• WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, those behemoths all share responsibility for killing the mom and pop stores. It’s not impossible to shop around to local variants. But probably the best solution is to learn how to kick the habit that American culture has foisted upon us all of buying endless piles of useless crap.

    I cancelled my prime subscription years ago. I occassionally restart it for a month at a time if I need some esoteric hobby thing and I would be forced into paying for shipping or for prime. Then I’ll watch some stuff on their streaming service. Last time I used it, it was awful. Half of the shows were gatekept behind some ad system. And the “Amazon Originals” are all just extraordinarily expensive shows with terrible writing. Uhg. I am making it a point to not have an active prime subscription when Christmas rolls around. We (the collective we, as in, humanity) don’t need more garbage.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Thats a lot of words to ignore the comment you’re replying to.

      All those stores sell neccessities as well as junk, so distilling it down to simply not buying junk is reductive and dismissive. If someone needs clothes and Walmart and Target are the only places available, are they supposed to go nude? Additionally, you’re literally ignoring that they said that there are not local options available to them.

      Nome of what you said is particularly untrue, it’s just completely ignoring the comment you replied to.

      • Prophet Zarquon@startrek.website
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, where my Mom lives, the food options are:

        • Walmart
        • An erratically pricey local grocery, that rents its building (which has a leaky roof, requiring them to move product when it rains)
        • Dollar General
        • A farmer’s market that’s open once a week for a few hours before the afternoon heat, a few months a year, if no events have pre-empted it, having an inventory of which about 30% is bulk-bought supermarket produce with the labels (sometimes) removed
        • A 90 minute drive; no trains, no buses (literally, no buses) to the next largest town

        And she lives in a town people drive to, to get food, clothes, medicine, etc.

        She gets as much as she can from the local grocer, for whatever that’s worth; the inventory is frequently poor, & about on-par with Dollar General so far as brand-representation, goes. When tourists ask if the store has something, they get pointed to Walmart.