News · moment 15 of 19
The Cult of Costco and Childhood Memories of Bulk Shopping
from Celebrity Home Invasions & Costco | The Tim Dillon Show #395 · #395
7 min
News
Tim reads an article about Costco's cult-like following, recalling childhood trips with his mother's Costco card and arguing that buying food in bulk warehouses has normalized overconsumption, comparing it to predatory subprime mortgages.
- Tim's book is coming out for the holidays—clarifies he means winter, not any specific holiday.
- Costco has turned America into monsters by methodically converting casual shoppers into fanatics.
- Tim remembers when his neighborhood first got Costco cards and going to Costco was a big event, borrowing his mother's friend's card.
- Having bulk food at home means you consume more—people don't portion it rationally, they just eat it.
- The industrial-size buckets of condiments at Costco would make Europeans vomit; this doesn't exist in Europe.
- When Tim was in Europe performing with Sam Talent, none of these bulk products existed anywhere.
- Tim's libertarian streak hits a wall: he thinks we need to stop allowing certain things in the food space, comparing it to subprime mortgages.
- Subprime mortgages were cheap for two years then became expensive—people's lives didn't change, so why would we structure loans that way?
- Companies poison the food and sell massive quantities while people load carts with industrial cans to feed their families.
- Pandemic prepping culture reflects a deeper American trend of using fear of cataclysm as an excuse to hoard food in pantries and closets.