silver_ghost

Hey dude, no hard feelings hey? I wasn't intending to argue or start a fight. I should have included some little smily faces in my post.



I also work in a bike shop, and I also have some serious problems with capitalism, so we're probably more on the same page than it seems.
I think I had the same feeling you're talking about as I recently repriced cassettes and deraileurs to "keep up" with the latest round of increases from the suppliers. Some of the higher end stuff had almost doubled in price. Something just feels wrong about a cassette worth more than an entry level bike. In my gut I feel someone must be on the take, but if you're experience is anything like mine, it isn't the local shops.
Granted I'm just a wrench, and don't know anything about the buisness side of things, but my feeling is that my bosses aren't living the high life off the recent price increases, and they seem to feel as uncomfortable as I do selling stuff we can't even afford anymore.

The background to my little rant before, I guess, is that all the bike shops in my part of the world are locally owned, small businesses that tend to employ skilled, creative, hardworking, underpaid and generally pretty decent people (owners included). They're working within a capitalist framework, certainly, but I'm pretty sure they aren't the bad guys. Even if i didn't depend on a shop for my living, I'd still rather see folks support local shops in thier own communities. Bike shops are the kind of places that we really have to keep around no matter what kind of economy we eventually decide for ourselves.

Now what we should really be talking about is a benevolent anarchist takeover of the Shimano factories, in case of worldwide, violent economic upheaval.