Debate: Wal-Mart

[Undertoad]

Oh, sorry -- that "we" was an editorial sort of we, meaning roughly the majority in our culture.

Bruce, I don't think a year's gone by, since I started paying attention (in 1981), when there wasn't a major complaint in the air that the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer. All it ever turned out to be was a sort of paranoid class warfare combined with wonton misuse of statistics.

In our economy, any waste is located and slowly wrung out. Obviously, it's simpler to manage the movement of huge masses of goods than to sprinkle them over hundreds of little ma and pa stores. Take the cost savings of buying and selling 1 times 100,000 of something, instead of 10000 times 10.

Then see an entire middleman - the warehouser - no longer takes a cut. The savings are passed along to the consumer. Watch as every major retail sector slowly converts to this style of mass-merchandising.

Meanwhile, see how the public demands enormous amounts of choice but how ma and pa can't work out more than about 3000 items, with or without automation. Witness how the slow decline in free time means the average person has less time to discern between smaller stores. Consider the lack of afforable advertising space in most major markets. (I considered running radio ads once -- one of the least effective types of ads btw -- but a full campaign in Philly would have cost $30,000, more than I could possibly afford without knowing what kind of sales it would really turn around.) See how real estate gets cheaper when you buy it in bulk.

Walmart doesn't happen in a vacuum.