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What Price Garbage Avoidance

4 Apr 2005 in Thought of the Day by Garrick

We’ve got a Rainbow Foods just south of us and a Cub Foods just north of us. Both are just on the border of walking-distance away (that’s a different story). At both stores, I’m struck by how much of we don’t see, how many aisles we don’t walk down, and how much crap we don’t buy. The other day, looking for a change, we picked up a few things at the local Whole Foods store. Though there were still huge sections we avoided, I felt the high fructose corn syrup content of the store was a factor of 10 lower. Refreshing.

The price difference between the Rainbow and the Whole Foods made me wonder:

In the age of scarcity, price is the value of receiving something wanted.
In the age of plenty, price is the value of filtering out something unwanted.

This filtering-out is why Tivo can charge a monthly subscription and why AOL is marketing themselves on virus, spam, and pop-up protection.

I was listening to my backlog of SXSW (t d) music tonight when Rob McColley’s TeeVee came through my iPod. He sings, appropriately:

’cause the free stuff you get these days
I’d pay to keep away from me.

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Comments (5)

[...] the top. Bus your own table. Check out their Italian market, great interesting foods you won’t find at the local Cub. Cossetta’s [...]

Garrick Van Buren .com » Italian-American Comfort Food at Cossetta’s added these pithy words on Apr 13 05 at 12:52 am

[...] more so) as what you’re paying attention to. I’ve talked about this before in What Price Garbage Avoidance. I’m going to repeat something I originally wr [...]

The Work Better Weblog » A Business Model for Abundance added these pithy words on May 17 05 at 2:24 pm

[...] orld Previously, I’ve talked about the a Business Model for Abundance and what price means in an age of abundance. Seems like a meme going around. &#822 [...]

Working Pathways, Inc » The Work Better Weblog » Archive » We Edit Each Others Media in a Post-Filter World added these pithy words on Jul 05 05 at 3:25 pm

I eat off the Whole Foods deli at least once a day. Last year Milo and I had a picnic thing to go to and forgot all about the beverage and cookies we were supposed to bring so we ended up going to Rainbow. The cookie aisle was overwhelming to say the least. Far too many cookie choices- what do the people like for snacks these days,everything looked like a variation of marshmellow fluff and chocolate syrup on cardboard. I felt my soul depleting a little standing there, baffled. I prefer the much shorter and much more organic aisles at Whole Foods.
Related book on excess options: Paradox of Choice ~~(the authors name eludes me)~~Barry Schwartz

kari added these pithy words on Apr 07 05 at 7:39 pm

The rule of thumb: “Everything coming in a colorful package is a suspect” works well for me. And what a difference the local wet market to the supermarket is!
Greetings from the other side of the planet.
stw