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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kirk © who wrote (3407)	9/12/2015 4:49:51 PM
From: Gottfried	1 Recommendation Recommended By Kirk © Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26648

Kirk, we've bought stuff at Amazon for years but now shop there even for items we would have bought locally in the past. Examples: socks, underwear, Band-aids, portable fan. Even ordered some clothing from Walmart because could not find it elsewhere. Amazon makes returns easy: they provide a return label and you can either mail it or have UPS pick it up. We only use that when they send a wrong or damaged item [that's rare]. I've also ordered from the Costco web site a few times, even though we go to the store at least monthly. I've never had close relationships with local store personnel anyway. I usually consider the cost of driving as part of the purchase price when I go to local stores.

To: Kirk © who wrote (3407)	9/13/2015 12:45:44 PM
From: dan6	1 Recommendation Recommended By Kirk © Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26648

Hi Kirk- I live in a rural area, 20 miles from the nearest Walmart. I am shopping more and more on Amazon and am constantly amazed that here in the middle of nowhere, I have access to the same stuff as you city-dwellers, often at the same prices. Bottom line: Without online shopping, I wouldn't have access to a lot of things. The only local retailer I am hurting is the ACE hardware store whose prices are so much higher that it is hard to rationalize paying them. On the the hand, I recently went shopping for an expensive piano keyboard and ending up buying it locally (50 miles away) at a small-town music store for a better price than I could get online! In the old days, you had to pay full retail for everything in small towns. This apparently is changing. All in all, I think online shopping a change in the right direction though it will be a real challenge for local communities to find ways of being economically viable. The big picture seems to be that most communities are simply bedroom communities existing without an economic base. We do not have viable communities anymore as most of us live in dispersed hotels holed up in our homes and apartments. To me the important question is how to build viable communities where people know and care about one another... d6