You’d Rather the Government Sell You Vodka Than Feed You
Government-run grocery stores aren’t radical.
What’s radical is how comfortable we’ve become letting a handful of corporations control what it costs to survive.
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Food isn’t a product like anything else.
You don’t opt out of eating this month because prices went up.
You don’t wait for a promo code on survival.
You don’t “cut back” on needing to live.
And yet, that’s exactly how we’ve structured the system.
We handed something essential over to companies whose only obligation is profit — and then we act confused when prices climb and nothing changes.
We talk about “market forces” like they’re some natural law.
They’re not.
They’re decisions.
And we made them.
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We allowed consolidation.
We allowed dominance.
We allowed a system where competition looks real on paper but feels nonexistent at the checkout.
And when it started to hurt?
We didn’t build alternatives.
We wrote cheques.
Public money — handed to private grocery giants under the banner of efficiency, sustainability, modernization… whatever word made it easier to justify.
Lower their costs.
Boost their margins.
Hope, somehow, that helps you.
It doesn’t.
Because corporations don’t exist to pass savings on to you.
They exist to capture them.
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So here we are.
Paying more.
Getting less.
And — somehow — still defending the system that’s doing it to us.
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Now someone suggests a public grocery store.
Not to replace the private sector.
Not to nationalize food.
Just to exist.
And suddenly that’s the line?
That’s where people get uncomfortable?
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Not when we subsidize billion-dollar companies.
Not when prices quietly climb.
Not when entire neighbourhoods become food deserts.
No — the problem is the government opening a store.
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Let’s be honest about something.
We already accept government-run retail.
We line up for it.
We normalize it.
We argue about hours and pricing — not whether it should exist at all.
Alcohol.
We’re completely fine with the government selling us something we don’t need…
…but the idea of them helping provide something we do need?
That’s too far.
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That’s not logic.
That’s conditioning.
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A public grocery store doesn’t have to win.
It doesn’t have to take over the market.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
It just has to exist long enough, and at enough scale, to do one thing:
Force the people currently feeding you to compete for your survival.
Because right now?
They don’t have to.
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This isn’t about ideology.
It’s about power.
Right now, the power sits with companies that decide what you pay to eat.
A public option shifts that — even slightly — back toward the people.
And that’s what actually makes people uncomfortable.
Not inefficiency.
Not logistics.
Not cost.
Control.
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Food isn’t a lifestyle.
It’s not branding.
It’s not a subscription.
It’s survival.
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And if our tax dollars are already touching the grocery sector, then we have a choice:
Keep feeding the system that extracts from us…
or build something that feeds us back.