Apartheid Grocery Stores?

 This week, some news group started up a chat over over a 'food apartheid system' existing in the United States.

The basic description?  You live in x-neighborhood where there's only gas stations, liquor shops, quickie-marts.  A real grocery?  Miles away.  

If you don't have a car, or the grocery doesn't offer much on 'discounts'....you are controlled in some fashion (like South African apartheid).

Somehow, they entwined this discussion over the fact that there aren't enough grocery stores in America....more or less.

I sat and pondered over this.  

There are four central faults with this suggestion:

1.  Who exactly is going to make the law to FORCE grocery stores to exist every two miles?

2.  Isn't this a urbanization problem?

3.  If you created this mass network of grocery stores....is there anything to indicate that it'd survive (profit-wise)? 

4.  Most folks around California will tell you that such grocery stores today are highly targeted by the homeless population.....who step in and shoplift $40 of food, with zero chance of doing jail-time.  The loss to the store?  It gets figured into the escalation for prices (this is why a can of Coke can be $2.20 when it ought to be no more than 80-cents).

A lot of this discussion seemed to give you the idea of Venezuela where they have grocery shelves that are mostly empty because the pricing system mandated by the state....makes it a highly unprofitable situation.   

I am reminded of a trip to NY City in the past five years....where I stepped into some local grocery shop near the hotel, to buy a six-pack of water.  For the no-name pack, with tax included....it was near $15.  If I wanted the name-brand, it was closer to $18.  I felt silly because in Germany, it wouldn't have been more than 6 Euro ($7) for the no-name six-pack.