Walmart in the American Conservative

[KingM34]

This is a great and chilling article about Walmart in the American Conservative, of all places. What I want to know is if Conservatives (not neocons, mind you) and Liberals can both agree that Walmart is evil, why can't we do anything to stop them? Hell, we can't even stop them from building stores in my home state of Vermont.

Anyway, the article is well worth reading.

http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_05_22/review.html

[Chimichurri]

1. Okay. I'm confused.

:yoiks:

This article is actually compassionate about the average worker and the well beig of slave laborors. And this *gasp* "If taxes are the price we have to pay for civilization, higher prices may be the price we have to pay for a First World society."

Whoa.

[KingM34]

2. .

Yeah, that's what I thought. I have to remind myself that there are principled conservatives out there, and some of them are just as upset at the current administration as we are.

[MISSDem]

3. IMHO, Walmart is not the great evil; the folks who shop there

and make them possible are the great evil.

[ificandream]

5. What you don't know is hurting you

Walmart is trashing local communities by ripping apart their economies in the name of profit. It's Walmart itself. Other discount stores like Target don't do what Walmart does.

[Son Of Spy]

4. Movie: "The high cost of low price"

is the documentary film sensation that's changing the largest company on earth. The film features the deeply personal stories and everyday lives of families and communities struggling to survive in a Wal-Mart world. It's an emotional journey that will challenge the way you think, feel... and shop.

Released simultaneously in theaters and DVD in November 2005, the film has been seen by millions worldwide. Families, churches, schools, and small busineses owners have screened the film over 10,000 times and the world is taking notice. See the film, share it, and become part of the movement forcing companies to act responsibly.


www.walmartmovie.com/

:^P

[Dora]

6. We can't do anything to stop them because....

Because the people who shop there are as dependent on their prices and goods as a junkie is hooked on smack. When Walmart opens a store in a rural community, eventually most other choices for shopping are shut down due to their predatory pricing policies. Then the local population has no choice but to shop at Walmart.

[MISSDem]

7. I don;t believe that. People always have choices.

A new Walmart just opened up in the small town where I live but I don't shop there. I don't shop at Walmart anywhere. I go to other stores. But the parking lot there is always full. And folks I know go there even though they can afford to shop elsewhere and they tell me they feel guilty but do it anyway. We are so greedy.

[Dora]

8. People are held hostage to Walmart by a number of factors.

There's laziness, yes.
There is their inability/unwillingness to discern the difference between wants and needs.
Gullibility is a factor as well. Suckers of advertising, believers of the sales-pitch.

Of course, you're right to a degree, it's not as simplistic as I proposed, but I'm not entirely in error.

You say your Walmart just recently opened up. Check back in on this thread in 5-10 years, and tell us how your locally-owned pharmacies, markets, hardware stores, etc., are doing. Give it time, give it time. I really do hope that I'm wrong and that Walmart has lost its momentum. Sometimes I believe that they have and that it will collapse in on itself.

[blackwalnut]

9. Good article -- plus more on Wal-Mart

I was surprised but glad that such a good piece would come out of a conservative rag. It isn't that I have always thought of conservatives as dumb, greedy, violent, and rude -- but the Bush era often has had me wondering if there were any good ones left in the world, or if my previous conception that there were, in fact, at least some good conservatives (that I had held for so many years) had been a grand illusion that Bush had violently and utterly ripped away.

"Hell, we can't even stop them from building stores in my home state of Vermont."

Right now there is a group in Tarpon Springs, FL called "Friends of the Anclote" (Anclote is the Anclote river near Tarpon Springs) that is desperately trying to stop a super Wal-Mart being built in the environmentally sensitive area next to the Anclote River. If anyone who reads this is is interested, their website is

Friends of the Anclote

In closing, (and to be loquacious) I'd like to add that the phenomina we know of as Wal-Mart is -- of course -- merely the end result of our pseudo-capitalist system. (I say "pseudo-capitalist" since real capitalism would never be corrupted by preferential tax breaks, subsidies, and state support. But that is my definition of capitalism versus pseudo capitalism, and not necessarily how others use the term).

We've all encountered environmental and labor degradation for a long time (to mention two prime effects of our system), just as our forebearers did, but in terms of the past 50 or so years, it probably has never quite sunk to the level that it has now. In the same way Bush certainly stands out as the worst president ever, so Wal-Mart is probably the worst of the corporations ever (excluding, of course, oil companies and defense contractors like Halliburton, or other too-close-to-the-state entities, whose nefarious nature makes all other entities pale.)