Submitted by ruby31876 t3_xxfss7 in UpliftingNews
Tamarind-Endnote t1_irctuk6 wrote
I'm so glad that some people are starting to see how the emphasis on Black Friday is just unhealthy at both the individual level and at the societal level. At the individual level, people literally die because of Black Friday when they might have lived if shopping were spread out more across more days of the year. The bigger a crowd, the harder it is to keep it calm and not have people trampling, crushing, or fighting one another. Then there's the burden it places on workers, who have to handle all those people and usually aren't paid anywhere near enough to take on that kind of stress.
On the larger societal level, it's bad in terms of things like land use. Parking lots are planned around handling the maximum number of customers that stores might have, so by concentrating more of the year's shopping on a single day instead of spreading it out over more of the year, stores "require" more land for parking that on every other day will just be wasted. Bigger parking lots also mean that everything else has to be farther apart, diminishing the ability to get around effectively by walking and forcing people to be more car dependent, and for all but the largest businesses, car traffic is worse for business than foot traffic.
Even if you want to keep some holiday sales, the modern incarnation of Black Friday has just become something horrible that needs to be reined in.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments