Tom Doak asks and states:
Can I ask why you need to buy golf balls downtown when you are not getting ready to play golf?
The purpose of big box stores is to destroy the small guys, so they can then raise prices with no competition. The end stage of the "free market" is not "efficient pricing" but monopoly. Mike is advocating for some sort of limit on the free market.
To your question, the better ask is why should the public municipal less-than-expert golfer be limited to buying Titleists or Taylor-Made balls at full-retail green grass shops when they prefer to buy discounted Pinnacles, Top-Flites or Kirklands that produce less angst when disappearing into the nearby pond or adjacent woods?
Ask the golfer living in Suffolk or Westchester Counties if they can either walk into Sebonack or Metropolis and buy whatever golf products they want.....especially if their tee time is at Montauk Downs or Maple Moor? What about the guy who wants to buy lower-cost, or even used, clubs for a beginning junior or spouse? Mike Young is entitled to advocate for green grass retailers over discount stores, but that point was effectively moot almost a decade ago.
The bulk of your statement about the purpose of big box stores is similarly presumptuous and uninformed. You won't find the likes of Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, Ikea, Costco or Babies R'Us (and dozens of others) seeking to "raise prices with no competition." Ask the executives of these companies if they expect to raise their prices anytime soon? Most, if not all, would tell you they only wish they could, but won't be able to so long as they wish to remain competitively attractive to their customer base.
Surely, the purchasing and specific locational efficiencies afforded big box stores make for advantageous economics. Certainly each and every retailer in every terrestrial market or product space desires domination at whatever level they can maintain, yet believing that they are on the path to a "free market end stage.... monopoly" is both false and silly.
Amazon or Wal-Mart might well be seeking monopolies on various markets, but they only approach that kind of exclusivity when they maintain the lowest cost--highest convenience offering to the consumer. Until then, they face reasonable and consistent competition from terrestrial big boxes as well as a wide variety of other specialty product sellers.
A great example of the fallacy of your argument would be the historic demise of department stores. In the areas of clothing, shoes, cosmetics and furniture they traditionally dominated, most tried the route of creating local monopolies and eventually raising prices. Where are they now? Practically extinct would be a fair assessment.
Your post nicely sums up my feelings, although I admit I am no economics expert. I agree the trend towards larger stores vs. mom and pops has existed in every field, including the corner store now being a 7-11. While I sympathize with the small, local, non brand name businesses (since, essentially I am one) I see the reasons why business is going the way it has. And, as someone pointed out, this thread would have been more relevant 20 years ago, as it's no longer big box vs small, it's internet vs retail stores, everywhere. (Once again, Mike is bitching about a situation that has long past gone away, like one sentence in an ASGCA document that suggests hiring ASGCA members, but was only in there 20 years ago, but that's him and just his way!
[size=78%]) [/size][/size]I also don't get why (from his posts here and on FB) a free market Republican like him so often argues against free trade?
I also don't get the "getting ready to play" comments from TD. Who says golfers need to wait until the last minute to buy what they need? Day of golf takes long enough as it is, I can see wanting to get out of the car and head to the first tee with as little hassle as possible. He and I can agree that at some point, the govt. can and should protect free trade. The argument has always been just how much is necessary, and do you wait until someone is close to monopolizing a market, and/or how far in advance can you pre-emptively intervene.
And, basically, I tend to believe most things happen as they inevitably should, not that everything and everyone is just all messed up and in need of me to straighten them out.
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