Traditional bricks and mortar retailers are suffering as people switch to cheaper, more convenient ways to shop.
Here’s a question for anyone who owns or runs a business;
Q. What do you do if your competitors are carving into your margins and market share with cheaper prices and more convenient services?
Do you;
A. Look at your cost base and search for efficiencies that will allow you to reduce prices?
B. Work to create a better consumer experience?
C. Investigate whether there are alternative goods or services you could offer to complement or replace the loss-leading lines?
D. Lobby the government to impose special duties, taxes and levies on the consumers who purchase from your competition?
Bill’s Opinion
If you chose option D, congratulations! You are officially a member of the crony capitalism class.
Welcome to the internet and the 1990s, Australian retailers, spoiler alert; get to see Bowie, Prince, George Michael and Motörhead in concert at the next available opportunity.
I don’t know what per cent of the population are high street retailers and their staff. Five per cent might not be too far off. What these nutters want is for one hundred per cent of the population to pay higher prices for everything so that the five per cent can maintain their occupations. Thusly encouraged they will look around for other failing industries to protect and by the time they’re finished, progress will have ground to a halt and everything will cost twice as much.
Secular decline is just that.
Plus landlords aint interested in letting their properties out to these high risk struggling retailers either.
Other than luxury retail, which is growing, its over.
What if you’re a famous self-identified libertarian blogger who’s style of instant punditry catches on at the same time your ideological foes’ social media empires capture huge market share and begin restricting their free service as they see fit? Do you;
A. Make principled arguments about property rights and freedom of association while using your own platform to support market substitutes?
B. Make a nuanced argument about platforms versus publishers, acknowledging thorny liability issues while erring on the side of liberty?
C. Loudly insist the current president (but not the LAST guy, heaven forbid!) use state power to punish these companies while simultaneously shilling for a leftwing mega online retailer?
…
(Sorry, but Glenn Reynolds has been an utter disappointment in this regard, and will have great difficulty arguing against a future leftwing president punishing an unabashedly rightwing company)
It may be an embarrassing admission but I’d not previously visited Instapundit until your comment.
What is the reason for your disappointment with him, where did here do a volte face?