In New Zealand, a government proposal to break apart the Foodstuffs supermarket cooperative has surfaced a tension as old as commerce itself: whether scale serves communities better than competition does. Regional store owners, many of whom have built their livelihoods within the cooperative model, argue that dismantling shared infrastructure would not lower prices but raise them — particularly for the remote towns that depend on the network's reach. The National Party holds that competition, once unleashed, will find its own efficiencies, but those closest to the supply chain warn that the ma