What can the leftists here learn from this, refer Philadelphia incident.
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That you shouldn't over saturate a market?
Treat everyone equally regardless of the amount of melanine in their skin?
I was correct to continue making my own coffee?
Starbucks should lower their prices in those areas so that the poorer folks can treat themselves to a nice cup of coffee now and then?
It seems you have accepted TD's framing of the issue; I would be cautious about that.
@Nyar
Ouch. Guess I should have thought that through a bit more, because what I said was intended to poke fun at Starbucks for the ludicrous prices they charge for a tasty latte. LOL Sounded much better (and funnier) in my head when I wrote it. Oops. Please forgive me! *chuckle*
I meant that what TD said is not exactly what Starbucks reported. TD added the word poor. Starbucks claims it is because of market saturation; too many stores, too close together, which seems to match my experience. There are places in town where you can see two Starbucks at the same time; which has often made me wonder how viable that is.
I have no idea what the truth is; but it is pretty safe to bet against TD, imo.
@Nyar
Oh, I have no doubt your assessment of the situation is by far the more accurate reality. *chuckle* Actually, I have zero real concern about the matter, to be honest. Heck, I wouldn't have even known the stores were closing had it not been posted here. (I avoid watching the news whenever possible. lol) Thing is, though, every Starbucks on the planet could disappear today and my life would continue on its merry way without so much as a hiccup. Pretty sure I could somehow manage to survive without them. My faithful and trusted Keurig will take care of me. *grin*
I have been to Starbucks ONLY once about 15 years ago. I went to the closest one on a coffee run for everyone. I everybody else's frappy froopy droopy crappy woopie whatevers they wanted. When I ordered for myself, it went like this:
"And I want a twenty ounce Regular Coffee."
Cashier: "What's a Regular Coffee?"
I ain't never been back. If a coffee shop cannot train their employees correctly, or least hire ones with at least the intelligence of a cockroach, I ain't never going back. All it takes for me is for a business to fuck up like that just once, and I'll tell them to fuck themselves.
When I complained to corporate with an email, all they kept doing was sending me coupons for free shit. I kept returning them with ever increasing nasty letters. And I have never been back to another Starbucks since.
As far as I am concerned, Starbucks could completely disappear and I'd never miss them.
rmfr
Question, who in several levels of hell would go to a starbucks in the first place? We are lucky in not actually having any that I know of in this part of the world, but from memory they were awful soul less places. Plus their coffee sucked.
I came across this, 3 reasons why we don't have a Starbucks...https://medium.com/feedmee-app/the-3-reasons-why-there-is-no-starbucks-i...
But there is one is Perth, Scotland....I am so ashamed.
And I agree that their coffee sucks. Then again, I have been making coffee with a French Press for the last 35 or so years. Otherwise, I do not coffee made by others unless I really want one. It's a little hard to carry a French Press around in case one wants a REAL coffee.
rmfr
I use a french press also; mostly because it allows me to make exactly as much as I want without wasting any.
I take one of my nieces to Starbucks all the time as a reward for her academic achievements. It's five bucks a pop, but that is kind of the point, something special that she likes.
I never understood the attraction of Starbucks. MacDonald's coffee is better. They seem to be going extinct in Australia, but they're popping up like mushrooms in Japan, where there are already over 1,000 outlets. One thing in Starbucks' favor in Japan is that they are smoke-free.
Here's a video of the great Dennis Leary on the subject of "coffee-flavored coffee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f_dxLiuXuw
I was wondering why so many Wal-Marts were also closing too. Thank you, it all makes sense now.
...then again it could be just what arakish mentioned. Are declining sales the result of the apparently indifferent attitude of Starbucks staff and is this attributable to a lax corporate franchise regard for staff training and customer service? ....is this what the rightists learn from all this?
Rightists just believe in supply and demand.
Leftists who didn't believe in supply and demand created famines in Russia, China, Vietnam....
Wherever you sit on the political spectrum, to survive you have to sell what you have to get what you need.
Last month I went to one and when I paid my drink and my friends' I remembered why I had promised to myself not to come back again years ago. If they decided close one in Madrid, it wouldn't be for the reasons insinuated in the @OP, since they are all concentrated in the same area.
@TD... Ayyyy.... supply and demand is the base of a capitalist market, or at least I was told my first day in Economics 101. And fortunately or unfortunately, in Western and Westernized socities, we don't get to change that basic principle -at least for the time being-, regardless who you vote for.
Leftists from capitalist socities have nothing to do with Communists in China, ex-USRR or North Korea... @Algebe, don't mislead him, please. He has enough mind chaos.
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@Flamenca: Leftists from capitalist socities have nothing to do with Communists in China
When I was in high school in capitalist New Zealand, leftists hero-worshiped Mao, Marx, Lenin, Che, Kim Il Sung.... Those unfortunate enough to be ruled by those tyrants meanwhile yearned to escape to places like New Zealand. I met one family that swam across the Pearl River at night to get away.
It's cool to be a communist if you are 18 and still living at home in a rich white neighbourhood in a western democratic capitalist country.
Not so cool if you live in Venezuela, Russia, Vietnam, North Korea ......etc then be a communist is about as cool as a kick in the nuts.
I can like see in the future - I 100℅predicted a leftist would post that leftists have nothing to do with communism in China, russia korea .....
Hahaha.
@Terminal Dogma
I'll be that leftist! None of those countries have anything to do with the left today. China is communist only in name. It's an authoritarian state market system. It's as communist as North Korea is democratic. And North Korea is a necrocracy as Hitchens so eloquently put it, a theocracy where God has been replaced by the ruling family. Russia is a kleptocracy or a securocracy, where the oligarchs control all the country's industries from media to agriculture in fear of the whole country coming apart by separatists.
@Peurii: Russia is a kleptocracy
Russia today is the inevitable result of communist rule in the Soviet era. The communists never understood that a centralized command economy is completely unworkable. Instead of listening to the markets, they had central planners setting production quotas. Supplies of raw materials and equipment were chaotic, so every factory had fixers who were expert at finding stuff on black markets or through theft/extortion. When the Soviet Union collapsed, those fixers took over the economy. Putin is their man.
As you say, China is an authoritarian state market system. However, the market is great democratizer, and I expect China to become progressively freer over the next few years. Despite the Great Firewall of China, people are well aware of conditions in the West. Millions of them have traveled abroad. The secret's out and the virus has been downloaded.
I agree that North Korea is a theocracy. But it's also another example of what awaits at the end of the road paved with good intentions.
@Algebe
No disagreements with you there on the Soviet Union & Russia. Although I wouldn't say that modern Russia inevitably followed from the Soviet Union, since most other Eastern European countries transformed better into democratic market economies. On China I fear that it isn't going to get freer in the short term at leaast. It's been the go to prediction by western analysts that when the middle class becomes wealthy, that they will demand more political power, but so far there has been little progress, in fact the opposite seems true as with Jinping's unlimited term. As long as the economy goes well, the chinese seeem complacent int trading their political power for wealth. In fact the tremendous success of China is undermining the value of democracy in the west too.
@Algebe, @TD... I agree with @Peurii... Well, I am a "leftist" and I don't admire any of those leaders and I don't consider of the left any authoritarian regime. Precisely the classical values of the left are quite the opposite.
@Flamenca
The tragedy of the left is that it is the viewpoint of people who want a fairer society, but it always leads to poverty and tyranny in one form or another. You end up with economic and social stagnation and a failing command economy.
I've seen left-leaning governments nationalize rail, coal, power, communications, etc. I've seen these key industries run for the benefit of union leaders and politicians, while ordinary citizens were left in the cold and dark.
So while I sympathize with some of the views of the left, I'm very nervous about what happens when left-wing parties take power. I hate privilege and entitlement, but those diseases grow as easily on the left as on the right.
Just to keep it relevant to atheism: I despise the so-called religious right, especially in the U.S. They are enemies of freedom and progress. However, I've also experienced the religious left in the form of socialist preachers, priests, and pastors who are on a mission from god to make society fairer. If they and their followers want to give away all their wealth to help the poor, that's their business. But they're always urging governments to raise taxes so everyone pays for their follies, and everyone ends up poorer. They're all clueless and dangerous.
Those regimes are evidence that communism is shit. Play the no true Scotsman fallacy as much as you want.
Modern feminism is also a corruption of Marxist theory.
I was part of your cult once, I know where you are at mentally if you are a far leftists.
@Terminal Dogma
That is like saying that because Augusto Pinochet's Chile was a disaster, capitalism "is shit". China, Korea & Russia are de facto not leftist anymore, to claim otherwise is to deny reality. I am more than willing to say that communism failed in China and it failed in Russia, and this lead them to abandon communism for a bastardised versions of free market capitalism, while keeping parts of the ex-communis-party elites in power. Although the communism practiced there was hardly what Marx had in mind, but then again his vision was too utopian for human nature too, and revolutions rarely bring wanted outcomes. Capitalism is the way to create wealth for massive populations, but it doesn't mean that laissez faire is the way to go, because that leads to inequality in wealth, health and ecology. That is why the poor need the state for their protection from the tyranny of the wealthy.
I am not on the indentitarian left, which I see you implying.
@Peurii: it doesn't mean that laissez faire is the way to go, because that leads to inequality in wealth, health and ecology.
The trick is knowing what to hold back and what to leave free. Politicians are notoriously bad at picking winners in the economy, and their "too big to fail" mantra often ends up hindering the flow of resources from failing sectors into new growth sectors. What we really need governments to do is ensure that capitalist industries pay for their own negative externalities. Politicians have never been very good at that either.
I'm not sure inequality is a such a bad thing per se. The important question is whether everyone has enough for their needs. Beyond that we're just talking about the politics of envy.
@Algebe
I agree. Mostly things like military, healthcare, infrastructure, media, police, science, fire departments and schools should be left for NGOs or the state or heavily regulated, because some of the values inherent in them don't fit well with free market capitalism. The problem today is the link between the political and monied elites that leads to bad regulation and croney capitalism. I 100% agree that states should do better to internalize negative externalities in prices. In fact it would lead to a better capitalist socities, because presently by not internalizing externalities states are in effect subsidizing object production as opposed to activity production, that has lower emissions
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