PSA: remember, if you see someone stealing essentials like groceries or whatever: no, you didn’t.

There are food banks, don’t steal.

Sometimes they run out. Or are 2 hours away. Or are in a bad part of town. There are tons of reasons why someone would be desperate enough to steal food.

Nobody’s encouraging it. All we’re saying is this: as a direct result of the deficiencies inherent to our society and the socioeconomic structure it perpetrates, some people need food but can’t get it through legal means. Categorically refusing to make an exception for exceptional cases is implicitly saying that those people deserve to die.

Corporations that price gouge basic essentials deserve it. People need food and clean water. Price gouging essentials should be illegal. This inflation isn’t natural anymore at this point; it’s just pure greed on a person’s right to live.

Grocery stores are pretty much the definition of a perfectly competitive industry. The profit margins are always between 1 and 3%. The only reason they raise prices is because they have to.

Thay was true once. It hasn’t been for decades.

Name a grocery store with a higher margin than 3%

Why are you assuming low margins necessarily lead to better competition? With low margins, volume dictates the winning business in the unregulated marketplace. Big businesses monopolize and then one day have more leverage over their margins than the marketplace itself. Not a problem when antitrust laws are enforced but those laws have had their teeth pulled for the last 30 years.