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TheYoungHorn

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Everything posted by TheYoungHorn

  1. Gunpowder. Paper. Printing. THE FREAKING COMPASS
  2. Hahaha. You caught me. The most CaucASIAN person you might ever meet. Pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes.
  3. Did I miss the part where y'all talked about China's history of invention and perfecting techniques that spread across the globe and became standards even in pre-modern times. For example: the white dishes your mom and grandma called "china." The literal whole field of porcelain is named after them for a reason, and it isn't because they made crappy, ripped off products.
  4. Because they aren't doing the same thing. In reality, if you understand their business model and culture you could see that Walmart won (ie, killed off independent retailers) in an age of scarcity, where controlling supply was the key to success. As a result, their ruthless and penny-penching culture made them the best at a certain game (lower prices as the result of true globalization and commodification of every possible thing Americans would want to buy) by specifically focusing on and optimizing for scale (both in the store and diversity of SKUs and in their footprint) and making every thing else a process that could operate at the least-common denominator, thus allowing them to treat their employees as just another replaceable cog in a humming machine. This is the same world that made newspaper publishers the richest people in their communities, and often in the world. We now live in a world where the power does not lie in controlling supply, but in being the source of aggregated DEMAND. So just as a newspaper can't charge a king's ransom to sell a local business an ad, the only real way to reach the audience at scale in his market, Walmart can't (or maybe can't) be as ruthless in squeezing their suppliers to death, exploiting globalization and have a customer-agnostic culture and just expect to "win" because they are either (or both) cheaper and more convenient than another retailer. To get your product in Walmart's stores might take years, massive capital investments to scale up your production, and more, only to see your business get squeezed at every possible turn. But now you can launch a new product on Amazon, with theoretically a larger reach than even WMT ever had, in minutes and scale as your sales scale. Because Amazon is increasingly driving demand in all online commerce, they are also growing a marketplace where any retailer can reach the world's (or at least the affluent customers of the US), and all they have to do is pay them a small percentage of what they sell in exchange. Amazon is not really interested in cutting costs just to spite their customers, as they want to continue to drive more and more of the demand, while forcing suppliers to come on their platform to sell, and thus reap a small "tax" on every retail transaction. There is no limit on shelf space at AMZN, much less a limit on departments, and with aggregated demand even the most niche players can find the very specific market they are looking for and build a successful business.
  5. Honestly, Walmart has still had a much larger impact on killing out the old retailers (department stores and regional grocers pre-Big-Box era) and big box competitors than AMZN. As mentioned previously, eCommerce hasn't even crossed the 10% mark of US retail sales, where WMT is still the dominant player. Brick and Mortar is far from dead. Mom and pops, and small boutique retail is on a massive rebound in affluent markets (the same markets AMZN is growing to own) and will continue to grow there. Play this out and you'll literally have some weird post-retail-apocalypse scenarios where thriving cities like Austin have tons and tons of independent retailers thriving alongside a humming AMZN powered infrastructure to move the stuff around and sell the commodity stuff and you'll have the rest of the country with only one choice to buy everything--Walmart. If you think lack of innovative jobs is exacerbating brain drain on rural America, wait until the cultural/amenity gap becomes even more pronounced.
  6. Actually, bikes/walking can become more viable for commuters should a city provide for real, sufficient density. It's just another odd disconnect with the NIMBY/NC folks who run this place, they could enact real change toward making the area less sprawly, less car-dependent, less carbon emitting, less, less, less... All the things they say they care the most about, but it would require massive changes in land use.
  7. Great, great great patio. Very strong chips and salsa. Makes their own fresh flour tortillas, which is saying something in this hell hole of a flour tortilla town. Free rainbow sherbet after your meal, to cleanse your pallet from the grease and spice, as it should be at an old-school Tex-Mex joint.
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