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Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

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Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#41

Post by batch12 »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #11
throwawaysleep wrote: post #6

It’s price and the ease the price enables. Low price demonstratably rules in everything from plane tickets to groceries to basic services to clothing as it enables a life of abundance and mental ease. A friend loves Walmart as it means he no longer has to maintain his lawnmower. He just throws it away and buys a new one annually at the start of the season. He can still mow his lawn while abandoning the need to mainta…

Tangential: but I’d really like to call out what a life hack, lots of cheap socks are. I got the idea myself long ago, as a kid, from the South Park creators, as they demanded unlimited new socks while making the movie. Once a year I buy like a 50 pack on Amazon and it’s great. 10/10 would recommend.

My wife chuckles because I darn my socks a few times before throwing them out. I chuck them when they either aren't comfortable, look terrible, or are too damaged to fix.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#42

Post by fidotron »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #9
ilyt wrote: post #4

Author is delusional. A bunch of small stores close is nowhere near similar. I just want to go to one shop, get the stuff, and leave, not to go to 8 shops, pay 8 times, pack groceries 8 times and overall walk more edit: that is not to say opening big supermarkets is great, just that once they are there that's why people skip local stores and go to the big supermarket

Yeah. The 8 stores are far better. There's competition. There's variety. Employees can move around. I can get to know the shop owners. I can take a wonderful stroll. Instead. You get to enjoy one corporation, that does anything it wants, pays horribly, employees have no choice, you have no choice in what garbage you buy. And your downtown now consists of 8 banks. Yup. You're living the dream!

If you're somewhere like Irvine then downtown can be owned by a single corporation in full control of everything, with a superficial veneer of choice and competition.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#43

Post by dradtke »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #9
ilyt wrote: post #4

Author is delusional. A bunch of small stores close is nowhere near similar. I just want to go to one shop, get the stuff, and leave, not to go to 8 shops, pay 8 times, pack groceries 8 times and overall walk more edit: that is not to say opening big supermarkets is great, just that once they are there that's why people skip local stores and go to the big supermarket

Yeah. The 8 stores are far better. There's competition. There's variety. Employees can move around. I can get to know the shop owners. I can take a wonderful stroll. Instead. You get to enjoy one corporation, that does anything it wants, pays horribly, employees have no choice, you have no choice in what garbage you buy. And your downtown now consists of 8 banks. Yup. You're living the dream!

Fundamentally, consumers and producers are at odds with each other in certain ways. For instance, it's best for customers if every shop was open 24x7, but absolutely horrible for the employees needed to make that happen.

Walmart is the extreme end of satisfying consumers above all else. Customers get a single, climate-controlled location to take care of nearly all their shopping, with good prices; but it comes at the expense of the employees, local community, and factory workers. Unfortunately, most customers don't know or care about those downsides because the experience is catered so heavily for them, and it's hard to get people to sacrifice material comfort for benefits that appear so abstract.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#44

Post by solarmist »

ThisIsMyAltFace wrote: post #31
chromaton wrote: post #15

Sam Walton points out in his autobiography that big cities are changing all the time, yet somehow people expect that small towns will not.

He's completely missing the point, but I suspect he knows that

From my understanding Sam Walton was a pretty quality leader, the company went to shit went he died and his kids took over.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#45

Post by notyourday »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #10
ilyt wrote: post #4

Author is delusional. A bunch of small stores close is nowhere near similar. I just want to go to one shop, get the stuff, and leave, not to go to 8 shops, pay 8 times, pack groceries 8 times and overall walk more edit: that is not to say opening big supermarkets is great, just that once they are there that's why people skip local stores and go to the big supermarket

I think the issue is more about the systematic destroying of the small town. They open multiple Walmart's, the small town stores go out of business, then they can close some percentage of the Walmart's to consolidate into a few stores in central locations, now all of the small town people have to drive farther to get anything at all. And the small town dies.

There's nothing great about small towns. All of this is waxing of people who don't live in small towns that think it is oh so nice to be able to go to a cute little store on vacation at 11:30am to get a muffin on Saturday. Never mind that the store itself is closed Monday to Friday.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#46

Post by ep103 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #10
ilyt wrote: post #4

Author is delusional. A bunch of small stores close is nowhere near similar. I just want to go to one shop, get the stuff, and leave, not to go to 8 shops, pay 8 times, pack groceries 8 times and overall walk more edit: that is not to say opening big supermarkets is great, just that once they are there that's why people skip local stores and go to the big supermarket

I think the issue is more about the systematic destroying of the small town. They open multiple Walmart's, the small town stores go out of business, then they can close some percentage of the Walmart's to consolidate into a few stores in central locations, now all of the small town people have to drive farther to get anything at all. And the small town dies.

Aye, I lived in Ithaca, NY for a while, and they had a local law that the only businesses within the town center could not be franchise stores, and had to be independently owned. Chain stores could open, but had to do so down the highway about ~2 miles away.

It is _incredible_ the difference it makes on town culture, and _how much better it was_

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#48

Post by rblatz »

no_wizard wrote: post #14
lotsofpulp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be surprised if most people under 60 or even 50 know what strolling down “Main Street” means. In my 30+ years, I have never once strolled down a Main Street. I have always gone to big stores and malls (and now online shopping).

I consider it the fact that Walmart for a long time had a mostly rural and suburban strategy that skews demographics to people 40+. It’s a Sam Walton hold over that I think is being slowly replaced. What WalMart hates the most is that they can’t get people of affluence who want to save money to shop at one though. When I worked there the complaint out of HQ I heard the most is that Michelle Obama and Oprah would shop…

Maybe don't strew pallets of junk in the middle of aisles if you want to go upmarket?

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#49

Post by User23 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #10
ilyt wrote: post #4

Author is delusional. A bunch of small stores close is nowhere near similar. I just want to go to one shop, get the stuff, and leave, not to go to 8 shops, pay 8 times, pack groceries 8 times and overall walk more edit: that is not to say opening big supermarkets is great, just that once they are there that's why people skip local stores and go to the big supermarket

I think the issue is more about the systematic destroying of the small town. They open multiple Walmart's, the small town stores go out of business, then they can close some percentage of the Walmart's to consolidate into a few stores in central locations, now all of the small town people have to drive farther to get anything at all. And the small town dies.

Banking and financing is a big part of it too. Good luck getting Chase to give you a loan to start Monky General. I believe that’s a big part of why you see so many franchise chains. The loan officer for an out of town bank can probably find a hundred similar Subways or whatever and have a good idea of what the financials will look like. On the other hand he has no clue how well or poorly a locally owned business will do so he wants no part of it.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#50

Post by jxramos »

chromaton wrote: post #15

Sam Walton points out in his autobiography that big cities are changing all the time, yet somehow people expect that small towns will not.

that is very interesting, sort of collides with the notion of soft bigotry of low expectations applied to cities. It's almost as if there's this implicit thinking and perception of the small town in terms of imagining them as these static, non-dynamic, unchanging homogenous entities which they are not. Kudos to Sam for challenging how we are to think of the small town and break out of these odd assumptions that have collected and are obviously out of date.

It's like anything with life, cities are comprised of people, people don't just stand still, being contemporaries in any generation you must necessarily survive and do what it takes to progress. There is no formula in any generation that you turn the crank and things just work, life takes work, and its non-formulaic and full of surprises.

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