If you don't like American over-consumption you can go to Carrefour and try out French overconsumption where people load up oversized trollies with corporate food to take to their SUVs in the overflowing parking lot... in France.

Are you under the impression that it is a uniquely American trait to have a bigger house than you need, more car than you need, and a penchant for corporate food? Over-consumption is human nature, not an American invention. America just happens to be able to afford it on a scale that most countries can't. Go to the poorer countries on earth, and you will still see people over-consuming if they have the means.

Maybe it isn't even overconsumption. Maybe it's just a different way of getting things done. Do you think that the people that buy Costco sized packs of toilet paper wipe their ass unnecessarily? Or maybe they just make fewer trips to the store to buy toilet paper.

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oezi 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Since toilet paper is mostly non-perishable it shouldn't really matter, right? But for anything that goes bad there is also a tipping point where you bought too much and have things go to waste.

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dghlsakjg 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In which case you buy a smaller quantity elsewhere. I don’t know anyone who shops exclusively at Costco. Most people buy large quantities of the things they use a lot of at Costco, and also visit grocery stores for other things. Besides, most of what they sell has a long shelf life. With the exception of their very limited produce and Dairy, just about every other perishable food they sell is freezable.

The people I know who shop at Costco aren’t throwing away half of what they buy. They are very often families that are actually pretty efficient about using what they buy. Big families, restaurants, remote work camps (I live in Canada) are the people I see completely filling carts and SUVs at Costco. For them, shopping at Costco is a way to avoid waste in terms of small packages and multiple small trips.

While there are certainly people that shop there and waste what they buy, it’s a pretty overused exaggeration to say that it is any more than a small fraction of their buyers. If you want examples of frivolous consumption, a barebones warehouse store selling staples in bulk is kinda the opposite of that in many ways.

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stevenhuang 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you really think families waste half of what they buy at Costco?

Come on now.

	▲	oezi 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I said nothing about that. But there are tipping points where buying too much is actually wasteful.