Tour of an insanely expensive supermarket in Barrow, Alaska where 1/2 a watermelon is $37

One hopeful point is the rise in the use of high-tunnels all over Alaska:

Might not be able to grow watermelons (my least favorite fruit anyway - don’t see what people like in them) but it’s making other produce more cheaply available.

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Shipping for us is essentially a critical utility; even when there is a short interruption (such as due to a strike) it causes very serious problems. Your comparison to outsourcing is pretty obtuse.

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toilet paper isn’t cheap

(yeah, yeah, I found it via ashens)

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Oh. Um… yeah. I guess I could see that.

That’s a shame.

I’ll be at the South Pole in a couple weeks. I’ll let you know how much things cost in the grocery store there.

Oh, wait, everything is free at the South Pole, except the booze. Thank you, NSF!

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There was a time when people kept their own chickens. But maybe having a heated shed to keep chickens is not worth a few eggs.

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I know a smallholder who tried keeping chickens in small numbers.
To cut the long story short, when factoring in fox precautions, rat prevention, squirrel stopping, and having someone check them when the owners were away, the eggs ended up costing about ten times as much as free range shop ones.

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But looking at it is a pretty effective laxative, one would think?

(This is an extremely old joke and dates back to at least 1540AD).

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Came to say the same, but about Iceland

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I was in Alaska this summer, less remote areas, and did notice the OJ was pretty pricey.
But I don’t care about brand-name breakfast cereal or mac & cheese. It would be more interesting if they looked at the price of, say, a pound of flour, a pound of dried beans, olive oil, the kinds of things you would buy if you really were trying to live on the cheap. Unless those things aren’t available at the type of store they were at.

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Well the month long vampire infestation every January doesn’t make things go any easier
See the documentary 30 Days of Night

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They are growing weed there?

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Yes, not distance, more likely the lack of competition. The captive audience probably keeps the price high as well.

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One wonders how the history went in terms of the population there either abandoning, outgrowing, or losing access to the resources that used to make living there viable. It’s not as though you’d expect tomato and orange products to ever have been attractively cheap at the far norther end of the supply chain; and it isn’t a Dubai-type ‘locals are so loaded they don’t care’ situation.

Some sort of temporary distortion(like the pacific islands where whatever the US army was eating was temporarily available in virtually unlimited amounts during WW2)? Collapse of some local staples? Decreased childhood mortality leading to population markedly above historical carrying capacity? Successful campaign to ‘civilize’ the natives without a subsequent supply of civilization?

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The South Pole? Wow.
bring back photos and video.

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HOMER, Alaska – In June 2012, mudslides and washouts from heavy rains shut down multiple stretches of the Alaska highway, the main thoroughfare for the refrigerated trucks that haul food north from the lower 48 states to Alaska’s interior.

Oh the irony.

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Well, you have to weigh the cost against the benefits of living there. Like,

Yeah, I got nothin.

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Just saw that last year. I’m not the one in the house that likes that kind of movie, generally. Also, I’m now banned from making that particular vampire noise, which I’m apparently quite good at.

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NEAT!!! Send pics to us up here in warmlandia! Make sure to hug a penguin for me!

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Why would your mom want pre-used TP?

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