You're missing that "& per se &" would still have been called that even if it wasn't the last item in the list. If the order was "...y, & and z" you'd pronounce it "why and per se and and zed".
One could say whatever one wants but I think that in this case it’s actually a conjunction and I doubt anybody has ever said “I per se I” (Edited to add: actually that makes sense - for the letter i - but in a different context: spelling and not alphabet recitation. “c, a, r : car”, “i : I”. _letter_ (per se) : _word_)
Re "I doubt anybody has ever said I per se I" (in the context of alphabet recitation) may I draw your attention to this article[0]:
> Up until as recently as the mid 1900s, it was standard practice when reciting the alphabet to use the Latin phrase per se (literally “by itself”) to differentiate between individual letters of the alphabet—like A, I, and O—and single-character homographic words—like a, I and O.
> So the letter A would be read as “A per se A”, to ensure it was distinguished from the indefinite article a. The letter I, similarly, would be “I per se I” to differentiate it from the pronoun I. And the letter O would be “O per se O” to differentiate it from the interjection O!
Taking the question at face value, the answer is: massive amounts of capital. And barriers to entry like that make the 'the free market will solve this' argument less convincing.
But you just said there is more capital than ever before! The people who ended up with this capital will be looking to invest it. So it should be easier than usual, maybe easier than ever before, to convince investors ...
The mature businesses dial up the greed when there is no competition and dial it down to crush threats. Once the threat is extinguished, up the dial goes again.
Along with all your startup costs, you will be competing against entrenched businesses willing to run at a temporary loss to bleed you dry. They can afford to do this because greed will pay after you are dead.
Capitalism does not create efficient competitive markets offering good value to consumers, government intervention does.
>The mature businesses dial up the greed when there is no competition and dial it down to crush threats. Once the threat is extinguished, up the dial goes again.
You’ve just described what is called “competition”. Having to lower prices to keep up with competitors.
Also, if there is a clear winning pattern of a single player takes all market, that’s super attractive to competitor investors because they only need to outlast your warchest.
What you’ve described is a very unstable game theoretic condition and it’s basically a non-issue everywhere in the US except for markets with regulatory capture (i.e. high government regulation).
I challenge you to point out an example of a one grocery-store city where that strategy has worked to keep competitors out.
> You’ve just described what is called “competition”. Having to lower prices to keep up with competitors.
Suppose a larger company is selling a product that competes with yours at a loss so as to undercut you due to other sources of profit. Do you think that sort of competition is fair? Does that result in the best product winning the most market share?
> I challenge you to point out an example of a one grocery-store city where that strategy has worked to keep competitors out.
Not the GP, but recommend The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman.
In my area, there are Indian, Japanese and Chinese grocery stores within a few miles of Costco and Trader Joe's. Considering these grocery stores are decades old, Costco and Trader Joe's have done a bad job at dialing up the greed.
First of all, from what I've heard, Costco and Trader Joe's are, at worst, middle of the pack among large companies as far as greed goes. And assuming incorrectly that the thesis is that all large corporations are equally greedy, then using a couple of specific examples of corporations that are less greedy to disprove it, just makes for a terrible argument.
Second, it's exactly that kind of differentiation (offering a niche product that the larger, more generic stores don't want to) that makes it easiest to avoid being undercut and run out of business by larger players.
Now, if you said you had several different small local grocery stores thriving without any specific niche, that would be somewhat more surprising.
So why can't fully greedy companies undercut half-greedy Costco and Trader Joe's? When exactly have "greedy" supermarkets driven out smaller competitors through price manipulation? Please be specific.
There are quite a lot of independent supermarket brands around and they seem to struggle to even match the major companies, let alone undercut them. It just seems very unlikely that there actually are huge, unreasonable markups being had here.
If they represent any meaningful profit margin, they get swallowed by capital unless a government prevents it.
There are no "mom and pop" grocery stores in my area. We have "Metro" or "Express" versions of the mega chains instead. You can stand outside one and see two others and there won't be a single independent until you get into a different area that the chains don't consider sufficiently profitable.
Do you think other cultures, who care less about work, care less about food and shelter? Or would you care to elaborate on why work is more necessary for food and shelter in America than in other cultures (bearing in mind that America is one of the more developed nations on earth)?
I'm guessing the family unit is more fragmented in America, and the social safety net is weaker due to rugged individualism that leads to everybody having to only worry about themselves. It's a spectrum of course, but it feels that in the US being poor is scarier than in other first world countries, which might lead to one working longer and harder to ensure a softer landing on the way down.
"Aquanauts". "Water sailors". Since the water is implied by the sailor bit (astronauts and aeronauts being effectively "sailors but in space"/"sailors but on the air"), couldn't we just say.... "Nauts"? Or, to stick more closely to the Greek, "Nautes"?
From Chicago ... and with more than a thousand solves on that puzzle we've never received a single complaint about the rhyme on that one (plus the stats say users find it an extremely easy rhyme to solve)! Curious how you pronounce that one such that they don't rhyme?
According to the dictionary (and matching my own non-native pronunciation), cactus is /ˈkæktʌs/, practice is /ˈpɹæktɪs/
The terminal /tʌs/ is not quite the same thing as /tɪs/; since they are both unstressed, the difference can be hard to notice in fast speech, but becomes clear when enunciating.
