this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024

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Unpopular Opinion

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It is unnecessary for 80%-95% of businesses to maintain a physical location such as a shop or building. (lemy.lol)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/unpopularopinion

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Edit 1: I did not mean factories, I meant businesses with the usual meaning.

all 23 comments

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[–] dumpsterlid 35 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It is also unnecessary for me to retain a corporeal presence, it just ties my vast mental capacity and consciousness to a slow, fragile meat sack.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Have you tried converting yourself into a website?

[–] dumpsterlid 12 points 8 months ago

I did but then I got replaced by an app and then my developers stopped really updating me and so I’m just broken and abandoned now.

Wanna have a longer conversation with me?

Please login and download the app!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

I’d be curious how you get to 80-85% - sounds like a number pulled out of thin air. IMHO, I think the estimation is way off.

IIRC in the US 20% of companies are in the goods producing industry, and producing physical goods tends to be difficult without a physical location. Even being generous and only guesstimating half of those need physical locations, we’re already straight in the middle of your 5-15% estimate, and we haven’t even looked at service based industries, which represent most of the rest of the economy... Just things such as restaurants, shopping/retail, entertainment and hospitality are probably a much larger portion of the remaining 80% of businesses than the 5% we’re left with based on your number.

Edit: your edit doesn’t change much about the statement. Even factoring out manufacturing altogether, I’m pretty sure the stuff I mentioned is probably more than 15% out of the 80% that’s left (therefore from service industry), so not really possible to do without some physical presence...

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (2 children)

80%-95% of internet statistics are made up

[–] gibmiser 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I heard it was closer to between 110% and -3%

[–] cmoney 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

"Never trust quotes from the Internet"

Alexander Graham Bell

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

"Alexander Graham Bell can eat a lemon" -Genghis Khan

[+] [email protected] -8 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Many services can be delivered to your doorstep.

You can order food online, find mobile solutions for your business needs, and shop for anything you want on the internet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

And where will those places cook the food and store the products?

Perhaps in a physical location.

Once they have that physical location they could even let members of the public come in to enjoy their products, as they already have the building anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Keyword “many”. Not all, and if you do find some data that can point to that direction, I can’t find anything concrete that points towards only 5-15% realistically could work without physical presence, I’ll gladly take it. Hell, remember the height of the pandemic measures, when only “essential” stuff was still running? That was still a shitton of people.

Your food needs a kitchen and a delivery pickup point. That point has to be decently close to all addresses that could be delivered to, or nobody would want to deliver, so that’s a bunch of physical kitchens already. Some of the point of restaurants is also the social gathering aspect, so you’re completely alienating a whole swathe of consumers - not everyone wants to eat alone at home.

Some business, or hell, even personal needs are not solved by signing up for yet another SaaS. Some companies have regulatory requirements/compliance. Others’ currently very simple operating costs would go through the roof doing so. My programmer, software architecture, security oriented mind also is screaming a little bit at the idea of a mom and pop bakery ran by two sextuagenarians now having to worry about keeping their Wordpress/WooCommerce up to date and secure. Why would I want to give my data and personal information to a bunch of random internet companies when I can have the same service without the data breach risk at the store down the road?

Many things are easier to source locally. Not everything is easy to find on the internet. Ever tried to find some odd screw for some obscure appliance by browsing pictures lol? Much easier to walk into my department store and physically compare. Another example, I was trying to find a Guitar Hero controller online. It ended up being much, much easier to find one at a decent price by looking up secondhand stores and thrift shops’ electronics sections - found one in a matter of a couple of visits for like $30. Online, I can’t find one under $120 right now.

Slightly off subject (or is it?), but I would also strongly push you to try and consume locally when possible rather than throwing even more money towards Amazon, Uber et al. Amazon in particular is an insane multinational-sized loss leader.

[–] Dravin 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Much easier to walk into my department store and physically compare.

Yep. I know I'm much rather go try on shoes rather then play the ship and return it game over the course of multiple days. This also applies to things like furniture, appliances, cars, or other items where physical interaction communicates information that can't or isn't communicated in a product description.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I did that whole ship/return/exchange dance exactly once - when I needed new shoes at the height of the pandemic. Such a shitty experience. Turns out I do need a full size less than my usual Vans when buying Brooks running shoes lol

[–] PRUSSIA_x86 2 points 8 months ago

Right. That food needs to be produced in a physical location, made from ingredients produced and stored in physical locations. Anything you buy needs to be stored somewhere at least temporarily, and unless you plan on having deliveries made by people in their personal vehicles, the trucks that transport said goods need to be stored and maintained in physical locations too. I think you may be overestimating the number of businesses that are purely digital.

[–] afraid_of_zombies 0 points 8 months ago

I work in an office section of a factory. How do you plan to build machines/systems the size of a small bus with "mobile solutions"?

[–] pennomi 15 points 8 months ago

I think you haven’t run the numbers on what the breakdown of different industries is.

For example, there’s around 600,000 tech companies in the United States, but there’s around 750,000 restaurants. I agree that most of those tech companies could work from home, but I doubt a Taco Bell could be successful like that.

[–] andrewta 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The edit part I figured was obvious.

Side note I disagree with you.

How would a insurance agency run with out a physical regular building? Some stuff you can do at home but the servers have to be somewhere. People want the ability to go to their agents office.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Everything in the primary and secondary sector requires a physical space. And atleast 80% of the tertiary sector does too.

Id say its the other way round. About 5% don't.

So upvote ig since tho incorrect it's unpopular

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I don't think that anyone would be happy if the shop across the street that makes 2500hp+ NHRA motors would be pleased if they were building and dyno testing them in a residential area.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I don't see a good reason why I would avail space in my home for the use of my employer. Real estate is expensive.

[–] JackLSauce 2 points 8 months ago

This seems more like a debatabe assertion of fact than an opinion with an inevitable follow up question of whether they should

Not sure I'd trust a purely remote law firm, pharmacy or insurance company to properly handle/destroy sensitive documents

[–] afraid_of_zombies 1 points 8 months ago

This whole thing feels like something a person with a brand new MBA would come up with.

Wow we can outsource everything and cut all overhead.