Saturday, May 28, 2011
Dollar Store Nation
What the success of the dollar store says about the American economy
Greg Beato | May 26, 2011 posted on Reason.Com
In 1868, a new kind of store opened at 669 Broadway in New York City and immediately captured the city’s attention. Immense, staffed with attractive young women, it featured silver-plated cake baskets, heavy-plated tablespoons, silk parasols, solid black walnut hat racks, pearl-handled knives—“pretty much everything,” theNew York Sun marveled at the time, and yet whatever one ended up choosing from this great cavalcade of merchandise always cost the same. The enterprise’s name doubled as its universal price tag: It was called The Dollar Store.
Nearly a century and a half later, the novelty of the dollar store, the sense of wonder that attends to how many different ways a few cents worth of raw materials can be processed, packaged, shipped, and sold for a buck, still beguiles us. Earlier this year, the Tennessee-based chain Dollar General exclaimed it has “more retail locations than any retailer in America”—9372 at last count—and is planning to add 625 more in fiscal 2011. Approximately 6700Family Dollar stores now blanket the U.S., and it’s opening new ones at a pace of more than one a day.Dollar Tree opened its 4,000th store in October 2010 and recorded a 12.4 percent increase in sales throughout the year.
Fifteen years ago, there were fewer than 6000 dollar stores in the U.S. Typically, they’ve been cast as capitalism’s consolation prizes, shabby oases of post-modern barbecue sauce and dangerously overachieving candle sets that have sprung up in the sort of retail deserts where even Walmart won’t take root, and their rise is attributed to economic hardship and the need to stretch every penny like a hot wad of Silly Putty. And no doubt value has always been the cornerstone of these retailers—in 1871, when a dollar price point did not yet automatically signify an extreme discount, a New York Timesadvertisement for the city’s original Dollar Store boasts that it is “selling goods for at least one-half what they can be purchased for elsewhere.”
But as dollar stores attract more upscale consumers—Time reports that Dollar General’s “fastest-growing customer segment is households making more
than $70,000”—it also becomes more obvious that consumers shop at these stores not just for utilitarian reasons but also because of how shrewdly they cater to current lifestyles and sensibilities.
In a June 2011 feature for Wired, James Surowiecki writes about how online auctions, widely heralded as the future of retailing just 10 years ago, aren’t even that popular at Ebay anymore. Dynamic pricing was supposed to make consumption more efficient, but we spend time as well as money when we’re shopping, and even in the midst of the recession, time is often the scarcest resource of all. “Why go through an entire auction in order to arrive at nearly the same price you could have set before it started?” Surowiecki writes. In another instance, he quotes Harvard business historian Nancy Koehn: “Does it make sense to spend this much time on an auction when I might not even get the item in the end?”
Friday, May 27, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Rand Paul on the Senate Floor
There’s been a lot of discussion of the PATRIOT Act, and we’re told basically we wouldn’t be able to capture these terrorists if we didn’t give up some of our liberties; if we didn’t give up some of the Fourth Amendment and allow it to be easier for the police to come into our homes.
We were so frightened after 9/11 that we readily gave up these freedoms.
We said, well, the Fourth Amendment is not that important. We’ll just let the government look at all of our records and we’ll make it easier for the government to look at our records.
The question you have to ask, though, is whether or not we would still be able to catch terrorists by using the Fourth Amendment as it was intended, and having the protections of the Fourth Amendment.
What you have to ask yourself is think about the worst person in your community. Think about someone accused of murder or rape or a pedophile.
You think of these people; do you know what happens if someone is accused of that?
Even if it’s 3:00 in the morning and they want to get their records or they want to go into their house, they call a judge. This is something very important.
Rand Paul....
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| U.S. Senator Rand Paul |
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Patriot Act Up for Renewal - Time to do Away With It
Our current version is the Patriot Act, which was excessive from the start in its allowance for government agencies to override the rights and of citizens in the name of protecting them from foreign terrorists. (Of course, we can’t be trusted to carry weapons to defend OURSELVES from such terrorists in the rare cases where we might encounter them but we must trust government agents to go through our personal information and communications (including financial), and even physically search us and our belongings to keep us safe as citizens.) To me this is to devalue the nature of citizenship.
I ‘m told that the Patriot Act comes up for renewal and/or extension over Memorial Day. I can hardly imagine a more appropriate holiday for doing away with this un-American act as a step toward returning us to the freedom, independence, and self-reliance that have defined us as Americans since the country’s founding.
Sincerely,
Dr. Richard J. Davis
(Dr. Davis was the Maryland Libertarian Party's
Monday, May 16, 2011
Why Be Libertarian?
Why be libertarian, anyway? By this we mean, what's the point of the whole thing? Why engage in a deep and lifelong commitment to the principle and the goal of individual liberty? For such a commitment, in our largely unfree world, means inevitably a radical disagreement with, and alienation from, the status quo, an alienation which equally inevitably imposes many sacrifices in money and prestige. When life is short and the moment of victory far in the future, why go through all this?
Incredibly, we have found among the increasing number of libertarians in this country many people who come to a libertarian commitment from one or another extremely narrow and personal point of view. Many are irresistibly attracted to liberty as an intellectual system or as an aesthetic goal, but liberty remains for them a purely intellectual parlor game, totally divorced from what they consider the "real" activities of their daily lives. Others are motivated to remain libertarians solely from their anticipation of their own personal financial profit. Realizing that a free market would provide far greater opportunities for able, independent men to reap entrepreneurial profits, they become and remain libertarians solely to find larger opportunities for business profit. While it is true that opportunities for profit will be far greater and more widespread in a free market and a free society, placing one's primary emphasis on this motivation for being a libertarian can only be considered grotesque. For in the often tortuous, difficult and grueling path that must be trod before liberty can be achieved, the libertarian's opportunities for personal profit will far more often be negative than abundant.
The consequence of the narrow and myopic vision of both the gamester and the would-be profit maker is that neither group has the slightest interest in the work of building a libertarian movement. And yet it is only through building such a movement that liberty may ultimately be achieved. Ideas, and especially radical ideas, do not advance in the world in and by themselves, as it were in a vacuum; they can only be advanced by people and, therefore, the development and advancement of such people – and therefore of a "movement" – becomes a prime task for the libertarian who is really serious about advancing his goals.
Turning from these men of narrow vision, we must also see that utilitarianism – the common ground of free-market economists – is unsatisfactory for developing a flourishing libertarian movement. While it is true and valuable to know that a free market would bring far greater abundance and a healthier economy to everyone, rich and poor alike, a critical problem is whether this knowledge is enough to bring many people to a lifelong dedication to liberty.
The Google Pharm Case
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
The American pharmaceutical system is a highly controlled apparatus for restricting access to much-needed drugs and violating the rights of those who want to purchase them. This has long been true.
Vast amounts of drugs that people should be permitted to purchase of their own free will are withheld from the market (of course, many others are outlawed). Instead, people who know what they need are forced first to fork over their money to a physician – who then gets overpaid by insurance – then part of the buck is passed to the over-trained checkout clerks at the pharmacy. We are all treated like babies in order to sustain and fund an industry filled with bamboozlers in white coats.
The Internet in its early days (perhaps 1998 to 2008) represented a wonderful alternative to this apparatus. Suppliers all over the world popped up to give us what we wanted, bypassing the whole cage of government regulations and private monopolists who rule them like prison wardens. You know what you need, so just click and buy it!
So the pharmaceutical industry solicited the help of government. Together, they worked to crack down on "counterfeit" medicines – meaning the real thing that bypasses patent restrictions and supplier monopolies. In their view, people must not be allowed to get prescription medications without doctor approval – else an entire fake industry could collapse. So they bandied together and instituted a medieval guild system for the digital age.
Over the years, Google has accepted some advertising from some of these so-called rogue elements. In a free market, they would be perfectly legitimate advertisers. Google makes no guarantee of the exact nature of the goods and services of all those who choose to advertise on its network. It has some degree of interest in quality control, of course, but if the customers are buying and happy, what could be the problem?
Well, the medical cartel, of course, and it asked for the Justice Department to intervene. As for this writing, Google is assuming that it is going to be in hot water very soon. Its recent report to stockholders says that it has put half a billion dollars in escrow to deal with the Justice Department investigation. The presumption here is that Google is going to be held liable for permitting ads to run from market-based drug sellers.
The American pharmaceutical system is a highly controlled apparatus for restricting access to much-needed drugs and violating the rights of those who want to purchase them. This has long been true.
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| Lew Rockwell |
The Internet in its early days (perhaps 1998 to 2008) represented a wonderful alternative to this apparatus. Suppliers all over the world popped up to give us what we wanted, bypassing the whole cage of government regulations and private monopolists who rule them like prison wardens. You know what you need, so just click and buy it!
So the pharmaceutical industry solicited the help of government. Together, they worked to crack down on "counterfeit" medicines – meaning the real thing that bypasses patent restrictions and supplier monopolies. In their view, people must not be allowed to get prescription medications without doctor approval – else an entire fake industry could collapse. So they bandied together and instituted a medieval guild system for the digital age.
Over the years, Google has accepted some advertising from some of these so-called rogue elements. In a free market, they would be perfectly legitimate advertisers. Google makes no guarantee of the exact nature of the goods and services of all those who choose to advertise on its network. It has some degree of interest in quality control, of course, but if the customers are buying and happy, what could be the problem?
Well, the medical cartel, of course, and it asked for the Justice Department to intervene. As for this writing, Google is assuming that it is going to be in hot water very soon. Its recent report to stockholders says that it has put half a billion dollars in escrow to deal with the Justice Department investigation. The presumption here is that Google is going to be held liable for permitting ads to run from market-based drug sellers.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Equality
A society that puts equality … ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.
Milton Friedman
Friday, May 13, 2011
Thoughts from Jimmy Fallon
"New York just passed a law that allows same-sex conjugal visits for prisoners. Isn’t that pretty much what prison is?"
Jimmy Fallon
Federalism
Federalism is not when the central government graciously allows the states to do this or that. That is just another form of administration. True federalism is when the people of the states set limits to the central government. Fundamentally, federalism means states rights. The cause of states rights is the cause of liberty. They rise or fall together.
Clyde C. Wilson
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Von Mises
Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments … Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils.? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs.
Von Mises, Human Action
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Thoughts from Jimmy Fallon
"Hillary Clinton said that watching the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound was '38 of the most intense minutes.' Which can only mean one thing: she's never had to assemble a chair from Ikea."
Jimmy Fallon
Taxes
In levying taxes and in shearing sheep, it is well to stop when you get down to the skin.
Austin O'Malley
What Would Jesus Cut?
by Shawn Ritenour
That is the question asked by the left-leaning Christian organization, Sojourners, in its campaign of the same name. Sojourners claims that, despite record budget deficits and national debt, reducing subsidies for things like vaccines and bed nets in Africa, school lunch programs, early childhood education, and income maintenance in the United States is immoral. Indeed, such subsidies, Sojourners says, “are dollars we can’t afford to not invest.”
What are we to make of these claims? Certainly we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves and this love, when directed toward the poor and needy, must manifest itself by providing real material help to those who truly need it. It is not enough merely to wish a suffering soul to be warm and well fed. We must be willing to put our money where our mouth is.
It is a mistake, however, to treat as materially poor those who merely have lower incomes than others. For example, the average officially “poor” American has more living space than the average person living in Paris or London. Sixty-two percent of officially poor American homes have satellite or cable television and nearly 75 percent own an automobile. In the United States, what passes for poor certainly does not imply destitution.
Most important, we need to remember that the ends never justify the means, especially for the Christian. Good intentions are never enough to establish an action’s ethical validity. Scripture not only ordains ends we are called to pursue; it also guides us regarding the means that are acceptable to use in achieving those ends.
We should keep these principles in mind when considering Sojourners’ campaign. The campaign correctly notes that societal righteousness is not measured by GDP or military spending; also one of the good works demonstrated by righteous people is charity to the poor. This is all true.
Sobran
"Need" now means wanting someone else's money. "Greed" means wanting to keep your own. "Compassion" is when a politician arranges the transfer.
Joseph Sobran, columnist.
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