We're mostly of the same mind. A different friend of mine pointed out how companies like Toys R Us and Wal-Mart were Amazon before there was Amazon, which was also reflected in this comment by kleinbl00. One of the ideas brought up, is that twenty to thirty years for now, we'll all have our people down the street that are our preferred small business go tos. For example, I have my preferred bookstores, one of my buds has his own tailor (who is surprisingly affordable!), many of us support small business from candle and soap makers, to pet supply stores, to pretty much anything. Almost all of us love family owned restaurants, especially of the ethnic variety, and try to eat at those places more often than fast food and chain places. Durable goods tied into this whole conversation too, which kleinbl00 also alluded to in his comment on this thread, but I don't really have much to expand on that.

There were two big hurdles that we discussed with this idea and we don't know what to think of them. The first and foremost is that specialty stores will employ less people and if durable goods become the standard again, there's gonna be less churn in retail. This means those without the skills, knowledge, and resources to start their own businesses will be left in the lurch and additionally if goods last longer, and people by less, demand will go down. Both of these things will mean that while goods and jobs might be of a higher quality, there will be less of everything to go around, once again meaning some people will be left in the lurch.

The second big problem that we see, is that if retail changes, other things are gonna change too, from health care and benefits, to real estate landscape, to demands on transportation, to a whole bunch of other things. If all of this collapses too quickly, and if we as a country lack appropriate and effective responses, there are gonna be ripple effects that could potentially be both wide reaching as well as long lasting. It's the unkowns in this area that really have us worrying, and while we can make predictions, we just don't know what we're gonna come across, let alone how to address it, until shit really starts falling apart. By then? It might be too late for a lot of people.