'Power to communities': Chicago considers city-owned grocery store to address 'food deserts' after giants like Walmart and Whole Foods shutter stores

Almost like a society of individuals that only care about themselves won't last long...

About 3% of humans are born psychpaths (roughly: they have no empathy hence only care about themselves).
One would naivelly expect that only caring about yourself would be a winning strategy from a genetics point of view and hence over time the whole of Manking would have become psychopaths as the ones with such a natural advantage were more successful at surviving and reproducing than the others, yet that's not at all the case and only a small fraction of people are born psychopaths.
My personal explanation for that is that psychopathic behaviour is only a genetic advantage if most people around are not that - or, transposed to to economic terms, being a rent-seeker only works if most people are producers and doens't at all work when most people are rent-seekers.
I expect that in our evolutionary past, whenever a tribe/group had too many psychopaths without some kind of mechanism to kick them out or force them into cooperative mode, it eventually collapsed and ended up removed from the genetic pool hence why in millions of years of evolution the supposed superior behaviour of caring only about yourself didn't end up dominating the human genetic pool - the "threading of the needle" for the survival psychopathy as a behavioural trait in the gene pool was a balance between that behaviour expressing itself often enough to reproduce and remain in the gene pool and not so much that there were too many such individuals in a group causing it to collapse.
- My personal explanation
  I have a degree in psych, and regret to inform you that you have no idea what you just rambled on about
  You're just making random guesses
  
  Right. First, indeed it's not a scientific theory, just an idea. The bit were I wrote "my personal explanation" and the context being a News community should've been a strong enough hint that it was to be taken as a bit of a ramble and I hoped (apparently wrongly so) it would make it obvious that's "chewing gum for the brain" rather than "nourishment".
  Second: unless you're disputing the Biology side of how behavioural traits that provide reproductive advantages result in the spreading of the genes that define those to a whole population (aka Theory of Evolution), or your understanding of Statistics is outside generally accepted Mathematics, the mere presence of that part means its not made up from "random guesses", no matter which random distribution you're thinking of. Ditto for the Economics side of it - i.e. rent-seeking does not create wealth and if the proportion of that kind economic activity exceeds a certain proportion of the whole then actual production won't keep up with natural consumption and natural attritional losses.
  Third: Absolutelly, even if the Biology and Economics are not, the Psychology part is mainly coming from ignorance, so if that's wrong then the whole of it is wrong.
  What is the bit in there that is that is so deeply insulting to your domain expertise that you felt that in response to this ramble of mine here in the News forum you just had to post a comment were you pointed out your qualifications in Psychology and then proceede to describe the entirety of my post with the mathematically inaccurate expression "random guesses" without actually providing an explanation?
  (PS: I'm not asking this to dispute your knowledge on Psychology as I accept I'm pretty ignorant in the domain. I'm mainly curious if it's on the nature-vs-nurture in psychopathy side, if it's on my assumptions of the behaviour of people high in the psychopathy spectrum when it comes to "not caring about others" being "bollocks" - say hyper-simpistic or way off - or if I'm using the wrong terminology)

Reddit:Lemmy

Twitter:Mastodon

It's sad seeing all the idiots excited to go to the proprietary platforms. I feel like they're victims of viral marketing, similar to how red bull operates.
Some things never change with this generation.

Is city ownership socialist though? Are the workers unionized? Do they have the right to decide what is and isn't stocked?

Is city ownership socialist though?
Not necessarily. That would turn it into something more like a public utility than like a for-profit business.
I mean, it's "not socialism" when the fire department or the power utility aren't private, for-profit corporations, but it is if the grocery store is? LOL
- Are fire departments for profit?
  
  You do get billed afterwords. At least my dad did when his house burned down 20+ years ago. However his insurance covered the bill.
  
  My in-laws had a housefire a couple of years ago, and they live in the boonies outside of a small farm community.
  The volunteer fire department handed them a bill afterwards and told them "give this to your insurance. We only want what your insurance will pay so don't worry about it if they only pay part or don't pay at all"
  Its a dystopian racket, but at least its pulling a bit of money from the haves to get it to the have-nots and helps sustain a vital service to the community
  
  That sounds kinda dystopian to me

The stores all closed down due to high crime rate, I don't blame them.

This is true. I don’t know why you’re being downvoted.
- I know, the issue is well known. I'm sure I was down voted because the city is primarily black so to mention the fact of it's high crime rate in a discussion that pertains to it is wrongly offensive to them, que sera sera.
  
  A lot of the discussion related to retail theft is heavily racially-motivated and insincere. A short comment without nuance can look indistinguishable from a scary dogwhistle news segment, even if the short comment is accurate

Doesn't look like socialism to me. Buiseness being city-owned isn't enough.

This is why I try to avoid using words like socialism and communism. Everyone has their own ideas of what they mean, and most of them aren't exactly wrong because these are broad terms with different sects. So many times a person mentions either word, and then guys like you come out of the woodwork to be like "umm, actually..." Lol.
I prefer to focus on real solutions to real problems (pragmatism.) This is a very pragmatic approach to solving the issue of corporations not meeting standards.
You're right. They should tax 100% of my income and give me a weekly grocery credit!
Oh, and it won't be enough to buy a nice steak more than once a week. Even though I have a very prestigious position at my job, I'm given the same grocery allowance as everyone else
- That's one steak a week more than I'm currently eating
- If you insist. The solution that sane people are proposing is way better, but if you want we can setup this weird system of punishment for you.
  But also you think that amount of steak should be somehow tied to the prestige of a job, so yes, for you specifically.

The stores left because of the crime, not because there isn't a market for them. I'm sure there are tons of people in Chicago who would love shopping at a local grocery store.

It's not sustainable to run a business when your loss to crimes outweighs any potential profits

The stores left because of the crime
The crime stories (yep, they made a big buzz and media ran hundreds of stories about that one shoplifter in San Francisco) wildly overstated the actual amount of crime. It's just so interesting that corporate news oversold that story, so much so that a person that didn't know better would think that was a pervasive thing in urban areas and cities are all hellscapes of disorder and flames.
Meanwhile, shareholders rewarded Walgreens' management with a boost to stock prices after they reported they'd be pulling out of 'crime-ridden' areas. They didn't leave because of the crime, they left for the stock bump and told the crime story to make it look less-bad
By definition, if the business venture isn't profitable, then there isn't a market.
REI in downtown Portland pulled out and publicly said it was because of rising crime, but it was really because the employees were trying to unionize.
Invoking crime for this practice is just a tactic to pretend it isn't red lining.

Are they closed because of rampant theft?

As other people have pointed out, big companies target an area and set about establishing a monopoly using $$$
Then they realise “huh. There’s not so much profit here in Assfuck, Montana after all.” And make some lame excuse (theft) to pull out.
Citizens get fucked because : capitalism.
- Bonus points if the large business trying to monopolize Assfuck, Montana kills the small businesses that were otherwise sustainable and leaves a gigantic financial burden on Assfuck, Montana's township finances in the process (demanding unsustainable subsidies, changing terms on the township after much money is already spent in the hopes of bringing more money into the town so the township invests more taxpayer dollars into the private business, and of course leaving a giant retail space that no business can afford to sit vacant and create additional costs to demolish and/or mitigate damages as it decays)
  There's a large homegoods chain that had locations in both the small town I live in and a neighboring town of which the parent company went bankrupt. The location in my town sat empty for several years because it was too large of a space for any local business to be able to grow into (the local furniture store asked the city to give them the space for free though!) it eventually got filled by one of uHaul's weird abandoned-retail-space projects where its now a storage space and truck rental. The town nearby has yet to fill the space, although the parking lot is sometimes used by the manufactured home factory nextdoor for overflow storage
  
  Wow, that was a considered and interesting contribution. I learned a lot there.
That has essentially never happened, that's just a fraudulent PR campaign
Yes really
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/retailers-talk-a-lot-about-rising-theft-but-a-retail-industry-report-finds-a-key-metric-for-it-hasnt-increased-that-much-b24ee181
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/09/claims-about-organized-retail-theft-are-nearly-impossible-to-verify.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/shoplifting-holiday-theft-panic/621108/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5ve49/we-cried-too-much-walgreens-cfo-admits-retail-theft-isnt-the-crisis-it-portrayed
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-12-15/organized-retail-theft-crime-rate
https://news.wttw.com/2023/05/12/retailers-walmart-and-starbucks-are-closing-big-cities-some-cite-crime-changing-habits
Wage theft.

There are less than 6500 food deserts in the country. Having access to cheap healthy food is available to the vast majority of people living in the US. We're talking edge cases, capitalism has been quite successful with the food supply chain here.

Do you think 6500 is a low number? It's not like each food desert affects only one person each. More likely than not, each is affecting more than a thousand people. Especially in a population dense area like Chicago. We are talking millions of people living in food deserts.
Also, after reading a bunch of your comments, I'm not sure you are fully aware of what a food desert is. But hey, that's Capitalism.
- Just going off the name, that's someone who didn't leave reddit voluntarily.
  The more time that goes by on Lemmy, it seems like the higher percentage of people who aren't here by choice, they're here because reddit IP banned them.
  
  That person is an ass in 90% of the comments I see them post... And I see them quite a bit unfortunately.
  (To clarify: "that person" mentioned above is shittyredditwasbetter)
  
  Anyone who left Reddit did it voluntarily, my dude.
  
  Wait you're here by choice?
  
  Yeah, lots of us came here voluntarily....
  But it seems like not a lot stayed, kind of feels like we just built the infrastructure and abandoned it to a bunch of trolls. Not sure how much longer I'll stick around to be honest.
  
  I am, I'll grant you I started looking for alternatives because Reddit went to shit, but I haven't looked back since I created a KBin account and have been quite happy with the change.
- I've seen three different definitions in the past 5 minutes. Two definitions were based on physical proximity to grocery stores. Another focused primarily on the poverty rates in census tracts, regardless of the presence of absence of supermarkets. I think the "6500" number comes from that third definition. Of the 84,414 census tracts in the US, fewer than 6500 (about 7.7%) are classified as "food deserts".
  I would have to say that yes, 6500 of 84414 tracts is a fairly low number.
  I would also have to say that if they are using the third definition in these Chicago neighborhoods, they qualified as "food deserts" before Walmart (et al) decided to leave.
  
  7.7%? That's HUGE for 21st century! What is it? Africa? Russia?
  
  7.7% of census tracts, not of people. The overwhelming majority of those tracts have insufficient population to support a nearby supermarket. That doesn't mean they don't have access to food.
  Most of these tracts are farming communities. They provide all the food stocked in these urban and suburban supermarkets. They are literally surrounded by food, in their fields, pastures, gardens, pantries, etc. But because the definition of "food deserts" focuses on supermarkets and doesn't include the 10 tons of grain in their bin, they are considered to be living in a "food desert".
  
  I think you misunderstand how rural food deserts work. They're certainly less-bad than an urban food desert but they're still a problem to solve. That 10 tons of food in your grain bin isn't necessarily food you can eat. Nobody chooses to eat feed corn unless they don't have other options. And while a farmer certainly has the tools and knowledge to grow their own food crops its a significant time investment to do so, something that a farmer doesn't have after 12+ hour days taking care of the crops and animals that make them a meager living.
  The issue is partially mitigated through roadside stands and farmer's markets but its still a significant challenge to the people who live in these communities, and some of the side effects of living in a food desert are present both in a rural food desert and an urban one, despite extremely different circumstances leading to them.
- About 5% of the population. Whereas the rest enjoy the best supermarkets on the planet. This should be about fixing the edge cases, not trying to pretend we don't have amazing choice and wealth in food for the vast majority.
  
  So you're talking about "edge cases" and also claiming it effects over 17 million Americans. That's a lot of human suffering.
  
  We should strive to improve. But the modern food system which is overwhelmingly capitalist has produced the most food secure system to the most people ever. Calling it a failure over 5%, especially without context and scope is foolish.
  
  The modern food system is not capitalist. We extensively subsidize farming, so that farmers will produce excesses despite a lack of corresponding market demand. This socially-funded excessive production is the foundation of our food security.
  Capitalism does not produce such a system. Capitalism sees production in excess of actual demand as wasteful, and seeks to eliminate it.
  
  We subsidize farmers, so we don't have a famine. Has nothing to do with it being socially funded.
  
  Why can't capitalism prevent a famine?
  
  The only way capitalism can prevent a famine is if the individual can be expected to adequately plan and prepare for a food shortage. History says we won't do that.
  
  Please clarify your point. You seem to be saying "the subsidies we provide have nothing to do with subsidization".
  
  Because it doesn't...we subsidize farmers, so we don't have a famine...we don't subsidize farmers because of socialism or capitalism. It's literally done as a fail safe. It's the same reason we have metric tons of cheese on hand as well.
  
  The idea that the government should provide such a failsafe against famine is an act of socialism. A purely capitalist approach to a famine is that the individual should be responsible for preparing their own means of surviving it, or perish in an act of economic Darwinism.
  
  And praising the capitalist part "especially without context" is also foolishly.
  The context being that a historically isolated and hard to invade country with extremely beneficial geological features happened to be capitalist, then went on a 50 year military and social propaganda campaign to stamp out any possible competition in other countries either by directly sending its military in, or funding local forces willing to cooperate.
  In no way am I saying communism or socialism is some kind of perfect system, and I not going to debate their historic representations.
  But you're ignoring a looooot of history in your comments.
  
  My guy, shut the fuck up. Who is paying you to spout this nonsense? Because if no one is, you are getting played.
  
  No.
  
  "fuck those potentially 15 million people, I eat perfectly fine so stop pretending there's a problem"
  This is what you sound like to those 15 million people.
  
  Again, I'm not sure what kind of Boogeyman you've imagined, but I'm not sure where I've said we shouldn't strive to improve food scarcity. Y'all are wild looking for some people to fight with.
  
  Wait you're not here looking for someone to fight? Well F-U
  
  I just said US food supply chain is a poor example 🤷‍♂️
  
  Oh, so like 20,000,000 people don't fucking matter and don't deserve the ability to have access to fresh fruits and vegetables?
  GTFOH.
  
  Can you point out where I said that's okay? Or that we shouldn't strive to improve?
  
  Then quit down playing the number of people in food deserts.
  
  I'm not 🤷‍♂️
  
  Whereas the rest enjoy the best supermarkets on the planet.
  Yeah but the rest of the world sees supermarkets as a negative.
Capitalism has been very successful... if you don't count the poor and the hungry.
Gotcha.
- Yes. It's a very small percentage of failure here.
  
  Oh. Well. As long as a "small percentage" starve to death, it's a resounding success! Let's celebrate by killing a few poor people to improve the economy!
  
  Or, and hear me out before you go full tankie, maybe take steps to correct that edge case rather than tear down a largely high performing system that gives me cheap access to food from around the world year round despite things not being available locally.
  
  Steps like government-owned supermarkets? I agree. Socialism is great.
  
  I agree, this could help. At no point in any of my comments did I say otherwise. But keep on trying to invent arguments for.... Reasons? 🤷‍♂️🤣
  
  So you agree that a non-capitalistic solution would help. That doesn't sound like capitalism is a success if you have to do something else sometimes.
  
  What's the success rate on full socialist and communist grocery stores?
  Now here it comes. Say the line Bart, say the line. I can't wait for you to tell me how socialism has never really been tried.
  
  As far as I know, socialization of grocery stores has never been tried. Why not try it instead of letting people go hungry, including children? Seems like it's worth trying to avoid that.
  By the way, if capitalism is such a resounding success, why am I in debt thousands of dollars due to medical bills and my wife in debt even more due to student loans? We have decent jobs. We're middle class. We own a house. We've paid off one of our two cars. And we're drowning. In "successful" capitalism.
  We're far from alone.
  
  The problem with the communist food systems was that they sought to eliminate waste, rather than promoting the sort of over-production that generates it. They planned to feed their people, and their plans regularly came up short.
  The socialized component of the US system specifically seeks excessive production, well beyond any likely shortages. We deliberately try to waste food.
Lol you contradicted yourself
- No. It's a small failure rate and you all love to ignore how much variety and abundant cheap food the large majority have access to.
  
  You say that but you also admit there are thousands of food deserts across the country. Pick one
  
  Currently at 3.8%
  https://www.nimhd.nih.gov/resources/understanding-health-disparities/food-accessibility-insecurity-and-health-outcomes.html
  I'm okay with edge case.
  
  Currently at 3.8%
  Of 333 million....
  That's 12 million people, they're not a rounding error
  Edit:
  Also, it's at 6.1%, or 19 million people...
  https://thehumaneleague.org/article/food-desert
  
  12 million people, who still get food. No one is starving. I'm technically in a food desert, but have tons of food available to me via a 20min drive to my local city. Almost all food deserts are in rural areas, there is no PT and everyone has a car because you have to be have one. Stop acting like there are 12 million people starving to death.
  
  Talking about things is hard if you don't know what any of the terms mean...
  I edited this in but looks like you didn't see it:
  https://thehumaneleague.org/article/food-desert
  Btw:
  The person I replied to was using drastically understated numbers, it's 19 million. But that article should help you understand the difference between food desert and starving. No idea where you saw anyone talking about starvation tho. It seems like you just made up a strawman...
  
  Naa it's just tankies in here acting like capitalism is the reason food deserts exist, and that communism would magically fix that.
  
  And we should strive to improve. I never said otherwise.
  
  What?
  Weren't you just "arguing" that we shouldn't help them?
  
  No, I said using the US food supply chain is a poor example.
  
  I'm guessing you're in the 96.2%
It doesn't affect me, so fuck who it does affect.
Nice, dude.
- You are just making up stuff now 🤷‍♂️
There are less than 6500 food deserts in the country.
If you can't walk to nearest store within 15 minutes, you live in food desert. Using PT counts as walking.
- Do supermarkets not do home deliveries in the US for people who can't get to the shop? The UK has had those for years.
  
  They do, but only for their area and there's a fee.
  If the closest actual supermarket with fresh food is a 30 minute drive, they're probably not delivering tho.
  The point is making high quality food (nutrition, not taste) easily accessible
That's... 130 per state.
I agree. I don’t think people realise how many “food deserts” there were even a hundred years ago, let alone further back. They certainly don’t realise how many food deserts there are in countries which don’t practise capitalism, or have not in the past.
- Lemmy is just largely skewed to I hate the US, facts be damned crowd at the best. At it's worst it's a straight up tankie cesspool and China apologist playground.
  Very few of these people from both sides have any real travel experience. If they have spent any time in the US or Western Europe vs a poorer county they might get their head out of their asses.