> It is very well optimized and efficient, but you're not going to order something with standard UPS or Fedex style shipping and see it delivered by rail.

This isn't actually true, huge amounts of small parcel ground shipping goes by rail. You're correct that it's slower, but not by a huge amount.

Costs grow enormously to shrink delivery times from around a week cross-country to only a few days, by far the best option is moving the fulfillment point closer to the destination. Amazon, Target, Walmart, Uline are some companies that do 1-2 day shipping cheaply almost anywhere by ground.

Expectations have changed too. FedEx was a pretty premium thing when it debuted. Now I'll order a new widget from Amazon because I'll get it as soon as I would have if I waited until I got around to driving to the Walmart 10 minutes away (and for the same price).

For a lot of things, consumers are like "What do you mean I won't get it for 2+ weeks?" CANCEL.

I remember buying computer parts to build my own PC around 2000, mostly shipped from California to the east coast. The parts took 2-3 weeks to get here, which I believe was similar to most ebay shipments at the time. I didn't even think to complain back then, the selection and prices were so much better than local I just considered the 2-3 weeks the minor drawback that came with them.

That sounds about right.

There also used to be these computer shows (Ken Gordon?) at local event centers where vendors would have all sorts of parts and CDs for sale. But mostly you bought your big ad-filled computer magazine and called a number. By late 90s, online ordering was coming in. Local "computer stores" (or camera stores or...) were frankly all showing their age by the late 80s or so.

Even in the 1980s, local retail stores such as computers or cameras were on the ropes. A friend of my dad's was a salesman at a local small camera store, he would talk about spending hours with a customer showing him different cameras and lenses, only to have the guy leave and save $10 ordering from a 47th Street Photo ad in a photography magazine.

And the reality was that, as information become more widely available, the local options really weren't very good. They had their limited inventory to move. I frequented various non-big city camera stores over the years and, with hindsight, they were what I had at the time but, other than as a nostalgic small town thing, I have trouble really missing them on any rational basis.

There can be value to local merchants. But it's harder to make the case for local distributors of mainstream manufactured equipment.

Yes pretty much the only such shops left where I live are the ones where the product manufacturer refuses to sell online or at Walmart -- certain brands of vacuum cleaners as an example. The local camera and computer and office supply and hardware stores (excepting big-box national retailers like Best Buy and Office Depot and Lowes) are all gone.

I think there is something to be said about how we take "free 2-day shipping" for granted these days. Transporting something across the country should cost money compared to buying something already local to you, or even better made or grown near you.

I haven't done the math myself, but I suspect we are all subsidizing interstate trucking (and perhaps air freight) compared to its actual infrastructure and emissions costs. This does lower prices of many essential goods, but also tilts things in favor of large corporations who can ship things cheaply all over the country (ie Walmart, Amazon).

Although subsidies at a country level are... complicated.

In general, I suspect that if most of us went back in time 25-30 years we'd be pretty shocked about just how much friction there was to everything. It's not a linear or absolute improvement--and some of the downsides are significant. (Cities you often wouldn't have wanted to live in back then are really expensive today.) But you also spent a lot of time and effort doing things that are essentially effortless today.

You did, but at the time it was just how things worked and it didn't seem difficult or burdensome. Certain things or services were simpler, because it was impractical for them to be more complicated or customized.

It's likely that one Amazon or UPS truck delivering 100 orders a day is better than 100 people driving to the store separately. It's hard to say though, because most people are driving to work or grocery shopping, etc. anyway and all they are really saving is one or two detours for things they don't need immediately, or wouldn't be buying at all if it weren't so convenient.

> It is very well optimized and efficient, but you're not going to order something with standard UPS or Fedex style shipping and see it delivered by rail

My package from China has arrived by rail, it took about 3 whleeks, and Aliexpress tracking showed it going through kazahstan and Russia

Yes, I should have specified in the US. In places with shared passenger and freight traffic (ie a lot of Europe and Asia), freight services can't hyper-optimize on very long, very slow, infrequent service.

This does result in usually less tonnage transported by rail, but service that is more flexible to faster shipping.