If it's Christmas, it must be time to argue about Wal-Mart.
In this sense, the self-styled humanitarians who object to Wal-Mart are narrowed-minded defenders of a special interest. If they get their way, they might better the lot of retail employees, but at the cost of the community, including people who aren’t fortunate enough to have a retail job but who still have to buy clothes and food. And so the anti-Wal-Mart zealots oppose the general welfare and an innovation that has promoted it. Hasn’t it always been thus?
Professor Bainbridge cites other studies
For the life of me I cannot understand the reflexive response of some conservatives to defend every single aspect of the Wal-Mart experience. Lower prices on goods=a good thing, yes. Employment=good thing, yes.
But there is a price for everything, and the price of a Wal-Mart culture is great, not just on local businesses, but on product manufacture and marketing, period. The control that Wal-Mart exerts in this area is great and has a wide impact, and, among other things, may lower the price on many goods, but because what Wal-Mart offers is wide but not deep, it impacts what manufacturers determine what is worth their time to produce and market.
Wal-Mart and the smaller big-box stores have not won completely. Smaller businesses have figured out that 9 times out of 10, the last place you want to go to pick up a hammer or a bag of carrots is the packed Wal-Mart parking lot, walk through the huge Wal-Mart (or Home Depot) store and stand in the ungodly lengthy Wal-Mart lines. So the smaller hardware stores are surviving, and the drugstore chains and dollar stores have done well with that knowledge.
But I suppose my bigger point is - why are conservative Wal-Mart defenders so reluctant to acknowledge any problems with the company and the system? I thought conservatism was all about realism, against mindless sunny prognostications. Right?
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