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

discoursemagazine.com

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

#121

Post by audunw »

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

Would you really be going to 8 shops every time though? Realistically I would go to a grocery store or supermarket and maybe one other store (like clothes or sports supplies, maybe a butcher or something if the town has that and I want something really special that week)

I guess what Americans are missing from how smaller towns work in other countries is that they tend to be more dense, with more mixed zoning. Not as overfilled with way too big parking lots, way too wide “stroads”, and endless suburban sprawl. So the trip to town is shorter/faster, you go into town more often, for more different kinds of activities, and so you don’t have to buy everything all at once.

Take a look at the Strong Town initiative and the YouTube channel “not just bikes”.

Being in town - to me - is a part of living life. It’s where you’d have a third place, where you’d do various activities, meet people and discover new things. If you’ve felt the need to optimise your life to maximise your time at work and in your house.. that feels really sad to me.

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

#122

Post by swexbe »

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!

Not to mention, all profits go directly out of town.

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

#123

Post by lapetitejort »

giantrobot wrote: post #111
light_hue_1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

> Small stores carry the same shit as big chain stores.

Not always. Go to a dedicated board game store and you'll see such a wider variety than the branded Monopoly sets on sale at big box stores. Plus they usually have an area dedicated to actually playing games, something you'll never find at a chain. This community charm is paid for by the small store tax, but the benefits far outweigh the cost.

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

#124

Post by lotsofpulp »

ep103 wrote: post #116
r00fus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Most town centers did not have chains open in them, but the stores in them still died because people preferred shopping at big box stores 2 miles away.

A small college town with a reputation of rich kids going to it is probably going to have an outlier amount of single people with extra money to throw around little shops. If they have families and start budgeting, they will be off to Costco and Walmart and Target to save money like the bulk of the US.

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

#125

Post by Merad »

batch12 wrote: post #33
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…

> 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…

> Why even own a lawnmower at this point-- just pay someone to mow your grass for you.

I don’t disagree with you about waste, but I’m assuming you haven’t priced lawn services lately. Even with a small yard and fairly cheap service you’ll be spending enough to buy a (cheap) mower every 4-6 weeks.

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

#126

Post by bryanlarsen »

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…

I'm fairly sure the author agrees with you. "Walmart is evil" is a core thesis of American intellectuals and can be taken a base assumption for any reader of a magazine such as the Discourse. So repeating that thesis doesn't add to the conversation.

But given that base assumption, this is a discussion of a novel explanation one of the reasons why Walmart got successful, and a suggestion for how downtowns could replicate that factor. Many have mentioned that one of the reasons that Walmart is successful is because they're easier to get to for the average car-driving American. But once there, they're convenient because you don't have to dodge traffic while navigating between departments.

Wouldn't downtowns be a lot nicer if, like Walmart, they were easy to drive to, but impossible to drive through? What if getting from the boutique to the restaurant to the theatre was easy as crossing the aisle to a different department in Walmart?

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

#127

Post by newswasboring »

scottLobster wrote: post #27
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).

Sounds like you don't get out much. I'm 35, grew up in a sterile DC-area bedroom community and even I walked down main streets when I went 10 minutes down the road on shopping trips. Then again there are a lot of cities/towns on the east coast that predate the car, so there's probably an increased concentration of "main streets".

> Sounds like you don't get out much

Just completely unnecessary ad hominem. Why?

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

#129

Post by freeopinion »

freeopinion wrote: post #54
throwawaysleep wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deal with 8 different potential return policies. Have 8 different conversations. Deal with whether all 8 take Amex or not.

Let different people shop at different stores depending on their preference for return policies or credit cards. Heh, let one store try to differentiate itself by accepting crypto payments. Or sell only products produced within 100 miles of the store. Or only employee people shorter than two meters. Just because there are 8 stores doesn't mean that everyone has to use all 8 of them. It does mean that anyone could use…

I should point out that the presence of Walmart does not preclude the existence of seven other local stores. Walmart didn't drive all the moms and pops out of town with a shotgun. They competed on price, return policy, credit card choice, quality, and everything else. If the store that only employed people shorter than two meters left town, it was probably because that wasn't a priority to consumers in that town.

In the end, consumers get to choose to support Walmart exclusively or to support a variety of businesses. Walmart doesn't get to make that choice. If you are unhappy with the outcome, is it right to blame Walmart?

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

#130

Post by gottorf »

imchillyb wrote: post #114
dingnuts wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ow…

Please tone down the rhetoric ("You can believe whatever pie-in-the-sky bullshit you want"). We all come to HN for discourse, not a bar fight.

As for what Bernie Sanders says, I'm sure that GP would agree with him that it is indeed wrong for the taxpayer to subsidize big companies. But consider that there are other ways for the taxpayer to stop this kind of subsidy, besides Sanders' "ponies for all" approach. We will benefit from rationally debating what the best way forward is, instead of shouting at those we disagree with.

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