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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

#111

Post by giantrobot »

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!

> There's competition. There's variety.

That does not follow. Small stores carry the same shit as big chain stores. Because of their smaller scale and more limited purchasing power those items are more expensive than a chain and they can only afford to carry high throughput items. The only way small stores can deal with long tail items is if they're super specialty and neat a large enough metro area to have enough sales to survive.

I'm not saying small stores are bad but there's a decided small store tax. Without economies of scale they have a very hard time competing against chains. They have an even harder time competing against online sales.

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

#112

Post by ilyt »

m_0x wrote: post #105
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

> overall walk more Walking more is better for your health. Or are you saying you walk too much already?

I'd rather spend time saved on bicycle, but I wasn't talking about myself but people that already spend 1-2h in commute and have kids so spending extra time on walking around shopping is probably the thing they want to do the least, hence they go to markets rather than local stores.

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

#113

Post by kipchak »

>"Walmart didn’t just compete with the small town. Maybe it didn’t exactly compete with it at all, per se. Rather, it replicated it. And, in stripping the frills and ornamentation of the indoor mall, it managed to replicate it quickly, cheaply and at scale."

The author's focus seems to be more on Walmart's walkability indicating a desire of the public for walkable areas, but I wonder how much of the difference between Walmart and Malls is due to decreased costs versus the monolithic bargaining power of Walmart. As the author points out, malls were originally modeled by Victor Gruen off of shopping areas like Ferstel Passage in Vienna, with the intent to have the mall be a part of an overall urban space with parks and apartments nearby, but the urbanism never came. Malls became versions of these "shopping arcades" replicated quickly, cheaply and at scale.

Instead of being one step down the ladder of cost, and closer to a small town layout, the greater distinction between a mall and Walmart seems to be customers and suppliers only having one potential avenue to go through with Walmart.

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

#114

Post by imchillyb »

dingnuts wrote: post #62
toomuchtodo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small towns should be able to change and adapt, but Walmart being the corporate small town core is another version of enshitification (Walmart being your IRL ecomm platform), with your town's core dictated and governed by Bentonville, Arkansas. Build strong, local communities and economies instead: https://ilsr.org/ | https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/how-small-towns-and-cities-c... (it will not be extremely economical…

You might consider it enshittification because it's not as cute as "Main Street" but in rural and impoverished areas Walmart brought affordable necessities -- like much cheaper groceries -- and real quality of life increases for people who otherwise would have simply had to do with much less. The lower prices that Walmart is able to offer actually do matter and have a material impact on people who are not rich.

> “At a time when huge corporations like Walmart and McDonald’s are making billions in profits and giving their CEOs tens of millions of dollars a year, they’re relying on corporate welfare from the federal government by paying their workers starvation wages. That is morally obscene. U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America. It is time for the owners of Walmart, McDonald’s and other large corporations to get off of welfare and pay their workers a living wage,” said Sanders. “No one in this country should live in poverty. No one should go hungry. No one should be unable to get the medical care they need. It is long past time to increase the federal minimum wage from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to $15, and guarantee health care to all Americans as a human right.”

> Bernie Sanders

> "Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages at Walmart, McDonald’s, Other Large Corporations, GAO Finds" - November 18, 2020

> https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/taxpayers-subs...

GAO = Governmental Accounting Office.

This 'enshittification' isn't some random internet goober decrying it. Enshittification and self-enrichment has been beaten to death on political trails, news, ted talks, social media, etc.

You can believe whatever pie-in-the-sky bullshit you want. The dangers are real. You're covering up the rotten and stinking corpse of reality with scented semi-transparent tissue paper, with all that implied scenario would accomplish.

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

#115

Post by ilyt »

jake_morrison wrote: post #79
batch12 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 maintain mechanical knowledge. It's hard for me to respect this as a valid choice. Waste and consumption concerns aside, the justification of not knowing (or wanting to know) how to perform simple maintena…

When I was a kid I ran a lawn service, and I got all my engines out of the trash. When the mowers are cheap, it's rational. They get the lawnmower out of the shed the first time in spring and it won't start, it would cost a significant amount to get it fixed, and they have to waste your time and wrestle a dirty lawnmower in and out of your car. So they buy a cheap new one and throw the old one away. Paying someone is…

I'd still think at some point they'd get an electric one...

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

#116

Post by ep103 »

r00fus wrote: post #80
ep103 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_

Ithaca is a special case as it's essentially the main town outside of Cornell University. Not all small towns have a major research university or other dependable benefactor around - most of the small town representatives can easily be bought/bribed by a major chain.

Ithaca being a college town definitely brings more money into the town. That definitely adds to the vibrancy. But I think my statement still stands independent of that fact :)

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

#117

Post by ilyt »

gottorf wrote: post #67
nathancahill wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like this quote from Dumbledore, when he looks in the mirror that shows your deepest desire: "What do you see when you look in the mirror?" "I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks." "One can never have enough socks. Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books."

The older I get, the more I appreciate receiving nice socks as gifts.

I just buy 20 pack (or more) of black ones every few years.

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

#118

Post by professoretc »

dmoy wrote: post #101
gtowey wrote: post #77

This article is pure corporate propaganda. Walmart isn't good for small towns no matter how you look at it because they turn entire small town economies into a line item on a gigantic global multi national's ledger. And once done, there is no going back. They build a new store and then sell at a loss to bankrupt the competition. They can do this because they have billions of dollars in reserve and are subsidized by o…

> sell at a loss They don't even necessarily need to sell at a loss. They can also just get economies of scale that don't work for tiny local businesses. Still has the same effect in the end.

Or they sell "the same" (looks the same but it's lower quality) product as other stores but at a lower price, as a Walmart -exclusive.

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

#119

Post by gottorf »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #32
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.

Small towns should be able to change and adapt, but Walmart being the corporate small town core is another version of enshitification (Walmart being your IRL ecomm platform), with your town's core dictated and governed by Bentonville, Arkansas. Build strong, local communities and economies instead: https://ilsr.org/ | https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/how-small-towns-and-cities-c... (it will not be extremely economical…

> Build strong, local communities and economies instead

In my view, a necessary part of this is decreasing central control, both at federal and state levels. A good example is the response to Covid; state laws in places like Michigan forced small flower shops to close, leaving them to watch as people bought flowers from the Home Depot garden center instead. And more broadly, the whole pandemic was a gigantic gift to Amazon's bottom line, at the expense of every small store owner.

I agree that as a society we've trended too far in the direction of efficiency at the cost of resiliency. In restoring the balance, we must also shift the locus of control more to the people and the localities they live in.

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

#120

Post by mrits »

rblatz wrote: post #55
mrits wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you name a large city in the US I can probably tell you the name of the main street that is packed with locals

Dayton Ohio

Believe it or not it hasn't been a vacation spot for me yet.
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