another example is only licensed funeral directors can sell caskets at twenty times the price they cost to make.

[Syntosi]

Even if it was true that corporations buy politicians to pass laws to eliminate competition, that would still be a problem with capitalism and the only way to resolve it would have a stronger government that can't so easily be bought.

But no. Your argument is stupid. The vast majority of small and medium sized businesses were destroyed through capitalist means such as competition and market manipulation. There is no logical way a small business can make coke cheaper than coca cola. There is no logical way a small business can make a better youtube. There is no logical way a small business can invent a better processor than Intel.

Small businesses can't compete fairly with large businesses in a fair and open market. You need to stack the deck for the small guys for them to survive and without the small guys there won't be any pressure on the big guys to keep innovating and lower their prices. The government interference is required to make capitalism work.

[Kelley1]

Your ignorance of history is even more astonishing. For thousands of years in most countries of the world, small businesses existed because the law didn't prevent them. However, capitalism was often limited by kings granting only favored people the right to trade in a few commodities. But generally, the markets were full of small businesses.

[Syntosi]

Speaking of being ignorant of history, capitalism is only a few hundred years old (not thousands) and the form you are familiar with today is like at most 100 years old. The system we had before then with all the kinds and shit was called mercantilism.

Guess when small and medium sized businesses started to die out? In the last 100 years. Strange that. Almost like some new economic power was growing and destroying all its competition... like some sort of survival of the fittest.. like a capitalist system almost..

[lightbulb27]

its definitely not a govt of the people for the people by the people is it. if it is, they are dumb people.

um... I'd say a bunch of white collar workers are next due to ai.

my area has or had a lot of small mom and pop shops, but covid took out a bunch and the high prices is taking out more. what's being built up is all corporate. very sad and unfortunate, but what young people can start their own little shops. not many can except for maybe nail spas, hair, etc.

[slatyb]

The government? No, they were high cost operations that were undersold by more efficient competitors. It didn't start with Wal-Mart. This goes way back to Montgomery Ward's, Sears, and J. C. Penney. The American public had a choice and they chose lower prices.

[Makeushiver]

Government didn't eliminate anything. Monopolies, formerly known as trusts come into a market, undersell the competition long enough to put them out of business, than are free to raise prices as much as they want. That is where the "invisible hand of free markets end up". Read some of Rockefeller's, Ford's Vanderbilt"s tricks. Pretty ugly.
On the other hand I think you have a very elegant neck.

[MisterWack]

It was big business buying up smaller farms, smaller shops, smaller everything for less competition. Less competition means more profit since they are forced to buy from you, then they price gouge.

Capitalism at its finest.

[normalice]

The government didn't eliminate them. Large corporations simply undercut their prices until they went out of business. The local shoppers could have seen it coming and paid the higher prices, but didn't. This is on them.

[Dargil]

Every enterprise that does not support Democrats. Then they will nationalize the survivors. Like Nazi Germany.

[Maybe_Maybe_not]

I totally relate to your sentiment, but then... It's a capitalist world we live in. It's not going to change soon, I think. Hm.

[Snakeyes7]

Slightly bigger businesses, and the business size will keep growing until the government takes control of it all.

[DJB72]

It's back door communism. Which is also, incidentally, the reason RFK Jr has suspended his campaign and backed Trump.

[msc545]

The government didn't eliminate small businesses. Large corporations did. Put the blame where it belongs.

[Snakeyes7]

The government locked the small businesses down, causing many of them to go bankrupt, while left the bigger ones like Walmart stay open during the pandemic. It is the government's fault and one could go as far as to say that it was intentionally done to help the corporations thrive.

[PsychicBoobs]

And what political parties do those owners fall into?

[abc3643]

The government had nothing to do with that. Capitalism did. And the gas station will still be here for a long time even if it eventually becomes a charging station.

[Kelley1]

It wasn't capitalism. It was “Fascism: the merger of state and corporate power. Almost all capitalism in the USA has been abolished by laws to eliminate competition.

[abc3643]

No, it's capitalism... and technology. You could see this coming long ago starting around the early 1980s...

Two major events occurred.
1. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 along with his action firing air traffic controllers de facto destroying the PATCO union in 1981. (He was right to do so, but it altered the relationships between business and unions ever since.)
2. The introduction of the IBM PC in 1981 thus legitimizing the personal computer.

After that, throughout the GOP-led 1980s, deregulation and lower taxation and enhanced productivity began the wealth gap.

When the Internet went public in 1993, there enabled "off-shoring" of jobs making things worse.

=====
Many rich people aren't stupid. They invest in their own wealth and start buying things so they can make even more money. This is why there is "Big Agra" now and big a lot of things. Long ago, the government might have intervened more to protect the consumer from monopolistic practices or too much agglomeration. But, under the GOP, that became lax and we know have companies that are very large - and that can pay lobbyists and make donations to politicians to help keep it that way.

[goaded]

"The Biden-Harris admin has taken anti-trust action against:

-Amazon
-Apple
-Google
-Microsoft
-Meta
-Kroger
-JetBlue
-Live Nation/Ticketmaster
-Nvidia
-OpenAI
-RealPage

It’s a really bad time to be a corporate monopoly."
mastodon.online/.../113013361487902378

[Kelley1]

@goaded I will believe it when I see it. Otherwise, it is just playing politics and doesn't mean a thing.

[goaded]

Well, Live Nation, to take one example, charges twice as much for a Taylor Swift ticket in North America as in the UK. www.businessinsider.com/.../how-to-buy-taylor-swift-tour-tickets-concert-prices-compared

They do it by monopolising all the elements needed to run a tour in the US.

apnews.com/.../justice-department-live-nation-ticketmaster-antitrust-lawsuit-df9b552d127e1494db13e3cd625787a8

[abc3643]

@Kelley1
Since you are young, I'll let you know that it HAS happened before. Numerous times.
Two times stick out in my mind:

Back in the late 1970s/early 1980s, there used to be a company called MCI. They were a telephone company which provided long-distance service. This is back during the time of land-lines. Cell phones, let alone smartphones, where essentially non-existent. Now, back then, almost everyone had their telephone service provided by American Telephone and Telegraph aka AT&T aka "Ma Bell". I lived in New York and our telephone company was the New York Telephone Company (my aunt worked for them) but it was part of "The Bell System" (that is, the group of companies all owned by AT&T). Back then, your telephone bill had two parts - local service and long distance... and long-distance wasn't that far. Long-distance was expensive so you rarely made long-distance calls - often only to relatives on holidays. The money the company made from long-distance calls was used to subsidize local calling service which was cheap. Well, MCI tried to compete with AT&T for providing long-distance service. But AT&T owned the telephone poles and benefited from that. MCI sued AT&T for monopolistic abuse or some such. (It's important to know that AT&T was a "regulated monopoly". Generally, they didn't abuse and used their more-or-less guaranteed profit toward scientific research. The vast majority of technology you enjoy today all over Earth was based on science and technology developed by AT&T in the 20th Century.)

Well, in January 1982, MCI won their case and AT&T was ordered to be broken-up. The breakup was complete on January 1st 1984 and many people were worried - it was like Y2K before Y2K... but you wouldn't remember Y2K.

(more)

[abc3643]

The other is Boeing.

Boeing was broken up in the 1930s.
Boeing made airplanes - including their engines - and also had its own airline!

Today, Boeing is still Boeing. They primarily make aircraft, BUT they don't make the engines and probably most avionics. So, Boeing has to buy engines and avionics from other companies. One of those companies is Pratt & Whitney... which was originally part of Boeing! And that airline? That's United Airlines today.

So, large companies are broken up.

[Kelley1]

That was 50+ years ago before the corporations bought up all the politicians. I am not sure it is possible now.

[abc3643]

LOL... Politicians have been bought for a long time, but many of them are straight-up.
And, no, the 1980s is not 50 years ago and, furthermore, believe it or not, 50 years ago is still a lot like today. Technology may have changed society a bit, but 4 billion years of evolution leading to humans leaves humans pretty much the same as they were. Human nature is human nature and pretty much always will be despite technology and culture changes.

[Kelley1]

Customs and beliefs change so in effect people change and even more governments become more powerful and oppressive. Things we believe would be horrible were normal in the past. Slavery, the age of consent, and the marriage age are three examples. In all states, without a court order marriage below the age of 18 is not legal. However, Shakespeare's Juliet was 13 when her parents arranged for her to be married and at the time, people didn't believe she was too young. the minimum age of consent is 16 in all states and people would be appalled if the age of consent and the minimum age to marry was 10, 12, or even 7 as was the case in the 1800s. Furthermore, this Law was also used to marry off girls as young as 7 to 10 to men who were a lot older, in the 1800s.
discover-the-truth.com/.../

[abc3643]

You don't understand what I am saying. You will one day. We all do... well, most of us. It just takes a few decades.

[abc3643]

Let me try to explain it a different way. You have two eyes two ears two arms two legs her nose etc. We've had these things for millions of years. Well, there are things about personalities or, to put another way, human mental and emotional constitution that are as immutable as the way the human body is shaped. This is what it's meant by human nature. This is not something that is obvious when you were young like your age. But, when you were out in the real world for a long time and deal with many many people over that time, you be into recognize the commonalities and how humans are among all of us.

[Kelley1]

I agree we are greater than 90% a product of our genes and less than 10% environment. However, anti-trust laws and any application of anti-trust laws to break up monopolies are due to environment; not heredity.

[abc3643]

I think I understand what you are saying and I won't disagree. I will simply say this: Once you understand human nature, it explains a great deal about the human world and you can often successfully make predictions based on that. Think of it as like "the physics of human psyches".

(Of course, it helps to know physics a bit to appreciate that.)

[beefcakebradybatson]

Outstandingly handsome black cowboys who love buxom blondes !!!

[Jennz6]

I hope Kamala is going next

[Kelley1]

She is part of the government. She is NOT part of a group to be eliminated. However, if you are working middle class person with a house, the government might raise your taxes and and add regulations making it difficult to maintain ownership of your house.

[Jennz6]

I live in a room where I work and I work on tips so she can’t bother me but I don’t like her and I want to see her go away

[thearchjoker]

everyone else

[jamesgoldman]

The people

[stratford]

Capitalism has done that.

[Kelley1]

I already answered your false claim.

[stratford]

Interesting