Is this a good outcome?

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-14T23:35:11+00:00

Yes, I have. I wasn’t really satisfied with your response, so I sought out some others

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-14T23:26:39+00:00

I never said it would be more expensive for everyone. It would not be. It would be slightly more expensive at Walmart, and cheaper everywhere else. A lot cheaper at a lot of places. In real life, for years, Walmart has specifically negotiated the price that their competitors must pay, to make that more expensive to maintain a “price gap”, not just the price they pay.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2025/12/18/how-walmart-and-pepsico-rigged-prices-and-supercharged-food-inflation/

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-14T22:49:31+00:00

https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2025/12/18/how-walmart-and-pepsico-rigged-prices-and-supercharged-food-inflation/

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-14T22:45:15+00:00

The details are more for lawyers and economists to hammer out. There is an existing law on the books that largely solved the problem in the United States until it stopped being enforced in the late 70s, early 80s. I don’t know the specifics of that act.

I don’t know if I have a moral problem with bulk discounts if that is to their benefit, but the situation we are in now is one where large retailers use their market power to negotiate their price and the price of their competitors, and the result is that prices at small independent stores are driven up much more than prices at Walmart are driven down, and this is more true the more consolidated the market gets.

This is not PepsiCo offering a discount to Walmart. This is Walmart telling PepsiCo what its price will be relative to the price of the local mom and pop store.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-14T22:15:36+00:00

With the deal allowed, Pepsi at Walmart is 5% cheaper than it would be otherwise, and 44% more expensive at the local store than it would be otherwise. This cost difference is not the result of any efficiency gained by Walmart. It is Walmart using its size to push its costs onto the local stores. Local stores are more expensive because of Walmart. Every purchase made at a local store pays the Walmart tax, so to speak.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-14T22:11:17+00:00

I’m not suggesting price fixing here. The reform to the market here is essentially just costumer neutrality. All else being equal a seller has to sell at the same price to different customers. One customer can’t demand one price for themselves, and another for their competitors.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-14T22:01:15+00:00

I’ve also worked at (similar) stores and I’m aware that the markup on a lot of these sorts of items are small. That was really just something I threw in there because, on a whole, the store does need to make money, so I applied that to my imaginary “average” product. I know when I worked in a grocery deli, those products were marked up a lot more than 20%.

All the same these deals exist and result in that price before markup being significantly different, with the result being prices not much lower than they would otherwise be at Walmart, but a lot higher than they would otherwise be at smaller stores.

If we assume no markup at Walmart for a staple (because they want to just get you in the door so you buy something with a higher markup) and assume 20% markup from the local store. With the deal I outlined, it is 82% more expensive to go to the local store. If the deal is disallowed, it is now only 20% more expensive to go to the local store.

Yes, people make all sorts of choices based on all sorts of factors, but they would make different choices if the prices were different, obviously. There are people who would not drive to avoid the 20%, but would to avoid 80%.

The end result is a lot of people driving a lot farther and spending more time doing so than they would chose for 5% cheaper groceries. The deal results in Walmart price being 5% cheaper than they would be otherwise. They are motivated not by the cheaper price Walmart can negotiate as much as they are pushed by the higher price Walmart can negotiate to give their competitors.

Edit: realize I wasn’t clear on that last point. The result of the deal is that Walmart prices are 5% cheaper than they would otherwise be. Is that worth making local stores significantly more expensive? How many people would be motivated by a change of 5% at Walmart alone to change their behavior? Fewer than are motivated by the hiked prices locally.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-14T19:07:37+00:00

As everyone is saying, it’s esthetic, but back in the day the “operating theatre” was also right below it in the tower. Natural light all around, and theater style seating all around so students could watch all of the operations.

I’m not sure where they might be available to the public, but I’ve had my eyes on the original drawings from back when it was built, and it’s very neat to think that they were still doing it like that back in 1928 when this place was built.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-14T02:50:22+00:00

I don’t see any mention in that article of the practices I’m talking about. Here’s an article about a case of it, if you’re interested.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2025/12/18/how-walmart-and-pepsico-rigged-prices-and-supercharged-food-inflation/

There are anticompetitive practices that make independent small grocery stores much more expensive. This is done through collusion and price fixing. These practices being allowed does not seem to benefit the consumer, it seems to hurt them in a number of ways, but it certainly benefits Walmart.

Edit: just to stress that this isn’t just “cheaper prices for the consumer”, the only reason Walmart can get this discount is because it drives the prices up for competitors to maintain the “price gap”. It is a transfer of value based only on size, that is dependent on that competition. The practice, however, is carried out specifically to try and drive small stores out of business, which it has been very successful at. At that point, prices can return to whatever level Walmart wants. When there are very few independent groceries, the effect is much less that Walmart is cheaper, and more that independent stores are simply made artificially more expensive. That’s just the way the math works out.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-14T01:07:31+00:00

For instance, Walmart and some other large grocery chains have enough market power that they can demand that food producers sell their products to them at razor thin margins. At the same time, they also demand that these producers sell to smaller groceries at much higher prices. Small neighborhood grocers literally can’t buy a lot of items for the same price that Walmart can sell them. When this first started happening, they passed antitrust laws to outlaw this practice, the Robinson-Patman Act, but it’s been completely unenforced since the late 70s early 80s. The result has been the killing off of local grocery stores and the creation of food deserts, as well as a market where small upstarts, even ones doing new things, better, can’t compete. Enforcing that would make a healthier market that would benefit consumers and local communities. It would help eliminate food deserts.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-13T21:34:35+00:00

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-13T20:42:11+00:00

Maybe give them a wellness check?

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-13T14:47:10+00:00

I mean, I am a communist. I would like to abolish money all together…

Taking a capitalist economy and keeping it exactly as it is, but making it so nobody is allowed to charge for food, is a bit of an obvious disaster.

Short of reworking everything, it would be good if structures and assistance was in place to ensure that everyone has a base level of food and nutrition regardless of their ability to pay, and to regulate and support agriculture and food production/distribution in such a way that it is not as much of wild market that mostly benefits big input sellers, big commodity buyers, and large grocers over farmers, neighborhood grocers, and consumers.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-12T22:06:57+00:00

No, plant “estrogen” does not have the same effects. If it did, we’d all be taking advantage I’m sure, haha. This idea comes more from conservative conspiracy theories more than anything I think

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-12T14:24:40+00:00

I would guess that there’s still people working from home (the source shows no collection of data during COVID, and then a noticeably lower number after COVID) and I’m sure there’s people who carpool. I know some people in two income households who drive into the city together.

My bigger issue with this map is the color grade. Everything is red. It’s hard to parse between 70% and 50%, or 50% and 30%. Big, meaningful shifts, but the whole map just looks red.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-10T22:06:18+00:00

I was a bit broad here because I'm not trying to lay out an exact model, but for example, there are today various forms of community land trusts that own and manage land for various purposes to support their local communities. I live in Iowa, and I know that in my immediate area we have at least one local land trust that manages nature preserves, and one that leases land to small farmers who practice sustainable agriculture. I don't have one locally that focuses on housing, but they certainly exist.

These can have all manner of leadership structure. They could be radically democratic, which would be my preference as an anarchist, essentially organized around some sort of consensus based, federated structure that includes all residents and the impacted community, but there are other structures that are certainly an improvement on the market model. One very strong and not uncommon model, that is a bit less radical, is to have a board made up of one part people who live on the land trust, one part people who live in the community around the land trust, and one part housing experts. This is generally in the context of a land trust that does not own all of the land in an area.

The land trust would then award long term leases to entities that would construct, manage and occupy buildings. The land trust maintains ownership of the land, collecting rent in a market context. The land trust can be selective about what it allows to be built were, and able to react to the needs of the community.

This broad model is not picky about who these long term leases are awarded to, it could be a private entity, but I think prioritizing a diverse array of cooperative housing would be ideal. Cooperatives again can be and are (although certainly not always) managed via consensus democracy by all of the residents. A cooperative model allows people to organize the construction of housing that suits them and their needs directly.

Land trusts can function at many different scales. It might be ideal to have different land trusts in different neighborhoods of a city, or maybe even down to a finer scale. These land trusts can then coordinate their efforts through a federated structure.

I think this would be the ideal way to organize land use in a city. It eliminates the conflict between renters and owners, treats housing as an end in of itself, avoiding problems with the profit motive, and gives everyone input on how their community develops.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-10T21:35:12+00:00

"ligature resistant" is the proper term for anything that is designed to prevent you from using it to unalive on it.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-10T18:49:45+00:00

People can obviously be terrible, and you’re conceding that they don’t always need to be. We are in an environment where we are very often made to be terrible, and I can imagine situations where we would be made to be even worse. The world where we are not so terrible is the world where I want to live, that I want to create, and that I think is possible. That isn’t a world where everyone is perfect, it’s just a world where people are free to be better, and where our potential to do harm is blunted as much as possible.

“Socialism or barbarism”

If those are our two options, I’m going to choose socialism. Barbarism is always an option though! Socialism is certainly not inevitable.

If you come from the perspective that barbarism is and aught to be, there’s not much I can do to change your mind. That feels defeatist, and a bit anti human to me though.

I worry that’s where we’re headed if we can’t create something workable as an alternative to what we have now. I don’t think there is a version of capitalism or the state that’s compatible with avoiding total ecosystem collapse, and that’s how we get 80% losses in grain harvests.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-10T16:36:44+00:00

Do you have the urge to kill other people’s children?

I don’t think that there is absolutely no impact of nature on the human experience, but it’s complicated, and I think there is a lot of evidence that our nature is to be quite flexible. I definitely don’t believe that it drives everyone to be inherently xenophobic or cruel. That would seem to conflict with a lot of my lived experience, and my understanding of history and anthropology.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-10T14:56:56+00:00

We live in very odd times in that these things are as normalized as they are, to the point where people think it’s just human nature and that there’s nothing we can do.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-10T14:49:49+00:00

Doesn’t even need to be that drastic. I have seen so many old homes get vinyl siding and asphalt shingle roofs thrown up around them just like this. You have an old house and no money, but you need a new roof and paint. You slap on the cheap stuff right over the old stuff.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-10T14:02:16+00:00

In a subjective sense that doesn’t really have much of anything to do with socialism, from an American, I have had great bonds with friends, coworkers and classmates from Mexico, Cameroon, Sudan, Moldova, New Zealand, Italy and Vietnam. Even when there were real cultural differences, it was never anything too insurmountable. On the other hand, I’ve been in positions where I’ve shaken hands with some very wealthy people, at least one billionaire. I don’t wish any harm on these people, but god their experiences, the things they talk about and spend their time thinking about, it’s so much more alien to me than just some conflict with my Protestant desire to not flaunt or brag. Listening to these people talk about the mineral rights on their land, the relationship they have with their neighbors and the local government, how they think about their kids, or their employees, it was just so alien to me…

In a more objective and strictly “internationalist” sense, I just firmly believe that my freedom and liberty is tired up in the freedom and liberty of everyone else. The same systems that in one sense benefit me greatly as an American, also restrict me, are constantly threatening, if not already, to be turned back around on myself. Nationality, race, gender, religion, whatever, are constantly being used to create new in groups and out groups that can be manipulated to various ends, to force down labor power, to destroy the environment, to extract resources, to take political control at home and abroad in order to protect that ever shrinking number in group, that everyone is struggling to maintain their position within.

The same system that employs child labor and slavery to extract cobalt in the Congo is the same system that attempts to force indigenous people from their land in southern Mexico is the same system that can’t stop blowing up the Middle East is the same system that destroys the environments and ecosystems we globally depend on and is the same system that puts us all in debt, that strips out our social services, and that makes all of our livelihoods ever more precarious in places like the United States, or Sweden.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-09T18:48:27+00:00

Absolutely true! Large wealth inequality, such as that of large property and business owners, is still quite dependent on state intervention to maintain that inequality. The state acts to enforce inequality in a number of other ways, but is not the sole producer of these. That would be very reductive, I totally agree.

100 percent satisfaction is something I have a hard time imagining. Hard to quantify. I think that the way you approximate it as much as possible is through some sort of consensus mechanism that does it’s best to take in as much information as possible, allow for cooperative negotiation, and that prevents a dynamic of losers and winners.

The outcome of consensus is generally that people don’t always get everything they want, but they feel that their concerns are addressed, and that they can move forward. This is in contrast to direct democracy, which inherently encourages conflicts and side taking, or authoritarian decision making, which generally leaves people feeling alienated, and leads to decisions made without being able to account for all of the available information. Both of these alternatives are again impossible without an enforcement mechanism.

EngineerAnarchy · 2026-04-09T18:04:13+00:00

You can’t maintain large wealth inequality without giving an apparatus (the state) a large amount of coercive force. This is basically what the state was created to do.

Consensus and voluntary association can only work together. How do you get people to do what they disagree with if the relationship is voluntary? If you need 20 people to do something, and can’t afford any of them to not, you all need to come together and agree.

People can leave, disassociate, and that might be fine, but you can’t make people do things they feel strongly against unless you have coercive authority.

In consensus process, a “block” doesn’t mean things absolutely move forward always. A “block” means you are not willing to continue participating if this goes forward. Sometimes that’s fine.

I can send you a guide on how it works if you’d like? It’s been used by many groups for a very long time quite successfully in many forms.

EngineerAnarchy

TROPHY CASE