TagMeInSkipIGotThis @ TagMeInSkipIGotThis @lemmy.nz

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Ah sorry, I was mixing things up. Requiring production, distribution, and retail to be separate sounds like a good starting point.

Yeah its the integration of all of that which is really allowing the cartel to dominate both the buying and selling side of things which in effect has made them a monopsony. (I learnt about the term a year or so ago reading Cory Doctorow, the technical definition would be a single buyer, but given how in concert the two Supermarket chains act (like Petrol retailers!) it seems to fit: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monopsony.asp)

I think you’re right, the government would step carefully, but I’d guess the only reason for this is because the supermarkets will try to sway public opinion. Move too slowly, and you’ll have a change of government that may reverse it all.

I think this is what frustrates me most about the last Labour government, they effectively ceded power to the lobbies that back their opposition by not acting decisively enough to quickly embed their good ideas. There's a reason NActional Fist have rammed through as much change as possible in their first year and its to get as much of the pain done well before the next election and to make it hard to reverse. Labour had a real mandate, and chose not to use it, this lot claim a mandate that barely exists and use it to its fullest.

That definitely sounds like a mature society but I don’t think we are mature enough to head that way, considering the slide back towards companies running prisons and education.

Western Liberal Democracies are always in a pendulum of pseudo-revolution then reaction, but because the revolution side never goes far enough here (and you can see the same in the UK, USA etc) slowly we slide further and further to the right, particularly economically. Then eventually there's less bulwark against populism and the risk of something far-right socially/culturally emerges too.

Yeah I didn't include Farmers Markets in my initial summary as they're not available everywhere and up here (HB Farmers Market) can be hit & miss on whether the value is better than other options. What you do get is the variety of produce types that just aren't in Supermarkets - eg in tomato season one of our local growers has probably 6-10 different varieties of tomato on sale.

Essentially it all comes down to time & flexibility, for instance I know that my local greengrocers has great variety on some things, but tomatoes they pretty much only ever stock roma or the standard hot house style up until the end of summer when they'll have canning tomatoes. But, if I had time and really wanted the variety I could go to the farmer's market for that, though it wouldn't be cheaper.

For me (DINK) I have the privilege of being able to prioritise buying variety when I choose to as well - which i'm well aware is not something most people can do where prioritising energy & nutrition is much more of a factor.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Seymour and the Actolytes have come out on the side of the Supermarket cartel.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/focusonpolitics/527289/act-pledges-pushback-on-supermarket-crackdown

We've been here & done this before. Spark & Chorus exist because the government split Telecom. So i'd guess you split the production / distribution arms off both Woolworths & Foodstuff then require them to sell to anybody at the same terms. Then other retail outlets can purchase competitively and compete with the independently owned New Worlds or corporate owned Woolworths.

And if those two retail arms can get better terms from their former opposition then that could force the centralised aspects of those businesses to improve terms too. But also if the retail side can buy from anybody, then additional distribution / production companies would have additional customers to sell to as well.

All extremely hypothetical of course, and to a degree given the importance of supermarkets providing essential food services to humans I would expect any government moves to be fairly cautious and err on the status quo.

Of course, given how critical supermarkets are to the smooth functioning of our modern societies, maybe we shouldn't leave them to the benefit of private capital and be run with a profiteering motive at all.

I'm in a smaller city, so could just be luck with the stores I have available. But also i'm thinking of the balance between price & quality too I guess. Definitely the bigger your urban area the more options will be available though. The Supermarket chains have over the years put local greengrocers and butcheries out of business in the smaller areas.

Oh that's a good point, the local Warehouse is right next door to a Mitre 10 though, so could be dangerous if I accidentally walk down the wrong aisle.

Actually speaking of - Mitre10 have a good range of the usual cleaning stuff too.

For everyone that has the time and flexibility, cut Supermarkets out of your life as much as you can.

• Meat - find a local butcher, you'll usually get better quality for about the same price and can usually get exactly how much you want, need, rather than prepackaged.
• Veg - find a local greengrocer, you'll usually get visually lower quality but much cheaper and often a greater variety of things (yes, there's more than 2 types of potato).
• Seafood - fishmongers will have a greater variety, and it'll probably be fresher, might be about the same price
• For dry goods - this is where it starts to get harder, and i'll have to break things down more:
• • Asian grocery stores will cover you well for rice, noodles, and all the usual sauces etc - often cheaper than the Supermarket, always with far more varieties. You might be surprised at the sorts of things they'll stock in their canned & frozen sections too.
• • Mediterranean grocery stores can get you things like flour, pasta, olives etc, but you'll find some stuff can be way cheaper, other stuff way more expensive.
• • Bulk dry goods can be found at places like Bin Inn if you have one near you.
• • Wholesale/Commercial - pretty common now for Gilmours, Starfoods etc to be open to normal public shoppers as well.

If i'm organised and plan ahead I can substitute my time and a bit of driving for the convenience of the Supermarket and usually save money doing so. Most of the time the Supermarket is basically just the bread, cleaning products & toilet paper shop.

I put a passively cooled GT1030 in mine and its doing the decoding & tensorrt detection for 4x 1080p cameras just fine, based on its current load I expect I could add another 4.

I couldn't tell you if that specific Amcrest camera will work, but I have 2 of the recommended ones on the frigate docs (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B083G9KT4C/) and they work.

The full vid was from this fella live streaming planes for hours:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mYAEcZlLX0&t=13586s

Yeah, and if well designed it potentially is an investment like electrifying steel furnaces. Anything we do that has a big impact on reducing emissions is likely a good thing.

There's two ways to achieve it; re-introduce the legislation (I think) from prior to the 80s that limited the maximum distance freight could be transported on road. If I recall some documentaries i've watched correctly it was removing this restriction that made road transport competitive with rail in the first place and precipitated the decline of TranzRail.

Or, as you say, charge all forms of transport the full cost of provisioning it which would immediately make road transport very expensive. The problem is that would probably cause an immediate inflation bump as a mode change like that really needs careful panning and transition.

Oh yeah duh, probably aren't any modern Utes that are petrol nowadays - though i'd guess some medium-large SUVs probably still are.

The damage thing is mad huh - which is why the way RUCs are charged on heavy freight is (last time I looked anyway) such a heavy subsidy to that industry.

Here's the thing. Freight transport is obviously important to the country's economic activity, so i'm actually OK with some form of public funding for road freight.

But I also think the heaviest freight would be better off the roads altogether and that in an ideal world long distance freight would also not be transported the length of the country. This could make roads safer, cheaper to build and reduce emissions by using more efficient vehicles.

Now, that implies that yes, low RUCs on heavy trucks is a problem, but its a multi-faceted one and the problem is that our current government's transport strategy just roads roads roads.

True, fuel efficiency meaning less petrol consumed & lower tax take is an aspect i'd not considered. Has that trend continued since the EV subsidy was canned? I'd expect the uptake of EVs was counterbalancing the fuel inefficiency of the ever larger Ute, and without a subsidy the EV sales dropped.

In any case, part of the massively increased cost in road construction is due to having to build roads that can safely take the weight of the trucks getting larger since the National legislation changes in 2014; those heavier trucks travelling faster is also part of the reason why there are more pot holes. Yet the operators that have gotten extremely wealthy have never had to pay their way to use the roads. Unlike the various rail / coastal shipping operators who could transport far more freight far more efficiently (if less time flexibly).

If heavy road freight paid RUCs more in line with the damage they do to the roads, then sure, but given their lobby paid for the National government that's not going to happen.

For people living paycheck to paycheck RUCs are a bill shock proposition so will mean many of them fall behind and inevitably start getting fined and dragged into the court system. The huge advantage of fuel tax is that its easier to administer, easier to enforce and far easier to pay as its just as you go.

That's the magic of neo-liberal economic theory. Its not just pretending that humans are rational actors; its a pretense that almost assumes that all the current humans and their future offspring can just not exist. The same thinking is behind the AI will replace my workers brain-rot.

You can't just take healthcare away, same as you can't just take jobs away. You still have a bunch of people who need healthcare, and need work.

This is a direct result of under-funding the health service in order to trash it to make NZ more amenable to privatisation of health.

Yes, National did increase the allocation in the current budget but using Treasury's numbers instead of Health's resulted in a 3% decrease in funding per head of population.

Underfunding like that when we have an aging population is immensely stupid, but the wealthier, older white people will be ok, its the poor, working class that are going to suffer.

Difficult time to find work, but the people I know, morale is low & they're increasingly being asked to follow questionable processes or implement things that are hard to tolerate let alone agree with.

Do Foodstuffs run the stores as separate entities to their distribution and production arms? Because figuring out the supermarket company profits is a very complicated thing. A store might only make $1m a year, but if it has to buy from the parent distributor then we also need to figure out what the profit is there as well.

Just to jump in here, residential solar makes a lot of sense for natural disaster resiliency. Your system would need to be sized to cover your bases in winter, but NZers should expect to experience days without power in a future where more Cyclone Gabrielle’s will occur. That’s why adding battery storage is a key part of it too.