Capitalism relies on survival of the fittest for businesses

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I'm a leftist but my only real, non emotional, criticism of this is - it's a shame for jobs and unemployment when a company dies.

I've noticed in recent months people blaming covid for the loss of certain businesses.

I think that's true when it comes to some. It can be the final nail in the coffin for things like the Pizza Hut in my home town. That Pizza Hut might have recovered.

But a capitalist society will always have some new businesses being formed and some old businesses dying off. It's about supply and demand. The demand part of that in particular.

I think it's silly for people to be surprised that for eg in an online world a store decides doing a catalogue which was popular in the 80s and 90s. Or that a shop which since the 90s has been known for outdated clothing worn by elderly people has shut down. Who exactly would be buying those clothes nowadays? The people who were middle aged 20 years ago won't be wanting to wear clothes they associate with old age, they'll be wearing other 'old people clothes'. So the target market for that shop would now be people in their 90s or over a century old - that's not a very good thriving business model. Or for eg Blockbuster - video rental doesn't make much sense nowadays.

I think some of these kinds of shops are blaming the virus for going under but would've failed anyway.

I do feel bad for people who have lost their jobs. And I feel bad on an emotional level that that particular Pizza Hut shut - it meant a lot to my family and was part of my childhood. But...

If outdated businesses don't die, there's no room for new ones to take their place. It's consumer preferences that drive things we merely feel nostalgic about away and encourage instead things which we could actually get excited for or actually have a need for. You might nostalgically want a tape shop (for eg of a shop I had in my town growing up), but realistically? A smart phone shop makes more sense in 2020.

And I have little sympathy for chain store, mall and out of town shop business owners at the very top who are upset over the death of their businesses. They drove out the older shops because of the same reasons and some of those - although their liquidation etc was inevitable - were actually at the heart of communities or small shops owned by local people. They bought up companies. 'Live by the sword, die by the sword' comes to mind.

Even that Pizza Hut should've innovated. There's another Pizza Hut in my home town which is newer and focuses on take-outs. If the Pizza Hut which shut down had focused on take-out during lockdown rather than on sitting on its laurels as a restaurant, it might've survived better.

There's a local bookshop I know will probably not survive this. And it's all because the old guy running it never thought to put the stock online and build a website. I'll miss it. I have sympathy for him. But I'd rather lose that shop than lose vulnerable family members. And in my own city I know of a similar sized, single member of staff, local bookshop which will stay afloat becuase it's switched to having a website and delivering books as well - so it was making a profit during lockdown.

I'm not an economist by any means, these are just a lay person's observations. But to me it seems like common sense.

All Pizza Huts are takeout here. In my area, people never have sat down like they do in restaurants. Domino’s is the same way.

Many old bookstores have survived in university towns/cities.

Yep....one does have to “change with the times.”

It's why Gordan Gekko argues that GREED is GOOD.

... it forces corporate evolution

... adapt or be eliminated

... the company, the employees, customers WIN

Lots of big businesses have online stores like Gamestop, Target, Best Buy, Wal Mart. That is how they stay in business. They have to compete with Amazon.

I have no idea what happens to people when their small business goes bankrupt. I assume they go and find a job like everyone else.

Restaurants here stayed open during COVID but they did take out. But that meant lot of people still lost their jobs because they didn't need busboys or waiters anymore and dishwasher people. The fast food restaurants stayed open as well but only the dining rooms were closed. So I saw cyclists and skateboarders and people on their feet going in the drive through.

BTW I thought stores always update their products, no way would they still be selling clothes from 20 years ago because those get bought out and they get new ones in. I won't be able to walk in any store and find toys there that were manufactured 10 years ago.

There is a need to distinguish between:

- Companies currently suffering solely because of COVID-19
- Companies performing poorly before COVID-19 that are currently suffering even more

Obviously, some industries - like the travel and entertainment industries - are hurt very badly almost exclusively due to COVID-19 and belong to the 1st category.

But other business, including restaurants, have the option to switch to take-out or other business models in order to adapt to the current situation.

And Pizza Hut may belong to the 2nd category, as it has had problems long before COVID-19.

In fact, a quick googling shows the following article from august 2019 - before COVID-19 - detailing how Pizza Hut has been unable to keep up with competitors and changing customer demands:
https://www.mashed.com/134236/major-piz ... t-to-best/

And Pizza Hut doesn't exactly need to invent a new business model from scratch. Last time I checked, pizza delivery wasn't invented in 2020. It is - despite outrageous and fraudulent claims to the contrary made by both prostitutes and assassins - the oldest trade, having existed since before the Big Bang (and the Bigger Bang before it). And while Pizza *Hut* may perish, pizza *delivery* will outlive not only COVID-19, but also the Heat Death of the Universe, since even cold pizza is good pizza. Fact.

The thing that hurts particularly with Covid, as stated, is that there have been a lot of small businesses who got caught in the right place at the right time by the situation to be run out. It underscores the 'red-in-tooth-and-nail' nature of ground-level economics and the risks that small business entrepreneurs take, and it a way the thought that self-delusion is required in many cases for people to take as bad of a gamble as to create a restaurant or coffee shop that I actually enjoy going to - it's a reminder that nature is constantly throwing human lives against the wall, carelessly, to see what sticks.

Some businesses failed per reasons in the OP, ie. restaurants without robust enough take-out or goods stores either without enough of an online presence or, I think this could be just as big an issue if not bigger, situations where their place online would be redundant and more of a hassle than just going to Amazon to get the same things.

Economics Explained (Youtube channel) had a video talking about why we should have some degree of trepidation over a 'K-shaped' recovery. The mode described is one where information availability means that the spread of power and inequality catches significant acceleration every time chaos is injected into the system for one reason or another. It's a bit like if I had a residential housing REIT and could by up loads of foreclosed properties in an area. That's good business sense, there's nothing wrong with that activity from the standpoint that the homes would be owned by the banks otherwise (property taxes are a double-edged sword and in this case they cause the banks not to want them), but at some point you have conglomeration of such REITS until you start heading toward regional oligopoly.

I think that's really the scary thing about Covid - if we've been headed toward some hard, and likely quite unpleasant, manual reset of our economic system Covid has only sped us along toward that point. It's what happens when power consolidates so much that almost anyone whose trying to get a start in the world is frozen out of most meaningful chains of advancement unless they can get into a very prestigious school.

One of the things I've been thinking about, and maybe it's a good question for German members, is what it's likely having a sizeable and salient government office focused on vocation. I don't know all of the ins and outs of the German system but it sounds like the government is more proactive with planning and placement, ie. getting real utility out of it's HR, whereas the closest facsimile we have in the US are various temp services who can stand in somewhat but in their size and placement they react to public and economic policy and changes rather than leading the discussion. Especially if we turn into a predominant gig economy, the way automation seems like it will be taking us, it's going to be a complicated enough issue that we're either going to need a job agency to throw unemployed workers against or we're going to have increasing numbers of people who are always just a month away from being permanently unemployed.

Yeah; but See, Greed
Don't Set Ya Free; If
Ya Think You Have to
Buy It, Hoard It, to Own Free; Ya
Will Never Be Free; It's Worth Noting
as Styx Sings, "It's All A Grand Illusion";
Yes, Back in '77, "Go Out And Buy Yourself A
Brand New Motor Car"; My God '76 Trans-Ams
Were Practically to Die For Then; And My God my
Honda Civic EX '14 Coupe is Practically Indestructible
And Will Probably Last Till i pass away with
Continuing Restricted Covid-19 Travel Plans;
Yet, My Wife Still Desires A Brand New SUV as
She Believes It Will Be Easier to Clean than
The Tiny Parts of Our Civic Coupe;
She Also Worries i am getting
too Big and Muscular
to Fit in the
Car, haha;
True though
i Won't tell all the
Young Women Who
Swarmed Around me in
the Dance Hall; But After
Dance, i Do Look a lot like
Sanford From Sanford And
Son Lifting 247 Pounds Out
of that Car totally out of Raving Trance Dance Flow Steam....

Have You Seen A Two Car Garage Lately not Filled
to the Brim With Walmart 'Stuff', Never used; Never
'A Home' for Any Car or SUV At All; True i am one
of the Last Members of A Human Species Who Is Able
to Fit Any Car at all in my only Single Car Garage;

Nah; Nah; Nah; Humans Are not
Evolved Now for Instant Gratification;
They are Evolved to MoVE iN Balance;
Friends With Gravity to Conserve Most
Energy, Truly Conservative We aRe Evolved
to Be at Least this way to Dance And Sing Life
in Balance Giving More than Taking, Sharing
More Than Hoarding, Lest

We Frigging

Starve
to Death
as Animal
Populations
Out of Balance
Who Fail to Conserve
Resources Naturally Do...

Greedy Animals Who Take And
Hoard More than they Give And Share

End up in A Worst place of All Totally Away From Free Heaven Now...

Totally in Balance of Course, one Rule of Nature that doesn't change

The Rule

of Balance
iN Deed Float

Baby Float Be Free
FRiEnDS With Gravity iN Deed...

And on Top of that Empirically Speaking i've Known Thousands of People
With Salaries Astronomically Higher than the Ones i made Where i have
Enough Money Saved for the Rest of my Life; Simply Because i Didn't Consume

So Much
Then and Now of the
Resources of Earth Still Now;

Conservative is Smart This
Way; Friends With Gravity
No Eating the Real Face
of God Nature out of Balance
in Greed And Hoarding More than Giving And Sharing;

And once again when i retired i gave all the Dead Green Away to
my Secretary, Accountant and Overall Personal Assistant, my Wife;

Let's Make
A Deal,

Will

Do,

Thank

You, And Thrive
Like it's a Prince Party of
1999, Free, Till Death PartS HEaVeN Now

So Let me ask You This; i don't expect
You to Answer; How Do You Define
Success in Life;
Does
it
Breathe,
or is it Just Stuff...

Sadly, For my Father
Who Always Wanted to
Be the Rich Dad; With Four
Marriages; Not Affording a
Home until His 50's, Never paid
off at 81; Following the 'Grand Illusion'
of Styx, Buying A New Motor Car Every
3 Years, some times 2; So worried when i
Git Ill And had to Retire Early that i would want
Something From Him in His Retirement then from
Law Enforcement at 100 Percent Pay after 46 Years
of Service plus Social Security coming in; He was totally
Shocked to See i had Saved 6 times More Than Him at age 47;
Enough for the Rest of my Life Without Any Retirement Pay Extra too...

Now it's true, my Wife had a bit of a Spending Spree when i turned the
Keys of Money over to her; but it's True, the Federal Retirement keeps
Pouring in; but it's also True; i always have plan A, B, C, And D, and Even
F if the Ignorance of Greed And Hoarding Destroys this Country From Within
Totally Out of Balance As

it is Doing Now;

And at least,

not the

Rest of the
World before
i Pass Way From Heaven next..

True Intelligence is Adapting
Conservatively in Balance
Wherever We Land
to Thrive and
Survive

Partying

Life Like

Heaven Just Won't Stop...

Just in my Humble Opinion of Course...

There are a lot of 'Normally Dressed Naked
Folks' With Big Fat Bank Accounts That Serve
Them Like the Rest of the Tools That Do too...

A Lot of Other Animals Naked Like me of Course With Enough As Is...

I See them in my Back Yard Forest Doing it all Naturally Every Day

Flying WRiTE
over the
Cuckoo
Nest of
Modern Money
Gods and Stuff
like they Don't exist at all...

What's 'Left'; Naked Nature in Balance.... Hint: Enough.

Maybe but it was all coudoroy trousers, kilts, arran jumpers etc. "Practical outdoor wear". Traditional clothing of high quality. Always was from when I was a kid to when it stopped existing.

Nobody wants to dress like that nowadays.

In fact my stepdad who's middle class & always wore a suit to work has taken to retirement as an excuse to wear JJB type clothes - hoodies etc, or at least jeans. Maybe he's an exception as he's probably HFA but most old guys nowadays see nothing wrong in wearing jeans. That's why M&S sells them. 70 yos don't want to look like 1990s 70 yos cos that reminds them they're turning into their dads.

And as for practical outdoor clothing, a lot of advances have been made in that, mostly technological ones. Not hardware computer type technology, more to do with the fabrics and figuring out how to make things lightweight enough to wear as over-trousers or snow proof or waterproof etc.

I really hope Pizza Hut doesn't go cos as an aspie, the takeout one is the only Pizza chain in that town I'm ok with. Ask seems to add loads of herbs - ironically without asking - you first.

I'm not saying there's something wrong in trying to appeal to older people. But you have to know what the upcoming retired generation (60s and 70s) wants and even younger people in their 50s. Not just try to cater to the really old (80s, 90s, centenarians).

I think toys will always need updating faster cos kids like the latest thing and really go in for fads in a way that grown ups don't necessarily.

Economics is not a zero sum game. Sears did not prevent Amazon from existing.

Sears was the old Amazon. You used to order through catalogues. Now those are extinct when we have online now. Sears retired their catalogues in 1993. Now the store is pretty much defunct but they still have their online website.

"Survival of the fittest" is just a phrase used by those with power to justify subjugating those that don't have power. They used to say "survival of the strongest" before we realized how overtly power-centric it was.

Capitalism relies on the ability to exploit labor. Labor is usually the biggest expense of many businesses. So the less I pay you, the more money I make. That's why slavery was so popular.

Capitalism is just about hoarding money. It's in the name. Capital is money. It's Moneyism. Capitalism the simply the ability to take other people's money and hold on to it, take as much as possible, and give as little as possible. If you have enough money, it doesn't matter if you're the best, or even good at what you do. If you think you have to be good at what you do in order to make money, I have some bad news for you. The only thing you have to be good at, is lying cheating and stealing, and getting away with it.

It doesn't matter. Companies that are deemed "too big to fail" will get government bailouts.

The rest of us have to survive on scraps.

Big box stores (out of town) and online stores make it that way nowadays I guess...

But the high street only has so much physical space. New businesses buy up empty properties.

Using my home town eg, if the toy shop was there then there'd be no mobility scooter shop cos they're in the same physical location.

High streets evolve with the needs of users. Young people grew up and left the town, older people retired there, so the needs were different.

I feel bad for workers esp workers who lose their jobs. And I feel bad for small business owners who are the workers or employ a couple of people they know personally (I think that makes them care about the work for them more. Not everyone but I know enough ppl with small businesses who think that way). But I don't feel bad for people who own large chains of shops then the shop is no longer needed. They likely ended other businesses themselves - maybe smaller more local ones. They don't know their employees or care about them as anything other than labour.

I think it's silly when hardline capitalists act shocked by their favourite businesses dying and start blaming the Covid regulations or the lockdown. Maybe if the business itself was a model which was working in 2019 that makes sense. But if the last time the model made sense was in the 90s, don't be surprised when it fails.

What upsets me on an emotional level is my home town's* basically just becoming pound shops, modern day pawn shops (Cash for Gold) and charity shops (and not the good kind of charity shop I used to volunteer in, just tatty shops without standards). It was a good place to grow up and had a mixture of shops in the 90s but now it doesn't. I hope someone revitalises it.

*I don't live there but my dad and granddad do and I visit it. Pre-covid I'd visit the shops fairly regularly.

Is it that or is it,
"Capitalism Relies On The Transient Whims of The Fickle Consumers For Survival Of Businesses
& Tries To Cope By Influencing The Transient Whims of Those Fickle Consumers"

(I do realize it could be "all of the above")

And that brings to mind the "Walmart killed the local Mom & Pop stores" thing out here in rural America.
Umm, no,
Walmart didn't kill the stores your neighbors own,
you did,
by taking your money away from them
and giving it to Walmart instead of to your neighbors' store.
You 'voted' and selected which store you wanted to survive.
And You did not select your neighbors' store.

The Sears And Roebuck Catalog is the Closest Some Folks Had to Toilet Paper in the Early 1900's...
The Closest We Surely 'Normally' Had to Porn in the Deep South in the 60's; Yes, the Bra Section

At K-Mart too... Nah, i didn't
Care About the 'Blue Light Special'...

The Best Thing About the
Sears And RoeBucks
Catalog; It Was
Free For
Everyone;
Makes Ya
Wonder Why
'They' Still Charge For TP hehe...

Meh; Just go to a Public Store
if the Walk or 'Run' isn't too far;
And It's True, Water Used to Be
Free In Public Places With Free
Snacks at the Grocery Store to
Taste Test too, Until Covid-19
Drove All that Free Stuff Away; yes,
Jesus F in Christ, A Person Will Practically Be Able to
Make a Living in Public Stores, Emptying their Pockets
And They Won't even Kick You Out for Loitering as
Long as You Offer Free Entertainment in Public
Dance; Mix Catsup And Hot Water for Tomato Soup
With Saltines At the Fast Food Joint Like 'I Love Lucy' too;
But only Before Covid-19 As they Don't Offer that only to go...

Dance; Yes, Freddy the Free Loader; it's a way to stay too...

What is the Symbol For All of What Is Evil About Money And
Capitalism; Yes; The Not So Jolly Green Giant God of the Dollar
Bill and Plastic Cards That Do That Trick now; Trump, Trump,

Trump, TRumP
The Earth
is Burping
Up the God
of Money, Trump,
Trump, Trump, Trump
Stink, Stank, Stunk, Orange Gunk...
Oh God 'IT' Also Comes in Unmasked
'5th Avenue Minions Killing' Version too..