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Why Doesn't McDonald's Take Over the Laundromat?

Once upon a time in America long ago, inventors and famous businessmen were held up to schoolchildren as great benefactors of mankind. I wonder if that is still true today.

Businesspersons still become celebrities today, but the nature of their success is different than in the past. Can you really compare Facebook to the Model T Ford? Industrializing agriculture, transforming electricity and magnetism into motion, building an electrical grid, inventing countless products out of petroleum -- all of these triumphs seem so much more important than the latest buzz in tech-fashions or social media trends.

Even a great modern success like Amazon doesn't really contain much that is new compared to a Sears Roebuck wish-book, drooled over on the porch of a farmhouse in the 1890s.


Surely there are still many innovative businesses being born today. But they may be small enough or mundane enough that they haven't become household words.

I would like to suggest a mega-success that is sorely needed: somebody like McDonald's or Walmart needs to take over the laundromat industry. What a piece of crap the average laundromat is! I just got done using one -- I hated every minute I spent there, and of course, I was ripped off by one of the dysfunctional dryers. (It's always the dryer -- never the washer.)

Of course, in fairness, this discomfort is self-inflicted by the customers. Any laundromat could hire an attendant if we, the customers, weren't so cheap.

And please don't join up with Kunstler and tell me that it is wrong to wish for a corporate Goliath to come in and rub out small-town-Davids. Perhaps every Ace Hardware should have a public laundromat in a corner of the building. Or Family Dollar?

Comments

Bon vivant said…
I will admit most are dumps and some are sketchy. The reason is 'lessors' never have the amenities their 'betters' enjoy. I have seen five or six nice, clean ones between Pensacola and Astoria. Most of all I've found are kept clean by the owners or someone who keeps a close watch on the property. John the Baptist never washed his clothes. just sayin'
Ed said…
I found another good one here in Albuquerque. That makes three since October 2017 that have all had attendants, where clean, well maintained and the one here is open 24 hour/day. My excuse for going to this one is the 1/2 mile round trip from my space to the Park laundry room. I didn't even look in at it.
It is funny how a traveler can remember specific laundromats that are well-run. Even the town they were in. And next year you go there again.
Three good laundromats in less than a year. That is a winning streak! Don't jinx yourself by bragging about it out-loud!
Bon vivant said…
Very true, I plan my week around them if'n I remember they're there.
The best laundromat by far in South Dakota is

Parkway Laundromat
105 E North St, Rapid City, SD 57701

I think that technology has a cycle to it like everything else, I am so grateful for technology.

One of my favorite organizations, The Weston A Price Foundation for Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, https://www.westonaprice.org/mens-health/

They have a phrase for the philosophy they follow,

Technology as Servant
Science As Counselor
Knowledge as Guide.

Today Technology has become the master, Science has become a dictator or worse, gatekeepers, and knowledge has been lost to the majority.

Good thing there is a cycle to all in the Cosmos, including the majority believing stupid wrong things, and it is about to change...again, after a whole lot of hurt.

You know things are about to change by how people behave. The weather has been crazy cold and wet and windy, winter was long and spring seems to have not really begun, food crops all over the world are being destroyed by all this crazy cold weather, the second year in a row, next year will confirm the cooling trend, so expect higher food prices here in the west, crazy plagues in 3rd world nations, starving people always get sick, of course the crazy global warmist will blame man and plant food, and ignore the facts that their paymaster, the government who borrows with out end does not want people to hear because we are evil carbon sinners who must pay the carbon tax to fill the coffers of the unfunded pensions and social security plan for surely we can do nothing about winter but prepare.

Technology as Servant
Science As Counselor
Knowledge as Guide.

Hope your preparing. If you have no clue what I am talking about, Ben Davidson of https://www.suspicious0bservers.org/ says,

Eyes Open, No Fear

This is a great primer on the Solar Minimum and what to expect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxGBoTLzrOk&list=PL51TAr4gmxRDqcaOSD5bo80E-saMH3QRf

Does it make sense to just ignore winter and how to prepare for it, especially as van dwellers?
jay said…
A Kunstler reference. How many people could make a Kunstler reference? 1 of 50? 1 of 100? Very, very few that I know here in Orange County California, that's for sure. Yet another Full-timer smashing my preconceived notions: that full-timers are a pack of semi-literate losers and 'tards who can't hack it any other way. I think a surprising portion could be college professors if they so chose. WTF am I doing here? It's drawing me closer.......
You'll find quite a variety of people in the full-timer category. I think it is the van tramps that account for a lot of the loser image.

For me, the main problem hasn't been the losers, but rather, the bar-coded scenery tourists.
Bon vivant said…
Romani are usually 'losers' in other's eyes but given they were targets of both the Inquisition and Third Reich I tend to side with 'em. I'm puzzled how you could have problems with scenery tourists. Oh, you just mentioned recently you were hosting and I assumed for years you have always been a BLMr like Mobile Kodger.
Instead of saying I had a "problem" with scenery tourist RVers, I should have said that I was profoundly disappointed by them, uninterested in them, and alienated from them.
jay said…
Didn't mean to open a can 'o worms......LOL. I've checked in here in the past (old format, I think) .....short, pithy and on-point comments, for the most part. I salute you...=) But I DO seem to recall you were hosting......maybe last summer....central Colorado I think.....and I seem to recall you telling a story about the weekenders and their giant rigs getting stuck trying to ford a stream? As to bar-coders: Tourists who show no interest and even less curiosity about anything they visit beyond placing a check mark next to it on their itinerary?
Ed said…
kaBLOOnie has been a long time BLMr perhaps more so than the Mobile Kodger. It is only recently that he has gone over to the Dark Side to see how the rest of the RV community lives. I think he has always been disappointed by the scenery tourist that visit all the bucket list locations and take 'purdy' pictures to show that they were there.
Bon vivant said…
I've got something in my kraw along those lines right now: All the weekend warriors heading to the mountains and such in the PNW . . . with their dogs in tow. Yes, some have to carry them out. Yes, they're at risk for rattlesnakes. I've posted data showing it's not healthful for the wildlife but not one comment, and more poodle pics to boot. Shows how deep their EdAbbey channeling is. hehehe