why i still shop at wal-mart from time to time
(i stole this from another person's brain because i don't think i would do much better explaining it myself.)
It is common in many circles I frequent for my friends and acquaintances to hate Wal-Mart. This is not a generic dislike for big-box retail, since I don't hear it at all about Staples/Office Depot/OfficeMax. It's particular to Wal-Mart. They are the largest, which is part of the issue, I'm sure. But Wal-Mart seems to draw a special anger, an anger I've only seen akin in intensity to the ire directed at Microsoft from technical folks.
The biggest critique I hear is that Wal-Mart is exporting U.S. jobs to China. They are. I don't hate Wal-Mart for that, for essentially the same reason that I dislike the Bush administration treatment of Iraq. I don't value Chinese lives less that American lives; I don't value Iraqi lives less than American lives. With China, the issue is economic inclusiveness. I don't believe that American lives are more worthy of economic participation than Chinese lives. In Iraq, I don't believe that Iraqi lives are worth less than American lives, in complete contradiction to de facto administration policy to minimize U.S. casualties at the expense of Iraqi casualties.
Another pair of critiques are that they pay their workers poorly and that they destroy Main Street (local retail). Both of these arise from a single trend which is independent of Wal-Mart-the continuing encroachment of the commodity principle into retail. Wal-Mart doesn't innovate products; it distributes them and clones them. Eliding a longer argument, the end result is a conversion of companies that sell commodity-like products into giant robotic vending machines. (Wal-Mart's well-known interest in RFID is the current step in this direction.) Lowering of wages paid to retail workers is a precursor to eliminating these jobs entirely. And what mom-and-pop retail business can compete with a giant robotic vending machine?
So I don't hate Wal-Mart. I don't love them, either. Wal-Mart is simply doing faster what the economy does anyway; it changes the world in ways that increase total economic wealth. In the process, there are things that people like but do not prefer that fall by the wayside. Consider the whole death-of-Main-Street issue. People's observed behavior is that they'd rather have cheaper prices than the human touch for this class of retail. Their choice in where to spend their money is a personal lifestyle choice. You may not like it, but it's not yours to dictate. So then there's the expected Imminent End of the Community. If this causes the community to end, what held it together in the first place? If it was only an accidental configuration of certain elements of the economy, then its actual value (certainly not its purported value) must not have been very high. To wit, if you value the community that Main Street had, now that it's going away I'd suggest putting in some effort to recreate its benefits in a different context. I know I am.
As one whose political leanings are essentially anarchist, I believe both in a free market (the right-leaning strain of anarchism) and in intentional community (the left-leaning one). As with many other things in life, you don't get to pick and choose from arbitrary possibilities; there are constraints. As the economy becomes more and more effective, so also does it remove necessities to deal with other people. Community that still happens at the ultimate endpoint of this process has to be entirely intentional.
It is common in many circles I frequent for my friends and acquaintances to hate Wal-Mart. This is not a generic dislike for big-box retail, since I don't hear it at all about Staples/Office Depot/OfficeMax. It's particular to Wal-Mart. They are the largest, which is part of the issue, I'm sure. But Wal-Mart seems to draw a special anger, an anger I've only seen akin in intensity to the ire directed at Microsoft from technical folks.
The biggest critique I hear is that Wal-Mart is exporting U.S. jobs to China. They are. I don't hate Wal-Mart for that, for essentially the same reason that I dislike the Bush administration treatment of Iraq. I don't value Chinese lives less that American lives; I don't value Iraqi lives less than American lives. With China, the issue is economic inclusiveness. I don't believe that American lives are more worthy of economic participation than Chinese lives. In Iraq, I don't believe that Iraqi lives are worth less than American lives, in complete contradiction to de facto administration policy to minimize U.S. casualties at the expense of Iraqi casualties.
Another pair of critiques are that they pay their workers poorly and that they destroy Main Street (local retail). Both of these arise from a single trend which is independent of Wal-Mart-the continuing encroachment of the commodity principle into retail. Wal-Mart doesn't innovate products; it distributes them and clones them. Eliding a longer argument, the end result is a conversion of companies that sell commodity-like products into giant robotic vending machines. (Wal-Mart's well-known interest in RFID is the current step in this direction.) Lowering of wages paid to retail workers is a precursor to eliminating these jobs entirely. And what mom-and-pop retail business can compete with a giant robotic vending machine?
So I don't hate Wal-Mart. I don't love them, either. Wal-Mart is simply doing faster what the economy does anyway; it changes the world in ways that increase total economic wealth. In the process, there are things that people like but do not prefer that fall by the wayside. Consider the whole death-of-Main-Street issue. People's observed behavior is that they'd rather have cheaper prices than the human touch for this class of retail. Their choice in where to spend their money is a personal lifestyle choice. You may not like it, but it's not yours to dictate. So then there's the expected Imminent End of the Community. If this causes the community to end, what held it together in the first place? If it was only an accidental configuration of certain elements of the economy, then its actual value (certainly not its purported value) must not have been very high. To wit, if you value the community that Main Street had, now that it's going away I'd suggest putting in some effort to recreate its benefits in a different context. I know I am.
As one whose political leanings are essentially anarchist, I believe both in a free market (the right-leaning strain of anarchism) and in intentional community (the left-leaning one). As with many other things in life, you don't get to pick and choose from arbitrary possibilities; there are constraints. As the economy becomes more and more effective, so also does it remove necessities to deal with other people. Community that still happens at the ultimate endpoint of this process has to be entirely intentional.