The Mis-Scanned Apple

ShopNotLifting

This is not going to be a pretty post. There will be ranting and swearing. Probably a lot of it.

Have a read here. I sooo had another go at the Big Duopoly several years back but can't locate the particular article nor even what blog it was in, but it was about the early days of self-checkout, and Coles wanted the local constabularies near their supermarkets to attend and catch people committing fraud by swiping the wrong things at the right prices, so to speak. 

You can see why that might have stirred me up a little, right? They were cutting out the wages of around a dozen checkout operators per store, along with said checkout operators, realised they'd probably made a terrible mistake by letting people swipe avocados at potato prices. . .

And at that, you might have expected that with all the savings they were making, some prices might have eased back a bit, right? But no - prices went up because "losses." And then they realised they might have to pay the store security more to patrol the self-checkouts, and so they ask our police that we pay for out of the public purse to save them having use their security. So - screw us by taking away checkpout operators, screw us some more by not passing any of the savings back to us, and then screw us by tying up several police in each suburb that they operate a store in.

Yeah. Triggered. 

And now here we go again. Woolworths was one of the companies (along with pretty much every other business) that worked hard and long to create the gig economy we're now working under so that people are earning less than ever before, inflation is rising daily and so people have less money and the idea of underscanning becomes pretty appealing. 

"Fuji, red delish, or gala" - here's an idea - price them realistically you bunch of mangy money-grubbing maggots. And get more checkout operators, they'll know this stuff and check it out accurately. It's a problem you created for yourself and now you're moaning about it? 

We've been allowing them to do this. For decades I've been blogging and writing articles about Keeping The Bastards Honest, a phrase I stole unashamedly from Don Chipp of the Australian Democrats back in 1977 because they're no longer using it but it's more relevant than ever, and nowadays not just against an opposing political Party. 

For the last forty years the food duopoly of Woolworths and Coles has had pretty much free rein. If you didn't sell your produce to them, you just didn't sell it. If you didn't produce enough to meet your quota, you just didn't sell it. Once you and all the other producers were in the contract trap, the contract prices shrank. 

As a customer, you went to a "super" market that had a wide range of products and paid a reasonable but not extortionate profit for it - and forsook the small corner groceries, fruit and veg greengrocers, butchers, and bakers. Once those had been priced out and closed their doors, prices went up, the range and variety of products shrank, and the prices (and the profits) went up again.

Then corners were cut, and suppliers of tinned and bottled goods were squeezed in their turn, finally dropped and offered them a bone to make "supermarket generic brand" versions of their best sellers, then sold those. The range of varieties available to us shrank again. 

Are you seeing where this is heading? Eventually you'll get only generic brand of the most common staples, priced at premium, and all those other bothersome manufacturers will have been driven into the ground... 

Look - it takes money to break into a field where another company has a headstart. My schoolfriend's parents ran a F&V store that could compete with supermarkets of the day. But the store went down the tubes just like all the others, and the parents have long passed away taking their expertise with them. 

Now, if Stevie wanted to resurrect the parents' F&V, he'd have to compete with Coles, Woolworths, IGA, Foodworks, and ALDI. And learn the trade all over again, and build contacts and suppliers and transport. He'd need to have some cash behind him - but he's been on gig wages for two years now and, well... 

In every blog post where I've railed against the Big Food corporations I've used the NatDems rallying cry to ask people to vote with their dollars and buy from anywhere but the supermarkets. Every dollar you spend there enables the things I mentioned above to happen. At the very least you should avoid the duopoly and shop at IGA, Foodworks, ALDI. At best, buy more from markets, farm gate stores, the few remaining F&V and butchers that are still holding their own. 

I've used "Keep the bastards honest" to exhort people to do just that - if there's some person or organisation doing something wrong - call it out! If there's a threat to free speech - fix it! We wouldn't have the garbage crisis we now have if people had called it out 14 years ago. 

Footnote:

In addition to writing these articles I'm also experimenting with ways of recycling waste that can be done at the cottage industry or community hub levels, not so much because it'll magically convert 100% of local waste into recycled useful articles, but because people who are doing these sorts of activities are likely to talk about them to people in their community, and so raise even more awareness of the issues and dangers.

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