By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 23/03/2026These stores are situated in food deserts, which they create by boxing in local grocers and heavily discounting until the real grocers go out of business. They're also situated in *work* deserts, because driving regular grocers out of business destroys the competition for labor, too. 10/ 182
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 23/03/2026That means they can pay low wages and charge high prices and make a hell of a lot of money, which is why there are so many fucking dollar stores: pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/w... That's the most obvious form of value harvesting, but it's not the only one. 11/pluralistic.netPluralistic: Rural towns and poor urban neighborhoods are being devoured by dollar stores (27 Mar 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow 171
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 23/03/2026There's other costs businesses can impose on customers and workers. Think of CVS, the pharmacy monopolist that uses vertical integration with bizarre, poorly understood middlemen like "pharmacy benefit managers" to drive independent pharmacies out of business: pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/s... 12/pluralistic.netPluralistic: What the fuck is a PBM? (23 Sep 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow 141