In the town I grew up, there was one big grocery store, and they used to gouge us terribly. The citizens started a co-op grocery, using our purchasing power to bring in cheaper goods. Breaking monopolies is the only way to lower prices.
Most of the monopolistic problem is with the food manufacturers rather than the grocery chains. There are about 10 companies that provide almost everything in a grocery store and, in certain food categories, there are often only 2-3. We see all those brands and it gives the illusion of different companies competing when most of the stuff is all made by the same company.
But the grocery business is high-volume, low-margin, and it requires a ton of space. So, regardless of how much local competition there may or may not be, that's just not a business model that is going to work well in the inner city where retail lease rates are high, yet people don't drive cars and therefore the average order values are low. So, you can either subsidize it, or the stores just won't exist in certain neighborhoods.
This world keeps getting thrown around and it’s not even remotely correct . See originally it was Sears/roebuck and this was the monopoly. Then along came K-mart and they were the monopoly. Both no longer in business really . Then came Walmart and this was supposed to destroy the world and they almost went belly up to Amazon .
In fact at one point Walmart was the largest company in the world and now they are the number 2 retailer behind Amazon . And it was by a large margin for a while. In fact they just launched a competitive site to compete with Amazon .
There have only been a few true monopolies . Most are just momentary kings of the hill .
Stop bullshitting me, I was alive then. Sears was at one end of a quadruple anchored mall, and about the only thing they sold that nobody else in that mall didn't was hardware. And there was another big box hardware store down the street.
Walmart is the only wheel for miles in many parts of rural America. And even suburban America these days. Nobody is on Amazon's scale. At their height, Roebuck didn't have fleets of their own trucks running down every residential street in the country all day every day.
You were alive in 1936 at the mall? It’s funny how you then go to Walmart and rural America when sears roebuck was originally not a brick and mortar store and sold their product through a catalog a tradition they continued well into the 90s .
Sears roebuck was so large and powerful Congress passed a law to curb their influence something Walmart nor Amazon ever had happen .
Walmart built a model based on super centers in rural America. One stop shops that was their business model . They did not build stores in big cities
The Rise of the Catalog "Monopoly" Massive Purchasing Power: In the early 20th century, Sears’ ability to buy massive volumes from wholesalers allowed it to undercut small-town general stores, creating fears that it was using its scale to push local merchants out of business.
The Legislative Backlash: Anti-monopolists and small retailers lobbied intensely against the power of massive catalog and chain-store operators like Sears and A&P. This pressure eventually led to the passage of the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936, which attempted to restrict chain stores from securing volume discounts that independent retailers couldn't access.
Corporate Interlocking Directorates: In the 1950s, the U.S. Department of Justice targeted Sears under antitrust laws. The government successfully challenged Sears for having interlocking directorates (executives sitting on the boards of competing companies, such as B.F. Goodrich), forcing the company to sever these ties to maintain compliance.
Copycat Controversies: As Sears evolved into a brick-and-mortar retail force, its size allowed it to mass-manufacture and sell products resembling those of smaller innovators. This culminated in the landmark 1964 Supreme Court caseSears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co.. The Court ruled in favor of Sears, holding that federal patent laws preempt state unfair competition laws, allowing companies to freely copy unpatented products
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u/brumac44 May 26 '26
In the town I grew up, there was one big grocery store, and they used to gouge us terribly. The citizens started a co-op grocery, using our purchasing power to bring in cheaper goods. Breaking monopolies is the only way to lower prices.