You can't always get what you want. But if you try real hard, you can get what you need.
Here ends today's TED talk.
But seriously though, yet another discussion on how disgusting it is that physical stores charge more than the Internet has prompted me to do some soul searching.
Seriously, what is necessity?
I sell hobby goods used in leisure for a living. In Maslows hierarchy of needs they are pretty far down the scale for most people. Food, clean water, shelter, companionship, the right to self expression. Maslow was writing in 1943 begore Yugioh was even invented, so its little wonder he missed games and Netflix off the list.
All retail is parasitical. Some is more parasitical than others. If you assume a parasite eventually goes on to kill its host, then Amazon can be seen as being the most parasitical. Without high Street stores you have no high street, no tax revenue, and a whole chunk of Maslows needs aren't getting met, unless you can pay.
It's weird arguing with people who consider that I am the parasite. Because they want to buy their entirely voluntary and ephemeral hobby products cheaper. Which they can. I mean, nobody is stopping them. Plenty of deep discounters out there ready and willing to serve them.
And yet, still, they argue with me.
You see, to them it is choice. But to us, the retailers of the world, not selling ephemeral hobby products at trade is not a choice, but a necessity.
I could sell everything at trade. I could give it all away, like Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol. But obviously then I wouldn't get to pay my staff, or my landlord, or my suppliers. The biggest deep discounters make this an art form. Run up debts, pay yourself a stonking salary with somebody else's money and then sail your company into the Atlantic on your third best yacht and sink it. And all those folks who believed in you were suckers.
This is not necessity. This is choice.
The people who argue with me from a position that my necessity to pay my staff does not have the same necessity as their need to get stuff cheap have a choice. Often they claim that they don't. They have to maximise their own personal take, you see. That's what society is all about.
Philip Green probably says that too.
The world doesn't owe anybody anything. Plenty of places you can go where people have to live from necessity who don't have the luxury of studying Maslow.
So what should we do.
Well, I've always tried to meet my customers half way. We discount very frequently, we do multi buy offers on boosters, money back entry fees on the library, you can earn store credit and get discount as a volunteer or staff member. Buy any three items and get an extra 10%.
In any given year this costs me around 30 grand.
That's my salary. More than, in fact.
We live in a pretty fucked up world right now. People are demanding that companies should raise their salaries, while at the same time demanding that prices do not rise.
Ironically if everyone paid more, everyone could be paid more - something that Henry Ford had worked out more than a century ago.
But then, how do you keep score?
Demanding retailers compete on price is a choice. It devalues the economic worth of every low paid staff member who works any job, because that's the only margin you can cut. Can't cut your tax, or your landlord, or your supplier. So it's staffing.
And in business, paying our bills is a necessity.
I'm not Philip Green. I'm not the Boohoo guy. I can't sell you everything bareknuckle cheap because keeping the lights on is a necessity. Paying my staff is a necessity. Keeping money flowing locally within the local economy is a necessity.
Your hobby is a choice. It's ephemeral. But when you stand up and tell me that my lived experience is choice, but yours is somehow necessity?
That's when I have a problem.