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Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on October 24, 2011 at 7:16am

Now that I have been referred to as a 'crank' in print can I now officially call myself a curmudgeon?

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Permalink Reply by John Greenfield on October 24, 2011 at 7:20am

Curmudgeon actually was the first word to sprang to mind, by I'm trying not to use too many big words in my writing. I also considered using grump, grouch and contrarian, but crank is a nice bicycle pun.

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Permalink Reply by Steven Vance on October 25, 2011 at 7:04pm

I think a network of home-grown businesses and dealers is important. They can pool money to market "bicycling in Chicago". As the ridership increases, the demand for goods will too. 

It's friendly competition. Where do Walgreens and CVS setup? Within a few blocks of each other. It's the best place. Dominick's and Jewel, too (their stores on Broadway in Lakeview are 5 blocks apart). 

"Assume a beach that is 100 yards long. (It wouldn’t be an economics story if you were not asked to assume something, right?) Now assume that there are two ice cream vendors working that beach, and that people are uniformly distributed on that beach. Where should the vendors set up? You might think vendor A should set up at the 25-yard mark and vendor B at the 75-yard mark – that way, no one has to walk more than 25 yards to get their ice cream. But look at it from the standpoint of the vendors. Vendor A could move to the 30-yard line and pick up a little business at the other vendor’s expense, and run no risk that the customers who now have to walk 30 yards would choose instead to walk 75 yards to vendor B’s stand. Vendor B then gets more business by moving to the 65, Vendor A to the 40, and pretty soon the two competitors are cheek by jowl, straddling the center. Voilà – a dysfunctional outcome, courtesy of the free market."

http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/steinberg/ice_cream_082005.htm

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