[Plantagenet]

Interesting article on ZEROHEDGE today (I know that website makes some apoplectic, but there it is).

amazonwhole-foods-cycles-aoltime-warner-sign-partys-over

They compare the Amazon takeover of Whole Foods to the ill-fated AOL takeover of Time-Warner. Both buyouts involve high flying tech firms buying out older brick and mortar companies on the premise that the tech wizards can do it better.

There really are some interesting similarities.

ZEROHEDGE goes on to speculate that this marks the top of another tech bubble in stocks, just as the 1990s tech bubble popped just after the AOL-Time Warner deal.

Time will tell....

CHEERS!

[evilgenius]

Just in Time, Amazon Patents Method to Prevent In-store Comparison Shopping

Amazon is perfecting a different kind of business model than we’ve traditionally known. First, crush an industry by focusing on growth instead of profit. Then, swoop in to “fix” the industry that was destroyed. Now that the online retailer is moving into the brick and mortar world, it’s trying to prevent the in-store price comparisons that have served it so well against competitors.

Following the announcement of Amazon’s massive bid to buy the Whole Foods grocery chain, the Washington Post reports that the company has patented an algorithm that’s designed to discourage “mobile window shopping.” Customers’ habit of visiting stores like Borders and checking the Amazon prices while they browse is understood to have played a major factor in Amazon’s competitive victories over the last decade, so it’s beginning to take measures to ensure that it doesn’t suffer the same fate.

The algorithm isn’t going to prevent a dedicated customer from checking out other retailers on their phones... for now. All it does is make it more difficult for any shoppers who are on the store’s wifi. The “Physical Store Online Shopping Control” patent analyzes the mobile browsing of the customer and if it determines that they are visiting a competitor’s website it will redirect them in one of a few ways. From the report:

It may block access to the competitor’s site, preventing customers from viewing comparable products from rivals. It might redirect the customer to Amazon’s own site or to other, Amazon-approved sites. It might notify an Amazon salesperson to approach the customer. Or it might send the customer’s smartphone a text message, coupon or other information designed to lure the person back into Amazon’s orbit.

Amazon is gradually pulling everyone deeper into its eco-system and playing around with throttling customer’s mobile browsing is not the greatest omen.

Amazon’s attempt to enter the smartphone market hasn’t really had much of an impact yet, but imagine if it had. Imagine if it does. Imagine the retailer building some sort of system that has control over your phone while you shop in any of its stores

Imagine what this will be like with the elimination of net neutrality. I thought it was bad news when I found out that my ISP could sell my browsing history. It's even worse if they can sell my actions in real time - with location information or big data driven categorization to help them.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Amazon’s attempt to enter the smartphone market hasn’t really had much of an impact yet, but imagine if it had. Imagine if it does. Imagine the retailer building some sort of system that has control over your phone while you shop in any of its stores

Interesting, but with young people living their lives with their cell phone in hand -- if a chain wants to keep people out of their stores -- controlling their phone (without permission) might well be a great way to do it. And not exactly a recipe for financial success, IMO.

OTOH, with young people being very complacent about giving up their privacy for "perks" from retailers, maybe only crabby older folks like me would even care.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Amazon is feeling the pressure. The time will come (sooner rather than later) when folks will no longer spend additional money for home delivery of bulky large items--clothing, bedding, lamps etc. The novelty of home shopping wear thin and expensive. Amazon is smart, picking the bones of the best and brightest

First, they don't have to pay extra for bulky items much of the time now. At Walmart, if it's over $50, it's generally free shipping. And they recently (say, six months ago, if memory serves) sped this shipping up to two days to compete with Amazon. I just wait until I need $50 or more of stuff I used to go to Walmart for, and get it delivered free without any of the Walmart in-store hassle, the drive both ways, or the time spent. To me, there's no comparison -- the online model is MUCH better if I don't need to closely examine something.

At Amazon, once you have Prime, it's (almost) all free. Considering how much I get in the way of online content for free, and again, I'm not spending any money driving -- I don't consider this "expensive" at all -- more like just free shipping, at the end of the day -- if I can wait two days.

Amazon needs local (not just regional) warehouse, pickup and retail space. ...I can almost guarentee we will see a new section open up in the back of the store, by service area. A product pickup for Amazon retail dry goods and electronics.

We agree here. If Amazon can save money on shipping for its frequent purchasers and pass some kind of incentive along to them to stay frequent purchasers at the same time via product pickup if they're at Whole Foods anyway, that seems like a sure winner. (***IF*** Amazon makes it efficient, unlike, say, dealing with any kind of line at Walmart. My guess is Amazon will manage to do this via some kind of cell phone app. so they have your stuff ready when you schedule a pickup). You'd have to threaten me with something scary to get me to sign up to wait in the "customer service" line at Walmart.

Has little or nothing to do with the food sector. Grocery home-delivery is just a no-go. Folks don't shop for oranges, dog food, kitty litter, or hamburger meat by Fedex.

I don't get this. I think it depends. Why NOT buy kitty litter online if Amazon makes it a good deal and ships it free with Prime? I do that. Sure beats going to Walmart, paying more, lugging around a 40 pound sack, not knowing if they'll have what I want in stock, etc. I think for ANY regular commodity type thing, the mail order thing can work out just fine, as long as the shipping is cheap or free. I just checked, and I can get free shipping on Walmart for kitty litter if I'm willing to wait about a 2 weeks for it to arrive. Most folks should be able to do a little bit of planning for such bulk items.

Now, for very fresh food, I tend to agree with you. I'd rather pick out my own oranges (or bag of oranges), my own fresh or even frozen meat, etc. I presume the kind of folks who buy expensive organic stuff at Whole Foods would be even more picky about this than me. (I just don't want it spoiled, soiled, banged up, etc, for the most part. Those folks will want "the best fish in the store, etc).

[Tanada]

Amazon’s first US union overcomes hurdles, faces new ones

NEW YORK (AP) — When a scrappy group of former and current warehouse workers on Staten Island, New York went head-to-head with Amazon in a union election, many compared it to a David and Goliath battle.

David won. And the stunning upset on Friday brought sudden exposure to the organizers and worker advocates who realized victory for the nascent Amazon Labor Union when so many other more established labor groups had failed before them, including most recently in Bessemer, Alabama.

Initial results in that election show the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union down by 118 votes, with the majority of Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer rejecting a bid to form a union. The final outcome is still up in the air with 416 outstanding challenged ballots hanging in the balance. A hearing to review the ballots is expected to begin in the coming weeks.

Chris Smalls, a fired Amazon worker who heads the ALU, has been critical of the RWDSU’s campaign, saying it didn’t have enough local support. Instead, he chose an independent path, believing workers organizing themselves would be more effective and undercut Amazon’s narrative that “third party” groups were driving union efforts.

“They were not perceived as outsiders, so that’s important,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociologist of labor and labor movements at the City University of New York.

While the odds were stacked against both union drives, with organizers facing off against a deep-pocketed retailer with an uninterrupted track record of keeping unions out of its U.S. operations, ALU was decidedly underfunded and understaffed compared with the RWDSU. Smalls said as of early March, ALU had raised and spent about $100,000 and was operating on a week-to-week budget. The group doesn’t have its own office space, and was relying on community groups and two unions to lend a hand. Legal help came from a lawyer offering pro-bono assistance.

Meanwhile, Amazon exercised all its might to fend off the organizing efforts, routinely holding mandatory meetings with workers to argue why unions are a bad idea. In a filing released last week, the company disclosed it spent about $4.2 million last year on labor consultants, who organizers say Amazon hired to persuade workers not to unionize.

Outmatched financially, Smalls and others relied on their ability to reach workers more personally by making TikTok videos, giving out free marijuana and holding barbecues and cookouts. A few weeks before the election, Smalls’ aunt cooked up soul food for a union potluck, including macaroni and cheese, collard greens, ham and baked chicken. Another pro-union worker got her neighbor to prepare Jollof rice, a West African dish organizers believed would help them make inroads with immigrant employees at the warehouse.

Kate Andrias, professor of law at Columbia University and an expert in labor law, noted a successful union — whether it is local or national — always has to be built by the workers themselves.

“This was a clearer illustration of this,” Andrias said. “The workers did this on their own.”

Amazon’s own missteps may have also contributed to the election outcome on Staten Island. Bert Flickinger III, a managing director at the consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, said derogatory comments by a company executive leaked from an internal meeting calling Smalls “not smart or articulate” and wanting to make him “the face of the entire union/organizing movement” backfired.

“It came out as condescending and it helped to galvanize workers,” said Flickinger, who consults with big labor unions.

In another example, Smalls and two organizers were arrested in February after authorities got a complaint about him trespassing at the Staten Island warehouse. The ALU used the arrests to its advantage days before the union election, teaming up with an art collective to project “THEY ARRESTED YOUR CO-WORKERS” in white letters on top of the warehouse. “THEY FIRED SOMEONE YOU KNOW,” another projection said.

“A lot of workers that were on the fence, or even against the union, flipped because of that situation,” Smalls said.

Experts note it’s difficult to know how much of ALU’s grassroots nature contributed to its victory when compared with the RWDSU. Unlike New York, Alabama is a right-to-work state that prohibits a company and a union from signing a contract that requires workers to pay dues to the union that represents them.

There was also a grassroots element to the union drive in Bessemer, which began when a group of Amazon workers there approached the RWDSU about organizing.

At a virtual press conference Thursday held by the RWDSU following the preliminary results in Alabama, president Stuart Appelbaum said he believed the election in New York benefited because it was held in a union-friendly state and Amazon workers on Staten Island voted in person, not by mail as was done in Alabama.

Despite some friction between the two labor groups in the leadup to the elections, both have adopted a friendlier public relationship in the past few days. Appelbaum praised Smalls during Thursday’s press conference, calling him a “charismatic, smart, dedicated leader.” Likewise, Smalls offered the RWDSU words of encouragement after their initial election loss.

For now, ALU is focusing on its win. Organizers say Amazon workers from more than 20 states have reached out to them to ask about organizing their warehouses. But they have their hands full with their own warehouse, and a neighboring facility slated to have a separate union election later this month.

Organizers are also preparing for a challenging negotiation process for a labor contract. The group has demanded Amazon officials to come to the table in early May. But experts say the retail giant, which has signaled plans to challenge the election results, will likely drag its feet.

“The number one thing is going to be fighting for the contract,” Smalls said. “We have to start that process right away because we know the longer drawn out the contract is, workers will lose hope and interest.”

Meanwhile, some workers are waiting to see what happens.

Tinea Greenway, a warehouse worker from Brooklyn, said before the election, she felt pressured by the messages she kept hearing both from Amazon and ALU organizers, and just wanted to make the decision herself. When the time came, she voted against the union because of a bad experience she’s had in the past with another union who she says didn’t fight for her.

“They won,” she said of the ALU. “So let’s see if they live up to the agreement of what they said they were going to do.”

AP News

[evilgenius]

Amazon is feeling the pressure. The time will come (sooner rather than later) when folks will no longer spend additional money for home delivery of bulky large items--clothing, bedding, lamps etc. The novelty of home shopping wear thin and expensive. Amazon is smart, picking the bones of the best and brightest

First, they don't have to pay extra for bulky items much of the time now. At Walmart, if it's over $50, it's generally free shipping. And they recently (say, six months ago, if memory serves) sped this shipping up to two days to compete with Amazon. I just wait until I need $50 or more of stuff I used to go to Walmart for, and get it delivered free without any of the Walmart in-store hassle, the drive both ways, or the time spent. To me, there's no comparison -- the online model is MUCH better if I don't need to closely examine something.

At Amazon, once you have Prime, it's (almost) all free. Considering how much I get in the way of online content for free, and again, I'm not spending any money driving -- I don't consider this "expensive" at all -- more like just free shipping, at the end of the day -- if I can wait two days.

Amazon needs local (not just regional) warehouse, pickup and retail space. ...I can almost guarentee we will see a new section open up in the back of the store, by service area. A product pickup for Amazon retail dry goods and electronics.

We agree here. If Amazon can save money on shipping for its frequent purchasers and pass some kind of incentive along to them to stay frequent purchasers at the same time via product pickup if they're at Whole Foods anyway, that seems like a sure winner. (***IF*** Amazon makes it efficient, unlike, say, dealing with any kind of line at Walmart. My guess is Amazon will manage to do this via some kind of cell phone app. so they have your stuff ready when you schedule a pickup). You'd have to threaten me with something scary to get me to sign up to wait in the "customer service" line at Walmart.

Has little or nothing to do with the food sector. Grocery home-delivery is just a no-go. Folks don't shop for oranges, dog food, kitty litter, or hamburger meat by Fedex.

I don't get this. I think it depends. Why NOT buy kitty litter online if Amazon makes it a good deal and ships it free with Prime? I do that. Sure beats going to Walmart, paying more, lugging around a 40 pound sack, not knowing if they'll have what I want in stock, etc. I think for ANY regular commodity type thing, the mail order thing can work out just fine, as long as the shipping is cheap or free. I just checked, and I can get free shipping on Walmart for kitty litter if I'm willing to wait about a 2 weeks for it to arrive. Most folks should be able to do a little bit of planning for such bulk items.

Now, for very fresh food, I tend to agree with you. I'd rather pick out my own oranges (or bag of oranges), my own fresh or even frozen meat, etc. I presume the kind of folks who buy expensive organic stuff at Whole Foods would be even more picky about this than me. (I just don't want it spoiled, soiled, banged up, etc, for the most part. Those folks will want "the best fish in the store, etc).

I could have commented on the union post, but this one is more relevant. Markets need factors. One factor in consumption is carrying around a heavy object, such that it causes a person not to buy it. Another factor is free shipping, which allows cheap enough prices that brick and mortar stores can't compete.

Is it the death of brick and mortar, or just that people are that lazy? I think that's an interesting question. Remember when Best Buy almost went out of business because, although they still had plenty of foot traffic, they weren't selling anything? That was because too many people used their stores to have a look at the exact thing they could buy online, but they couldn't check it out to their satisfaction online.

I work at UPS. I load trucks. I don't drive. From my point of view, we have to be protected from the worst aspects of the this trend.

Yeah, we have a union, but they are pretty much useless. I don't drive for UPS. If I did, the union would be my best friend. Since I only load the trucks, though, they don't care so much about me. The union is on the wrong side of this argument, when it comes to my position.

The only recourse I have is to quit. When I look at the fact that the Teamsters will be negotiating a new contract with UPS in a year, I don't get my hopes up. I know that loaders, pre-loaders they call us, won't get much attention.

I see the issue having humane overtones. As far as I am concerned, packages should fit into certain size ranges, or there is an extra charge. There are weight restrictions, but nobody really pays that much attention to them, unless push comes to shove. The UPS store, or the shipper themselves, often lie about what things weigh. I don't go by what the label says a package weighs, unless it is a small package.

So many things come through the system with boot holes in them. They get to me after traveling through a myriad of loaders just like me, who get frustrated with their circumstances and lash out at the packages. I don't do that, but, as far as I am concerned, nobody's package is more important than any other person's package.

I don't care how many fragile stickers you put on it. I do, however, think that if you pack something so poorly that the package comes apart, it is your fault, not mine. And I think senders who consistently scrimp like that should be penalized, by not getting bulk discounts.

I also think that if your package doesn't fit on the shelf in at least one orientation, then you should be paying more to ship it, not getting free shipping. The robots will need package size restrictions in order to figure out loading. They won't be able to think like people. They will probably implement them for the robots. They won't even think about it for human beings. Human beings, it seems, are there to be exploited.

Free shipping is a curse. Neither UPS, nor the Teamsters can see that. It may have served a purpose, in promoting the success of the internet when an incentive like that was necessary, but, now, it serves as an artifice which emboldens people to look the other way at a dangerous trend for workers.

[evilgenius]

Which is to say that, conversely, free shipping is a boon to business. Or is it? The point I am getting at is whether more business drummed up by free shipping is really worth it? It causes problems that show up in places like breakage, which I mentioned above. But those places are usually more like the canary in the coal mine, they alert, but do not fully demonstrate how the problem can be one of expense that builds up in unexpected places. Those unexpected places, the unexpected consequences of the best laid plans, can change the math that a company thought would work. It seems that the companies are not revisiting their original expectations, and seeing if they can still get there from here.

This attitude shows up in the politicization of labor. The situation is politicized on both sides. What this does is undermine the idea of management that empowering one's workers is the best way to go about getting things done. Everything tends to become a battlefield, and inefficiency reigns.

[Tanada]

Which is to say that, conversely, free shipping is a boon to business. Or is it? The point I am getting at is whether more business drummed up by free shipping is really worth it? It causes problems that show up in places like breakage, which I mentioned above. But those places are usually more like the canary in the coal mine, they alert, but do not fully demonstrate how the problem can be one of expense that builds up in unexpected places. Those unexpected places, the unexpected consequences of the best laid plans, can change the math that a company thought would work. It seems that the companies are not revisiting their original expectations, and seeing if they can still get there from here.

This attitude shows up in the politicization of labor. The situation is politicized on both sides. What this does is undermine the idea of management that empowering one's workers is the best way to go about getting things done. Everything tends to become a battlefield, and inefficiency reigns.

There is a lot of truth in what you say. At one time there were two basic types of business in the USA, the Mom & Pop type business where you knew your employees and treated them like human beings with a touch of compassion here and there and the Robber Baron sort who sought to squeeze every penny out of every operation to get as rich as possible as quickly as possible.

The reality is if you treat your employees like humans with a touch of compassion they will generally bend over backwards trying to make your business a success because they like and respect you as a boss. If you go in with the attitude that they are replaceable cogs in your machine they know you have no respect for them no matter what so they have zero loyalty to you and don't care if your business dies because they can get another crap job for another crap company when yours goes under.

[Doly]

At one time there were two basic types of business in the USA, the Mom & Pop type business where you knew your employees and treated them like human beings with a touch of compassion here and there and the Robber Baron sort who sought to squeeze every penny out of every operation to get as rich as possible as quickly as possible.

I once read a book about how Ben & Jerry ice creams grew as a company, and it was very instructive. It started as a mom & pop type of business and ended up a corporation. It was very clear that, at the point that a company grows to the point of going public, it's doomed to lose its soul. The reason for this is that the people who run mom & pop business lack the necessary knowledge to run a corporation, in terms of all sorts of complicated financial and legal stuff that goes with it and that they would need to know. So they are forced to give the management away to somebody of the Robber Baron class, while keeping some sort of symbolic position within the company, with no real power. Only people of the Robber Baron class can afford the sort of extremely expensive education that teaches you this kind of knowledge, and usually they have been groomed since birth not to give a sh*t about common people, and all their education reinforces that it's perfectly OK to be a bastard in business. The only exceptions I'm aware of to this rule are a couple of tech companies run by very smart geeks, that on realising that they'd need to go public, they spent their own money into getting the needed expensive education.

[Outcast_Searcher]

At one time there were two basic types of business in the USA, the Mom & Pop type business where you knew your employees and treated them like human beings with a touch of compassion here and there and the Robber Baron sort who sought to squeeze every penny out of every operation to get as rich as possible as quickly as possible.

I once read a book about how Ben & Jerry ice creams grew as a company, and it was very instructive. It started as a mom & pop type of business and ended up a corporation. It was very clear that, at the point that a company grows to the point of going public, it's doomed to lose its soul.

Except, it's utter NONSENSE to act like all large companies bad, all mom and pop outfits good.

I worked for IBM for 26+ years, following my dad, who worked there for 33.

For the first half of my time there (until Lou Gerstner's tenure started in 1993), the company generally treated its employees fairly well. Respect for the Individual was one of their core beliefs (it was number one). Benefits were good, pay was decent, and job security was fantastic if you just showed up and made an effort. And IBM had roughly 400,000 employees by then, so not exactly a mom and pop place, but a huge corporation.

Then suddenly they turned everything into cost cutting, firing people to obtain that, cutting benefits, cutting peoples' retirements, pay, and on and on. Oh, and treating people like crap on the job while they did that (hoping you'd leave voluntarily, I think). Also, many of the former hard workers (including me), eventually stopped doing more than we had to (I did great work WHEN they rewarded me well). It's not like the management in place (from marketing) could tell the difference any more.

It had nothing to do with size. It had to do with financial pressures leading them to think they had to manage another way. Things did change. Almost all the good employees quit or retired. (I did too, but it took me 13 years, as I was reaching when I could retire early by then, I didn't want to move as my parents needed help, etc).

The 90's book "White Collar Sweat Shop" pointed out what happened to 80 million-ish US workers. Not due to just big corporations, but due to financial stress and how the VAST amount of employers, large and small, reacted to those stresses.

There are endless counter-examples to the example that big companies are all bad and small ones are good.

And MANY mom and pop places are TERRIBLE, even for legal things like unemployment benefits, where you have to SUE them to get them to follow the law. Again, it's not about size, it's about financial stress, and thinking doing the wrong thing gives company owners an advantage.

What does making such arbitrary generalizations get you? Instead of hating "the man", why not hate the employers who actually DESERVE it?

[evilgenius]

At one time there were two basic types of business in the USA, the Mom & Pop type business where you knew your employees and treated them like human beings with a touch of compassion here and there and the Robber Baron sort who sought to squeeze every penny out of every operation to get as rich as possible as quickly as possible.

I once read a book about how Ben & Jerry ice creams grew as a company, and it was very instructive. It started as a mom & pop type of business and ended up a corporation. It was very clear that, at the point that a company grows to the point of going public, it's doomed to lose its soul.

Except, it's utter NONSENSE to act like all large companies bad, all mom and pop outfits good.

I worked for IBM for 26+ years, following my dad, who worked there for 33.

For the first half of my time there (until Lou Gerstner's tenure started in 1993), the company generally treated its employees fairly well. Respect for the Individual was one of their core beliefs (it was number one). Benefits were good, pay was decent, and job security was fantastic if you just showed up and made an effort. And IBM had roughly 400,000 employees by then, so not exactly a mom and pop place, but a huge corporation.

Then suddenly they turned everything into cost cutting, firing people to obtain that, cutting benefits, cutting peoples' retirements, pay, and on and on. Oh, and treating people like crap on the job while they did that (hoping you'd leave voluntarily, I think). Also, many of the former hard workers (including me), eventually stopped doing more than we had to (I did great work WHEN they rewarded me well). It's not like the management in place (from marketing) could tell the difference any more.

It had nothing to do with size. It had to do with financial pressures leading them to think they had to manage another way. Things did change. Almost all the good employees quit or retired. (I did too, but it took me 13 years, as I was reaching when I could retire early by then, I didn't want to move as my parents needed help, etc).

The 90's book "White Collar Sweat Shop" pointed out what happened to 80 million-ish US workers. Not due to just big corporations, but due to financial stress and how the VAST amount of employers, large and small, reacted to those stresses.

There are endless counter-examples to the example that big companies are all bad and small ones are good.

And MANY mom and pop places are TERRIBLE, even for legal things like unemployment benefits, where you have to SUE them to get them to follow the law. Again, it's not about size, it's about financial stress, and thinking doing the wrong thing gives company owners an advantage.

What does making such arbitrary generalizations get you? Instead of hating "the man", why not hate the employers who actually DESERVE it?

This argument, that there may be no correlation between business nature and behavior, is also why I don't like relying upon the "backyard chickens" concept, to fill in economic gaps.

That stuff comes front loaded, with automatic grants that allow a lot of misbehavior. Local politicians don't tend to shy away, that far, from things like conflict of interest. Land developers, mostly, but there could be those who hope to support solar adoption, for instance.

It's quite alright, if your new rules don't make home ownership onerous. Don't force people who are barely making it. That's just being deliberately blind. It's a different thing, though, if you can guarantee a rebate of some kind, or a discount on some other form of tax?

Not fully guarantee enough of a payback to make a homeowner see a return on their investment, but help to guarantee. To push that much further, spending where they can, for an idea, in this case we say solar adoption, that the people at large have deemed is important.

Local politics is a dangerous place, also, to place the fate of things such as alternative energy. The Federal Government should be able to function in a manner that can support that, at the beginning, when it is needed more. Everybody loves the government, when it is spending its money on them!

For some things, there isn't enough money in the world. For a sustainable future, which, as we see in Ukraine, will also be important strategically, there might be. It sort of fits the definition of the mass interest. It might just mean road signs with solar panels. Solar panels on more government buildings. Across the country, that may be "extra push" enough.

But when they can afford to directly incentivize local homeowners, with promises the homeowners can count on, then they will be getting somewhere. That might only be possible when the country at large is doing so well, that region to region there is so little chance of deterioration.

Do Americans simply not talk about their faults so much, that things like addiction problems rampant within the community aren't reflected at all? When every creek is full of homeless people, maybe it's time to admit a homeless problem? I don't mean acknowledgement that passes the problem along, which local governments are much more prone to do.

So it would have to come when local government had some guarantees that the Feds would boost the sector. Because everything they put in requires for it to be that extra push, in addition to the much more effective Federal boost. It's bad if they spend against the wind. Local can't borrow like Federal. They can't just endlessly keep coming back.

Backyard chickens just exposes you to vigilante justice, if you happen to be right, and can't back down, for whatever reason. Then they are just as sincere as any cops, or HOA council, ever were, when they walked away, shaking their heads, wishing that, to them, there had been "another way." Things happen fast, when they happen locally. Sometimes, too fast.

Because what this really is, is a return to the old days of one's reputation going before them. An age of far less anonymity. A place where shame is a more effective deterrent. We see victims elevated every day, but no one wants to be a victim. Who would?

Our problem is we haven't yet questioned why we are asking those types of questions, where we require so many victims? Because our standards create victims. They hold back ordinary people, who would, otherwise, be heroes. No, it isn't wrong to boost the weak. Just don't make being ordinary onerous for the ordinary! We can have policies that keep that victimization to a minimum.

Figure that equation out, how to instill things like solar, or other government programs, in a more coordinated manner, then, as solar adoption begins to take off in earnest, with EV ownership going up, Trumpville may just evaporate away.