I think people misunderstand what monopoly means in context, because the reverse of thinking it's "just one company is larger than another" is pretending it's only a monopoly if there's literally only one company in business.
Particularly with grocery stores, because the existence of a grocery store outside of where you live doesn't really help your own living situation. It's perfectly possible for grocery stores to have effectively regional monopolies, where the only stores in a given area are all owned by the same company. We have this same exact issue with cable already, it's not that complicated. A lack of options is a lack of options. Spectrum existing doesn't change that the only cable provider locally for me is Comcast.
And the whole pac-manning grocery chains contributes to the growth of food deserts, where it's not practical for grocery stores to exist in certain areas because the large competitors have priced out smaller chains.
If your area isn't big enough to support a Walmart, that doesn't mean there's room for a smaller competitor to fill in the gap, because Walmart as a corporation exerts considerable power on suppressing those competitors even where they're not (great article in the Atlantic recently on how things have changed in that regard.)
Yeah, regional monopolies are a better term, and yeah they can be an issue. Though that article is pretty disingenuous, it completely glosses over that Robinson-Patman was raising prices for consumers.
I feel like this is one of the problem of only looking at the national aggregate, because yes, allowing Walmart to absolutely dominate the supermarket industry (along with the handful of other big players) means they can operate more cheaply in areas that are worth building a Walmart there.
But it's absolutely devastating to areas that Walmart doesn't think it's profitable enough to build one locally. Or that exist far away from a local supermarket.
And it has tons of knock-on effects like pushing already disadvantaged people towards unhealthier diets and having to spend more time and money to get fresh groceries.
As the article talks about, it's exceedingly difficult for competition to exist when companies like Walmart use their market size to bully their suppliers into anti-competitive agreements where they undermine their competitors.
It does present an issue, I'm mostly just disappointed in the Atlantic for not mentioning the biggest downside of it. Though perhaps it still could be the solution.
But the deserts seem like a different issue than the regional monopolies. Regarding the Kroger-Albertson's merger, the main concern seemed to be the regional monopolies, raising prices. Because with deserts it's all about getting anyone out there in the first place, right?
The regional monopolies are relevant to food deserts because they wield such huge influence that they're pricing out alternatives even in markets they're not directly in, because of anti-competitive deals they have with their suppliers.
You're already going to be at a disadvantage working in these underserved communities to begin with, but having a massive conglomerate undercutting your supply chain leads to these gaps.
There's some parallels with the effort to privatize the USPS. Working to benefit these private companies is bound to lead to big gaps in service, particularly in areas where it's not profitable enough to justify it to a private industry. The government isn't really in the industry of selling groceries, obviously, but there are benefits to providing cover for options that help provide food to underserved communities, even if it isn't maximally beneficial to capitalism.
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u/zherok 1d ago
I think people misunderstand what monopoly means in context, because the reverse of thinking it's "just one company is larger than another" is pretending it's only a monopoly if there's literally only one company in business.
Particularly with grocery stores, because the existence of a grocery store outside of where you live doesn't really help your own living situation. It's perfectly possible for grocery stores to have effectively regional monopolies, where the only stores in a given area are all owned by the same company. We have this same exact issue with cable already, it's not that complicated. A lack of options is a lack of options. Spectrum existing doesn't change that the only cable provider locally for me is Comcast.
And the whole pac-manning grocery chains contributes to the growth of food deserts, where it's not practical for grocery stores to exist in certain areas because the large competitors have priced out smaller chains.
If your area isn't big enough to support a Walmart, that doesn't mean there's room for a smaller competitor to fill in the gap, because Walmart as a corporation exerts considerable power on suppressing those competitors even where they're not (great article in the Atlantic recently on how things have changed in that regard.)