And then this happened!

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/02/13/vancouver-blast.html?ref=rss

Remember: You’ve always got time for Tim Horton’s.

Second, businesses can open wherever local governments will allow them to open. Starbucks could not operate in those locations without permission, so you were apologizing for no reason.

I know nothing of Vancouver or of Starbucks’ practice, but one issue is that large corporations can use their muscle to get a favourable deal from local government, which allows them to squeeze competitors on price. That said, Starbucks don’t strike me as cheap so it doesn’t seem plausible in this case.

I agree with Dunc: we shouldn’t build society and legislate on the basis of theories that assume people take rational decisions as defined by utility theory.

And the “The Free Market Solves All Problems” branch of the “Capitalism über Alles!” church is especially humourless.

Anyway, I like JanieBelle’s expansion on why McD’s is bad. (Funny pic!)

Just some random disclaimers and thoughts on a more serious note, though…

I don’t go to places I don’t like, and McD’s happens to be one of them. Hence the ‘MOSTLY’ in my point above.

I do dislike heavy advertising to the point of saturation; the more advertising, the more likely I am to be turned off. You can imagine how effective political campaigns are with me, then.

I’d hate to see the free market become monopolistic. Ironic, that… companies outcompete other companies, growing bigger to the point where they can buy out those they don’t outcompete, and eventually, there’s no competition. And thus, no free market. BUT could that really happen in real life? Would that really happen in real life? I mean could it, would it happen that completely? (Side note: I recently heard someone ask why, instead of a free market economy, we don’t have a fair market economy, but I believe it was in reference to health insurance.)

Oh, finally, I don’t drink coffee. Can’t stand it in any form: plain, flavored, whatever. Never have. Yuck.
On behalf of myself, I don’t apologize for that.

You found the other end of the universe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9iMgSNrwv4

Care to show some stats on that? It sure ain’t true in my part of the world.

how many hundreds of silly, humorous posts have I left here?

Silly? Loads. Humourous? Fewer.

As for my sense of humor, for pity’s sake, how many hundreds of silly, humorous posts have I left here?

Those who say “I don’t see the problem in this. The populous will buy it, the companies will make it” clearly don’t understand the economics of the situation.

And yet, somehow, life goes on. And smaller coffee shops thrive even next door to a Starbucks.

“quiet desperation”: you are the only reasonable human being writing in this blog!!!!

Ah, well, someone likes me.

I’ll tell you what’s worse. My sister lives in NY on the Upper East Side and every cute little shop and restaurant has been turned into a bank branch. Each bank feels it’s necessary to have a branch on every block.

Of course, living in Naples, Italy might have something to do with that. . .

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of the world as we know it. When there’s a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks… the game is up.

College guys would later confirm that Lewis Black is telling the truth.

Seriously, Canada, we’re sorry.

The thing about Starbucks is that they aren’t selling the burnt-tasting coffee, or the sawdusty “pastries” — what they’re selling is the idea that everyone who walks in the door can have their own special idiosyncratic idea of coffee made to order. They don’t even blink at the most crazy orders you can come up with, like the ones in that scene with Steve Martin in “LA Story”: “I’ll have a vente quad-shot vanilla breve cappuccino with room…”

This is very much akin to Douglas Adams’ great routine on the “shoe shop event horizon”, where it becomes economically unfeasible to have any kind of shop except shoe shops, so the economy collapses and people evolve into life forms that never have to wear shoes again.

It’s not a hard-and-fast rule that when you move to Boulder you absolutely MUST apologize for everything American… as a former NATIVE Boulderite, I know the urge to do this, but you must use this weapon with discretion… elstwise it goes blunt with overusage.

Since everybody took your thing seriously, and have posted some seriously whining replies (including one that somehow implies that some people in America are fat because they go to Starbucks (not sure how that works, but hey, don’t let logic stand in the way of a good chance to slam Americans again)), I thought I’d jump in the fray. It’s snowing here, I haven’t yet shoveled out the driveway (why bother, it’s still coming down) and there’s not a Starbucks within 10 miles of me, so hey…

So, those mom-and-pop places the lack of which (or loss thereof) that everybody’s decrying? Let’s talk about my town… a small burg on the edge of wishful thinking. It has two Dunkin’ Donuts, both of which serve… um… coffee. Sort of. If you can call stuff that is seriously loaded with cream and additives “coffee.”

It has one, count ‘em ONE Mom-and-Pop coffee shop that serves reasonably decent coffee along with a delicious array of soups, salads, and pastries, but it closes at 2 p.m. So much for going somewhere to sit and drink coffee and converse with one’s townies in the afternoon for a quick break.

It has ONE breakfast joint, which is usually open and serves something that resembles coffee only in temperature and color. Otherwise, not so much.

Starbucks, on the other hand, is open many more hours, has a variety of coffees, some of which are good, and some of which I wouldn’t touch. But they’re there. Although, since I live in Frost Heaves, MA, I have to drive to Nashua, NH to get to a ‘bucks…

And, one last smackdown to the snob who thinks we’re all fat from going to Starbucks: it’s obvious you’ve never had a Venti triple expresso with low-fat milk and Equal. There’s NO chance in HELL you’d stand still long enough to put on weight after drinking one of those!

Heh.

And I gotta say, the Starbucks phenomenon here has nothing on the Dunkin Donuts, where I passed 4 of those between home and work, and they were in the same small town….

Because of this article, every time I drive down “99” past Starbucks Corporate, I think I hear the sound the “Obelisk of Nod,” from the game Command and Conquer, and I worry the mermaid is going to blow away my car with her laser-beam eyes.

I can, and have:

http://www.squidzone.ca/the_squid_zone/2007/03/coffee_rankings.html

I drink the espresso-based coffees of Starbucks, Costa, or any other chain, and although I do taste a difference, it is not so much better/worse than different. I can’t comment on their filter coffee, though.

I lived in Seattle when Starbucks started, and they crushed the dozens of independent coffee cart operators at the time.

I’m from Puebla, Mexico, you should be really scared, that just at south of the city there are 5 starbucks, I don’t know about the rest of the city!