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Comment by jldugger

18 hours ago

Interestingly, my local subreddit loves to describe Costco as a late stage capitalist dystopia.

- fighting for space everywhere: fighting for a parking lot, avoiding people seeming to ram you with their shopping cart, waiting for the extended family of seven in front of you to pick a cereal so you can leave the aisle, waiting for traffic to clear so you can _leave_ the costco

- you have to pay to get in

- and then you have to pay extra to jump to the head of the line

- fights over rare stock like pokemon cards

Look, I get that everybody has a job and can't go during the week, but if you're going to Costco outside of working hours, you're doing it wrong. I dunno about fighting over pokemon cards, which like you do you, but crowding doesn't happen at 10 am on a tuesday.

It's wild that you can look at a physical testament of the sheer abundance and affordability that capitalism has created for almost every consumer good, and people will call it a dystopia because they experience traffic or fight over the right to buy cardboard childrens toys

  • I guess it feels less abundant when there's a million people in the store and you're basically in line to check out the minute you step in.

    • This is Costco literally suffering from success, they have had an enormous growth in subscriptions yet opening stores takes time, faces regulations, has limited availability

  • Would the world really be worse off without cardboard children's toys but also without people fighting over cardboard children's toys?

    • There is nothing about Costco that is causing the fighting.

      It's entirely a unrelated subculture going insane about pumping up the prices of pieces of cardboard, and 30's-ish adults who never grew up mentally but now have disposable income.

      Normal people buy whatever packs for the kids who proceed to play the game completely wrong.