The way supermarkets squeeze suppliers is unfortunate, and probably symptomatic of a short-termism that affects a lot of industry - not sure I have any solutions. However, I wouldn't want to live in the Iron Curtain communist era of state control of food production, shortages and joining queues around the block for products unknown, just because this might be your only chance to buy whatever is on sale (personally witnessed in Romania in around 1981). Likewise, those who hark back to the "good old" days of going to half a dozen local specialist shops every day for food shopping are blokes longing for the days when women were "her indoors", the little housewife given an allowance to buy groceries, who spend every day dusting, washing clothes and going to the shops, to put dinner on the table for hubby when he gets home from work. (And don't forget, those were also the days of early closing one day a week, possibly Saturday morning only opening). How many of you would really want spend your mornings trekking round the local shops every day? Frankly I'd rather have my financial independence, a job (and money for motorbikes) and pop into Waitrose or Tescos after work! And as for bemoaning the takeover of local corner shops by the supermarkets, did any of you actually buy the overpriced stale traffic fume infested pathetic few bits of fruit and veg that might have been offered there before? I find the quality and selection offered by the Sainsburys Locals/Tesco Metros that take over the sad little Kwik-e-Marts generally better than what was there before.
Your view of corner shops sounds like city life. I doubt it would be like that down here in the countryside. If tescos hadn't squeezed everyone out!
Don't forget, Tesco was once a local shop, T E Stockwell & CO. If you went back to a time before Tesco, you would inevitably end up with another Tesco, it's how capitalism and a free market works.
I can remember Tesco being on the verge of pout of business, when Kwik Save, Asda and others launched and people either went Sainsburys or KS as one was better quality, one was cheaper, than Tesco. Stack em high, sell em cheap. Now look at it, an increasingly competitive market but one where all the players seem to increase margins year on year by adding diverse product sets and branching out into clothes, white goods, electrical etc unlike the tech world where seems only Currys and the occasional independent Sony or Panasonic centre survive. This is the modern impact of supermarkets
