A German fan couldn't choose from 100+ sodas. A Scot called Buc-ee's one of a kind. A Swede couldn't believe every restaurant has its own ranch. This summer's World Cup visitors are stumbling onto the same discovery a Soviet politician made in a Houston grocery store in 1989.
As always, I enjoyed it. But, your Facts & Figures You Didn't Know You Wanted often lack that little bit extra that I want. For example, Luling, Texas, home of the largest convenience store in the world is in a town of fewer than 6,000 people. To people not for the United States, that is super confusing, I am sure. But seeing on a map that it is between Austin, San Antonio, and on the way to Houston, you have potential buyers traveling between these large cities constantly. If people weren't driving like Americans are prone to do, this place would not exist.
120 gas pumps?
200 employees on site at a time?
10,000 to 20,000+ customers per day?
Those are the numbers that intrigue me more than the physical size of the place!
A bigger story here is that path-dependent differences in national, and even regional, tastes make international welfare comparisons highly problematic except when one country has more of everything. A moderately well-off Parisian would hate the life of a a wealthy Midwestern suburbanite and vice versa with a switch of incomes.
Regionally, Sydney isn't that much different from the Sunshine Coast, but you'd have to pay me millions a year to live there. Same true in reverse ( a little less so with Noosa, which is a Southern enclave)
Except there is no such thing as "Sydney". There are multiple Sydneys. The eastern suburbs beaches are very different from the Northern beaches, the inner west and "western" Sydney etc. The latter also being very diverse...in population, beliefs, lifestyle, religion, recreation and much else.
You can say the same of all major cities making these comparisons/generalisations almost entirely pointless.
It also highlights the futility of the gross racist generalisations of Pauline Hanson et al.
As a white male anglo-celt living in Bronte, I had much more in common with the second generation Indian origin Sikh doctor living next door than I did with most Anglo Celtic tradies living in Liverpool.
That is, in itself, a big generalisation but it demonstrates the futility of Hanson's ignorant attempts to divide and stigmatise based on racial or religious stereotypes
True of course, and the variation goes down to suburb, street and individual level. As an aside, important to note that Hanson is mainly gaining votes from LNP supporters who always shared her views, but are only now getting the choice to say so out loud.
Having lived in several countries, I find that the choice and size of options stand out in America. I will note that one benefit the states have is the number of customers; it is often overlooked as a reason why companies can offer choices.
While I appreciate the variety, I do wish we sold things in smaller units so that I could try all that variety. I'm just not in a position to commit to full sized cartons of things I've never tried before.
Funny thing about America is the chocolate bar selection sucks. Far too few options. Canada has Nestle, Cadbury, Mars, and micro chocolate companies such as peace by chocolate. America is VERY abundant by needs work on Chocolate.
Attempting to centrally plan everything was nonsense. But it might not be nonsense now, as marketing companies built the infrastructure to understand desires and demand at scale. There seems to be a significant bet being placed on this being the case.
Is this just a statement about the maturity of the market system? If the EU markets are dominated by a few participants, is it just a matter of time before this becomes true of the stares as well? We seem to have a few national-(or international)-scale companies growing ever-more-dominant in several industries, and this is probably worse if you dig under the surface to determine which companies are functionally actually the same due to the ownership being identical. Is the EU-state our (near) future?
You could argue that we see the same market structure as the EU on a regional level rather than a national level. There may be a dozen major grocery outlets, but regionally there may only be 2-3 real giants.
This reminded me a lot of Robert Reich's stance on the role of governments in supporting a free market economy. I think he talked about it in Saving Capitalism.
Hayek clearly stated that government had a place in society. It should provide the skeleton or framework by which order liberty expresses itself. As Tom said, governments are instituted among men for the protection of rights. It is good for very little else. When government plans or directs, it is for political reasons, not economical. As such, will always be suboptimal, including the incorporation of grift and corruption. Why did the state of Missouri get two Federal Reserve Banks? Apologetics for government.
It’s interesting that Friedman also famously used pencils as an example of the invisible hand - but Dani Rodrik has discussed how the current production of pencils actually shows the effectiveness of a mixed economy as pencils are no longer produced in the same places as when Friedman was writing.
Straight Talk on Trade, p 132. I was just looking at the passage again and you’re right - Rodrik says Friedman’s discussion, which appeared in a tv show, Free to Choose, was based on Read
Not really my experience. Huge variety in some things, limited choice in others. Take the category of cookies. US has a fair few variants on the basic version (round, with chocolate chip or similar), and then a handful of specialty - Fig Newton, Oreo etc. In australia, US-style cookies are mostly home-made, but there are vast numbers of specialties (we call them biscuits). The iconic one is a chocolate biscuit called Tim Tam, which comes in at least a dozen different varieties.
Same, surprisingly for pizza, as reflected in the great controversy over pineapple, which (as "Hawaiian") was always a standard item on Oz menus.
A great read. Thank you for covering interesting topics and helping us see connections to economics. My only reservation, as a Ukrainian, I would not be that positive in depicting Yeltsin.
That's a fair criticism, but one that I'll admit I'm not at all familiar with. Do you have any good book recommendations on Ukrainian history and its connection/dissolution from the Soviet Union?
Please don't take it as criticism :) I'm aware of my personal biases. If you would like to know more about Ukraine, read articles and books by Anne Applebaum and Serhii Plokhy.
I guess this is like my delight when I go to French rest stops on the highway and find foie gras, wine, and cassoulet. Which still seems a lot better than what you find in a 7-11.
To be fair, I geek out about ABC Stores in Hawaii because they have spam and that's still part of the United States. We need more regional variety in our stores!
This may be my favorite Monday Morning Economist post yet! Really enjoyed this, especially the connection to the Soviet conversion to capitalism. I had no idea about that bit of history, so enjoyed learning about that!
I'm not really convinced by this. There's an American guy who keeps popping up on my social media. He's travelling around the UK and Spain with his family and making endearing videos about the culture he observes. Some of it is about the quirks of behaviour. But a lot of it is stuff like "I just went into a greengrocers in Yorkshire and the selection of cheese is just insane. There are so many varieties. We have nothing like this back home in the US"
He's very complimentary about the UK, and as a Brit it makes me feel warm inside. But I don't think it makes the UK better than the US - it's just different.
I think you might be confusing a bunch of tourists noticing that the country they're visiting is different to home with some kind of profound insight into the superiority of the US.
And the Soviet Union is a pretty low hurdle to clear...
I was thinking about your article again today when I went shopping and saw a bottle of Ranch Dressing. What actually is a Bucc'ees? Is it like a supermarket attached to a service station on a motorway?
I'm intrigued because digging into this a bit more and I found Bucc'ees claims to have the biggest "convenience store" in the world, but it's only about half as big as the shop I was stood in this afternoon on the edge of the medium sized town in England that I live in. And believe me, there was no shortage of choice on soft drinks or sweets (I had to steer my son away from them!)
So I wonder if it's not just a case of tourists getting excited because they're in a different country, but actually you're comparing different things entirely. Sure, we don't have that level of choice in our motorway service stations. But our transport system is set up very differently. We don't really go shopping in service stations. We buy a snack and get back driving. If we want to go shopping, we go to a shop.
And if you asked a Brit to describe a convenience store they'd probably guess you meant something like "a small local shop where you go to buy snacks, drinks, newspapers, a bottle of milk, and have a bit of a chat with the owner to catch up on local gossip". It would be somewhere you'd walk to from your house, not a drive. But tbh, "convenience store" isn't really a term in British English.
FWIW, if you want to know how good a motorway service station can actually be, check out Tebay on the M6 in the North West of England. It doesn't have 100 petrol pumps, or more varieties of Coke than the human mind can cope with, but it does have genuinely great food from local producers.
Anyway, an interesting article. Could you explain Bucc'ees a bit more and I might then understand your point better.
I'm curious what you see as so sad about it? One of my favorite things to do when traveling abroad is to visit their grocery stores and convenience stores to see the differences.
I’ve watched a couple of those videos and the foreigners are amazed and gleeful over things I see as gluttonous, extreme Capitalism, or otherwise head scratching. Excessive servings at restaurants, Costco/Walmart, air conditioned stadiums and malls, dragsters, gas stations. Nobody mentions the rampant obesity, extinction of mom & pops, waste upon waste, like nothing matters. Sorry to rain on your parade, just my humble opinion. But thanks for asking!
I’m a “buy local” kinda guy, plus I don’t like overspending at restaurants for XL portion sizes. The foreigners are thinking that the grass is greener here, but everything is not as it seems sometimes. To your other point, I also enjoy going to markets that the locals enjoy, when on vacation. Traveling to other countries can be a great experience.
As always, I enjoyed it. But, your Facts & Figures You Didn't Know You Wanted often lack that little bit extra that I want. For example, Luling, Texas, home of the largest convenience store in the world is in a town of fewer than 6,000 people. To people not for the United States, that is super confusing, I am sure. But seeing on a map that it is between Austin, San Antonio, and on the way to Houston, you have potential buyers traveling between these large cities constantly. If people weren't driving like Americans are prone to do, this place would not exist.
120 gas pumps?
200 employees on site at a time?
10,000 to 20,000+ customers per day?
Those are the numbers that intrigue me more than the physical size of the place!
You’re not wrong at all. I was in such a rush on this one this morning that I sort of phoned it in on the facts & figures.
A bigger story here is that path-dependent differences in national, and even regional, tastes make international welfare comparisons highly problematic except when one country has more of everything. A moderately well-off Parisian would hate the life of a a wealthy Midwestern suburbanite and vice versa with a switch of incomes.
Regionally, Sydney isn't that much different from the Sunshine Coast, but you'd have to pay me millions a year to live there. Same true in reverse ( a little less so with Noosa, which is a Southern enclave)
Except there is no such thing as "Sydney". There are multiple Sydneys. The eastern suburbs beaches are very different from the Northern beaches, the inner west and "western" Sydney etc. The latter also being very diverse...in population, beliefs, lifestyle, religion, recreation and much else.
You can say the same of all major cities making these comparisons/generalisations almost entirely pointless.
It also highlights the futility of the gross racist generalisations of Pauline Hanson et al.
As a white male anglo-celt living in Bronte, I had much more in common with the second generation Indian origin Sikh doctor living next door than I did with most Anglo Celtic tradies living in Liverpool.
That is, in itself, a big generalisation but it demonstrates the futility of Hanson's ignorant attempts to divide and stigmatise based on racial or religious stereotypes
True of course, and the variation goes down to suburb, street and individual level. As an aside, important to note that Hanson is mainly gaining votes from LNP supporters who always shared her views, but are only now getting the choice to say so out loud.
Having lived in several countries, I find that the choice and size of options stand out in America. I will note that one benefit the states have is the number of customers; it is often overlooked as a reason why companies can offer choices.
While I appreciate the variety, I do wish we sold things in smaller units so that I could try all that variety. I'm just not in a position to commit to full sized cartons of things I've never tried before.
Funny thing about America is the chocolate bar selection sucks. Far too few options. Canada has Nestle, Cadbury, Mars, and micro chocolate companies such as peace by chocolate. America is VERY abundant by needs work on Chocolate.
We’ve been cursed by the Hershey corporation.
Probably two things here:
Attempting to centrally plan everything was nonsense. But it might not be nonsense now, as marketing companies built the infrastructure to understand desires and demand at scale. There seems to be a significant bet being placed on this being the case.
Is this just a statement about the maturity of the market system? If the EU markets are dominated by a few participants, is it just a matter of time before this becomes true of the stares as well? We seem to have a few national-(or international)-scale companies growing ever-more-dominant in several industries, and this is probably worse if you dig under the surface to determine which companies are functionally actually the same due to the ownership being identical. Is the EU-state our (near) future?
You could argue that we see the same market structure as the EU on a regional level rather than a national level. There may be a dozen major grocery outlets, but regionally there may only be 2-3 real giants.
Also, you might want to read my response to a standard exposition of Hayek
https://johnquiggin.com/2011/04/16/i-pencil-a-product-of-the-mixed-economy/
This reminded me a lot of Robert Reich's stance on the role of governments in supporting a free market economy. I think he talked about it in Saving Capitalism.
Hayek clearly stated that government had a place in society. It should provide the skeleton or framework by which order liberty expresses itself. As Tom said, governments are instituted among men for the protection of rights. It is good for very little else. When government plans or directs, it is for political reasons, not economical. As such, will always be suboptimal, including the incorporation of grift and corruption. Why did the state of Missouri get two Federal Reserve Banks? Apologetics for government.
Agree that this is what Hayek stated as a general proposition. But, as I show, it doesn't work for pencils.
It’s interesting that Friedman also famously used pencils as an example of the invisible hand - but Dani Rodrik has discussed how the current production of pencils actually shows the effectiveness of a mixed economy as pencils are no longer produced in the same places as when Friedman was writing.
Friedman was probably alluding to Read's "I, Pencil", as I was. Do you have a link for Rodrik?
Straight Talk on Trade, p 132. I was just looking at the passage again and you’re right - Rodrik says Friedman’s discussion, which appeared in a tv show, Free to Choose, was based on Read
Not really my experience. Huge variety in some things, limited choice in others. Take the category of cookies. US has a fair few variants on the basic version (round, with chocolate chip or similar), and then a handful of specialty - Fig Newton, Oreo etc. In australia, US-style cookies are mostly home-made, but there are vast numbers of specialties (we call them biscuits). The iconic one is a chocolate biscuit called Tim Tam, which comes in at least a dozen different varieties.
Same, surprisingly for pizza, as reflected in the great controversy over pineapple, which (as "Hawaiian") was always a standard item on Oz menus.
I need to get my hands on some Tim Tams because I’ve only heard great things.
They are great, but a little too chocolaty for me. We have superior versions of Oreos (Delta Creams) and FIg Newtons (Spicy Fruit Rolls), but my go to is Monte Carlo. https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/36031/arnott-s-monte-carlo-cream-biscuits
A great read. Thank you for covering interesting topics and helping us see connections to economics. My only reservation, as a Ukrainian, I would not be that positive in depicting Yeltsin.
That's a fair criticism, but one that I'll admit I'm not at all familiar with. Do you have any good book recommendations on Ukrainian history and its connection/dissolution from the Soviet Union?
Please don't take it as criticism :) I'm aware of my personal biases. If you would like to know more about Ukraine, read articles and books by Anne Applebaum and Serhii Plokhy.
Thank you! I need to be better informed, but it's hard to weave through a lot of the stuff online to find things that are accurate.
I guess this is like my delight when I go to French rest stops on the highway and find foie gras, wine, and cassoulet. Which still seems a lot better than what you find in a 7-11.
To be fair, I geek out about ABC Stores in Hawaii because they have spam and that's still part of the United States. We need more regional variety in our stores!
That is fair!
This may be my favorite Monday Morning Economist post yet! Really enjoyed this, especially the connection to the Soviet conversion to capitalism. I had no idea about that bit of history, so enjoyed learning about that!
Oh man! Two in a row at the top of your list? It's only downhill from here.
no way! I don't believe you've peaked :)
The way you make connections to economics through everyday experience --> brilliant.
That is incredibly kind. Thank you, Lynne!
I'm not really convinced by this. There's an American guy who keeps popping up on my social media. He's travelling around the UK and Spain with his family and making endearing videos about the culture he observes. Some of it is about the quirks of behaviour. But a lot of it is stuff like "I just went into a greengrocers in Yorkshire and the selection of cheese is just insane. There are so many varieties. We have nothing like this back home in the US"
He's very complimentary about the UK, and as a Brit it makes me feel warm inside. But I don't think it makes the UK better than the US - it's just different.
I think you might be confusing a bunch of tourists noticing that the country they're visiting is different to home with some kind of profound insight into the superiority of the US.
And the Soviet Union is a pretty low hurdle to clear...
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
I was thinking about your article again today when I went shopping and saw a bottle of Ranch Dressing. What actually is a Bucc'ees? Is it like a supermarket attached to a service station on a motorway?
I'm intrigued because digging into this a bit more and I found Bucc'ees claims to have the biggest "convenience store" in the world, but it's only about half as big as the shop I was stood in this afternoon on the edge of the medium sized town in England that I live in. And believe me, there was no shortage of choice on soft drinks or sweets (I had to steer my son away from them!)
So I wonder if it's not just a case of tourists getting excited because they're in a different country, but actually you're comparing different things entirely. Sure, we don't have that level of choice in our motorway service stations. But our transport system is set up very differently. We don't really go shopping in service stations. We buy a snack and get back driving. If we want to go shopping, we go to a shop.
And if you asked a Brit to describe a convenience store they'd probably guess you meant something like "a small local shop where you go to buy snacks, drinks, newspapers, a bottle of milk, and have a bit of a chat with the owner to catch up on local gossip". It would be somewhere you'd walk to from your house, not a drive. But tbh, "convenience store" isn't really a term in British English.
FWIW, if you want to know how good a motorway service station can actually be, check out Tebay on the M6 in the North West of England. It doesn't have 100 petrol pumps, or more varieties of Coke than the human mind can cope with, but it does have genuinely great food from local producers.
Anyway, an interesting article. Could you explain Bucc'ees a bit more and I might then understand your point better.
Glory to consumerism
It’s so sad to see
I'm curious what you see as so sad about it? One of my favorite things to do when traveling abroad is to visit their grocery stores and convenience stores to see the differences.
I’ve watched a couple of those videos and the foreigners are amazed and gleeful over things I see as gluttonous, extreme Capitalism, or otherwise head scratching. Excessive servings at restaurants, Costco/Walmart, air conditioned stadiums and malls, dragsters, gas stations. Nobody mentions the rampant obesity, extinction of mom & pops, waste upon waste, like nothing matters. Sorry to rain on your parade, just my humble opinion. But thanks for asking!
I hadn't looked at it that way, but it's an interesting perspective I hadn't considered before. Thank you for sharing.
I’m a “buy local” kinda guy, plus I don’t like overspending at restaurants for XL portion sizes. The foreigners are thinking that the grass is greener here, but everything is not as it seems sometimes. To your other point, I also enjoy going to markets that the locals enjoy, when on vacation. Traveling to other countries can be a great experience.
My unpopular opinion is that I actually prefer shrinkflation over inflation because portion sizes were way too big to begin with.