Bryan

Saw American Sniper on saturday. I knew nothing about it. Never heard of Kyle, didn't know all the accounts of him being a bullshitter until I read about them in this thread. They don't surprise me at all though, because my BS detector was going off through the entire movie. It was very difficult to enjoy it as a "true story" because it really was obviously a complete work of fiction. No sir, I did not like it.

People have very different ideas about what "a perfect world" means? One man's utopia is another's nightmare.

Doing that would require the treaties all be abolished. All they serve to do is institutionalize racism. We are either all literally the same, or we are not.

Kids believe a lot of things that aren't true.

He got the blame all right. He got fired for it. And his incompetence cost another 17,000 people their jobs as well.

That cover is hilarious… "Canada has a bigger race problem than America, and it's ugliest in Winnipeg". If that's true, then what that means is there is no such thing as racism at all in the US, because it's virtually nonexistent here. It's not as if Macleans had much integrity to begin with, but they really outdid themselves with that one. The real problem, if there is one, is aboriginal people (including many of the members of my own family) who go out of their way to reinforce as many stereotypes as they possibly can. When something they do turns out badly, they'll inevitably blame whitey. When aboriginals are killing each other at an alarming rate, the number of murdered aboriginals becomes a dog whistle for social justice warriors who want to blame it on racism. It's preposterous.

His worth to Target was a negative several billion. A stray cart had more value to the company than he did.

What did he specifically do to be responsible for those profits? On the other hand, he was responsible for wasting billions on the failed Canadian expansion, and oversaw a massive security breach. His worth to Target was a large negative number, that's why he was fired.

You do what you can where the options exist. Most of the beer I drink is not union made (even though a company that is unionized is a partner in the brewery), but I don't know the source of their cans... I'll have to check into it.

I don't usually buy beer in cans, but if doing so can help to break a union, I'm going to start.

Sony stores were pretty much gone for years already. This is just the last few. They were an odd concept from the start. Just a show-room of the various Sony products available, all at 50-60% higher prices than anywhere else. They weren't really there to sell, just to showcase the product lineup. That was a bad enough strategy when Sony was a major player in electronics, but now they don't even have the prestige factor.

Good analogy, it's not all that dissimilar.

Anyone is vulnerable to something 10 times it's size with malicious intent.

It's a matter of inertia. When surrounded by predators, in many cases, you end up with no viable choice. You can either take the offer, or they will deliberately kill you off.

Not everyone took the money. Those that didn't, are left to fight for their lives against an apex predator.

Yeah, it does. We can and do get anything we want. Brick and mortar stores either give us a reason to spend our money at home, or they die. Nobody expected the SAME pricing as in the US. What shocked us about Target Canada, was that for the most part, they brought prices that were significantly higher than what was already being charged in the local market. The different range of products, Canadians absolutely did expect, and Target brought none of it.

As Michael said, it's less common in Canada because we ALWAYS have to fight off the ten ton gorilla from the south trying to take everything over, but it certainly HAS happened. Eaton's is a prime example. They were so big for so long, and the great-great-grandsons of the founder didn't have a clue how that happened or how to keep it going.

It's not either/or. It's both. Canadians want their Canadian stuff, AND they want to be able to get whatever else they want without protectionist agencies interfering. I use both the Canadian and the American versions of those services you listed (I would add iTunes to that list as well). Canadian MOST of the time, but American ones when there's something I can't find. That's all Canadians want, is to not be told what they can and can't have. All of that is completely unrelated to the problems with Target Canada though. What they did just didn't bring anything of value to the retail space, Canadian or American.

Target Canada lost billions. Zellers in Canada made a modest profit.

Target definitely wasn't a replacement for Zellers -- because they sucked MUCH more than Zellers ever did.

And they couldn't even come close to doing the same business Zellers was already doing.

They ALREADY had the retail spaces in those locations. In most instances, they purpose built the stores from the ground up -- they are BETTER spaces. They not only competed with Target, they beat the crap out of them.

They already have the retail space in the same retail complexes.

You're still missing the point. Walmart is irrelevant. Target couldn't even compete with ANYONE in Canada. The stores that were in the same retail complexes (where there were no Walmarts to be found) were beating them. SMALL Canadian retailers who weren't even in that top 20 were kicking their asses. Zellers didn't fail. It was doing fine. They just saw a sucker who wanted to pay them $2 billion for just the leases. That's good business.

The comparison doesn't even make sense. Big fish eat little fish, that's not news. It's when the big fish can't even come close to competing to the much smaller fish in the much smaller pond that something is amiss. Forget about Walmart, they weren't even Target's biggest problem in Canada. Most of the Targets were located in places nowhere near a Walmart, but that did have several larger Canadian stores. The one closest to me is in an area where most of the residents have a lot of money to spend. They're well off, but they're not stupid. Canadian Tire, Giant Tiger, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Real Canadian Superstore all have better selection and better pricing. Right next door, you don't even have to move the car. Even now, when they are putting the inventory on clearance, Target STILL doesn't get it. Their "clearance" prices are still higher than Canadian Tire or Superstore's normal prices.