Albert Heijn annoyance

[gusl]

My Albert Heijn is frequently out of soap. It can be really annoying when I don't have any left. I can't understand why they don't fix this.

I would love to see a small enterpreneur planting a booth right in front of the store, providing consumers with all the goods that the corporate giant failed to. How long would it take before the cops busted him/her? In Brazil, one might be able to get away with this, thanks to the semi-anarchical state of things. I understand that there's an issue of control (health inspection) and fair competition (tax collection), but as whole I think that this form of spontaneous & chaotic free trade is a good thing.

Sure, there might be some negative externalities (pollution, overcrowding of public spaces, disorderly traffic), but surely much of this piece is heavily biased in favour of the status quo: their (successful) agenda is to use the state's power to oppress their small competitors. An example that gets me really incensed was Recife's ban on kombi-taxis (the same thing happened in South Africa): when some creative people decide to do something about the sucky public transportation monopoly, their initiative gets oppressed. But sometimes the force comes a non-government group that is averse to progress: e.g. bus drivers in Colombia.

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Shopping in Germany is apparently even more inconvenient than here. Maybe I should move in next to the Hauptbahnhof.

Comments

[darkjewelz.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean, we have the same problem here.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

which one? inconvenient shopping or sucky public transport?

[darkjewelz.livejournal.com]

both.

bus drivers in Colombia

[jozefpronek.livejournal.com]

... for a long time, they had virtually absolute control over the town councils. They could combine state oppression (through the city governments, who blocked all progress in transportation) with brute force actions (through blocking all the main avenues with their buses). Nowadays, their monopoly seems to have withered, or at least is funneled in other, more constructive ways. The city of Bogotá has interesting public transportation, and it works. The new bus line (NQS) that goes from the National University (quite centrally located) reaches the end of Bogotá (Portal del Norte) in less than 15 minutes. It used to take one hour and a half. I hope these initiatives will continue - a new major one is under construction. And by the way, the original model was Curitiba (with local adaptations to a city of eight million inhabitants).

Re: bus drivers in Colombia

[jozefpronek.livejournal.com]

(well, really, bus owners were the ones with the control :)

check http://www.transmilenio.gov.co