11-26-2020, 04:39 PM
(04-06-2018, 01:43 PM)Ti m Randal Walker Wrote: As for brick and mortar, the big box stores proliferated. I now think of these are average in terms or today's retail. A few enclosed malls might survive, offering what passes for higher end retail.
It went this way: the shopping malls depended upon anchor stores, bloated versions of department stores that already existed, which would offer the convenience of allowing an exit from them into a mall which would lead to specialty boutiques and to restaurants. The problem for the anchor stores that a convenient exit was an easy way for people to get through the stores to something else. Some retailers recognized such as a convenience that they could easily do without because that convenience would do that retailer no good. So it is with Home Depot, Best Buy, Kohl's (usually), Wal*Mart, and Meijer. Wal*Mart might allow a non-competing business (typically a hair salon, bank, or restaurant) operate inside the building. In one mall that I know, Kohl's and Best Buy closed off the mall entrances during the COVID-19 pandemic with medical concerns as the reason; I would not be surprised if those stores keep the mall entrances closed after the pandemic is over. (For one thing, that likely makes shoplifting more difficult).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.