[extropy-chat] Seven cents an hour? (was: Riots in France)

[Alfio Puglisi]

On 11/14/05, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> Jef it occurred to me that Europe Inc. must have dealt
> with this problem a long time ago.  I understand that
> civilization has been around a long time on that
> continent.  How about it Europeans?  How did you
> guys handle the classic conflict between small
> local shops and huge retail monsters?  Do you
> have something analogous to the yank's Walmarts
> and Fry's?  Do the big cities have
> them and the small towns not?  If so, do
> people go to the cities to shop?

(not speaking for the whole Europe, just for my country)

Sorry but we didn't deal with this problem a long time ago, actually
we are just starting, and we are behing the US in this kind of things.
Small shops were the rule until a few years ago, except for grocery
store chains.

In the last ten or five years, a lot of huge shopping centers sprung
up around the cities. They are seen as an "americanized" way of doing
shopping. A few of the mentioned grocery store chains are starting to
expand their product range in the "everything" direction, so they
could be start being comparable with US retail giants.

They sometimes have a socialistic touch, for example one of the
biggest is Coop (short for "cooperative"), which just opened another
IperCoop megastore not far from here. You can become a member of the
cooperative, effectively buying a vanishingly small part of it, they
have special savings accounts for their members, have published specs
for quality control, etc. Most others are purely retail and compete
almost only on price.

But the huge retail centers are still quite new. Also, keep in mind
that a 60 minutes drive is considered "long" around here, especially
for shopping, so in the small towns most people goes to the small
local shops.

Alfio