Grocery giants just can’t help themselves.

[driusan@doomscroller.social]

@Bwacton@mastodon.social @avilewis@mstdn.ca Is that a serious question or do you not know the history of Co-op Atlantic?

If not I'm afraid I'm not knowledgeable enough to explain the whole backstory but my understanding is it was similar to what happened to MEC.. poor management, leading to the same management selling it out over member concerns.

[bwacton@mastodon.social]

@driusan @avilewis I’m familiar ( member) with credit unions and my local retail gas coop, I think in Alberta they also have retail food stores. The Cooperative movement has more successes than failures.

[tezoatlipoca@mas.to]

@Bwacton @avilewis Co-ops aren't perfect (e.g. MEC's implosion) and neither would a government option be - for one to keep costs low they'd have to focus on a smaller set of skus than any private or co-op retailer.
There's room for all 3, but there's a clear need to hold any partial/private retailers accountable for screwing customers with false weights, bread collusion, shrinkflation or predatory pricing.

[driusan@doomscroller.social]

@Bwacton@mastodon.social @avilewis@mstdn.ca My experience with coops in eastern Canada has been that they mostly follow the same trajectory:

1. Start as a niche
2. Get popular because they're really good
3. Hit a point where they're popular enough that people running for the board have more "business" credentials than interest in the co-op model, and has members that vote for them because of their paper credentials.
4. Business people take over and put in roadblocks for members to run for the board
5. Quality declines significantly
6. Declare bankruptcy and sell to private equity over members objections

but maybe I'm just still bitter about MEC.

At any rate, I do agree that the co-op model is better than for-profit and should be better supported. I just think we need to fix 4-6 before pushing it as an alternative to public grocers considering in Atlantic Canada there was a significant co-op option until 10 years ago when it finished that cycle and sold out to Sobeys.

[fartnuggets@jorts.horse]

@avilewis I would love some corporate accountability, where fines represent more than just "cost of doing business"

Canadians need corrective powers over the individuals making these decisions. Personal accountability for crimes against society sure would go a long way towards bringing back trust in our free market economy.

It's exhausting to hear that the same companies are screwing us in the same way, and making the same record profits, while govt uses tax revenue to offset the difference.

[cy@fedicy.us.to]

Yeah, like, you fine someone, great, and you leave the reins in their hands? Then you're surprised when they steal the stagecoach again? Those bastards need to be taken out of power, and that means shutting down bad businesses, and replacing them with something better, so they can't just start the same scam with a different name.

CC: @avilewis@mstdn.ca

[tweakedenigma@mstdn.ca]

@Bwacton @avilewis If this public option is also working as a distributor then it would benefit Co-ops as well.

Loblaws and Empire basically hold all the smaller providers hostage as there is no one else able to supply them including the remaining Co-ops in the east.

[bwacton@mastodon.social]

@Tweakedenigma @avilewis I agree we need intervention all the way along the supply chain. One of unintended outcomes of legislation for mad cow disease was tighter slaughter house regulations that forced a number of small operations to close resulting in industry concentration.

[fartnuggets@jorts.horse]

@cy @avilewis Galen Weston Jr is a crime against Canadians

[kbal@fedia.io]

free market economy

Whatever you imagine the ideal of a free market to be like, the situation with grocery stores in Canada sure isn't one. It's not free, it's all locked up by a profit-maximizing oligopoly — just like far too much of the rest of the economy.

[fartnuggets@jorts.horse]

@kbal @avilewis sure would be great if we had some kind of means of stopping anti competitive behaviour. Imagine if we had both legislation and enforcement that made it financially ruinous to run a criminal enterprise... How wonderful that would be.

[militaryg@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@avilewis as I'm always saying the system

max 5x salary of workers in company company can have money everything more is cut

and worker can have min 1k max 5k salary

this system would automatically prevent this and they would not do it but lower the cost dramatically.

there would not be billionaires not even millionaires everyone would be equal. no poverty

[militaryg@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@avilewis they are always propaganding equality why don't they do it here. well cuz it hurts them.

[tweakedenigma@mstdn.ca]

@driusan @Bwacton @avilewis Co-op Atlantic was a particularly bad run.

The Federated Co-ops out west are very strong. Also lots of great examples of successes in the Book Grocery Story (and a section on the fall of Co-op Atlantic).