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

https://www.discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-society/2023/07/24/walmart-didnt-kill-the-small-town-the-small-town-did/

by nickwritesit • 3 years ago

39 174 3 years ago

ilyt6• 3 years ago

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

throwawaysleep4• 3 years ago

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

FrustratedMonky3• 3 years ago

So you are advocating for large monolithic monopolies? Reduce the complexity by reducing choice?

freeopinion3• 3 years ago

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 any of them. Sounds like a win to me.

light_hue_1• 3 years ago

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!

throwawaysleep4• 3 years ago

Walmart was the competition that lowered prices. Those 8 stores may have had more variety, but not lower prices.

cykotic2• 3 years ago

And from a typically American perspective one doesn’t have to walk. They’ll even provide motorized carts to use when you are buying gallons of cola.

moolcool• 3 years ago

Not to mention that the product you get from dedicated merchants will invariably be better. The worst bakery in my city is leagues better than the best bread available at Wal Mart

fidotron• 3 years ago

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.

dradtke• 3 years ago

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.

giantrobot2• 3 years ago

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.

swexbe• 3 years ago

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

FrustratedMonky3• 3 years ago

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.

notyourday• 3 years ago

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.

ep1033• 3 years ago

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_

User232• 3 years ago

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.

leetcrew3• 3 years ago

people often give this "just so" explanation, but it doesn't quite add up to me. if it's really so inconvenient to go to the consolidated Walmart location a few towns over, why don't you see shops start to reopen on main street? I suspect the root cause has more to do with cars than a particular megastore.

ilyt6• 3 years ago

Right but the issue is that people want to go there, if nobody went there it would not be a problem. There is th emoney aspect of course, but supermarket (of any type really) is convenience vs having to go to a bunch of smaller stores.

SoftTalker3• 3 years ago

The quaint downtown stores were also probably open from 9-5, maybe 9-12 on Saturday, closed Sunday. That was fine in the 1950s when housewives didn't work and could go shopping during the day. Today, nobody's going to want to take time off work to go buy bread, eggs, and socks. They want to go to Walmart on Sunday afternoon, or on their way home after work.

m_0x• 3 years ago

overall walk more

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

ilyt6• 3 years ago

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.

audunw• 3 years ago

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.

ilyt6• 3 years ago

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.

Well I'm not american and I lived in village and in small town. If I have supermarket in "range" I will go to supermarket, choice is bigger and prices are lower.

Sure, if I have store nearby and want to get an icecream or something, or forgot to buy something on weekly shopping trip I'd buy it there.

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.

...when going on grocery shopping ? And for some reason you're prevented from speaking to people in supermarket ?

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.

I dunno from which arse you've got that conclusion. Do you have nothing more interesting to do in your life than going around shopping ?

Groceries are chore not a fucking adventure, regardless of shop size. And saving money means I can spend it on things I actually enjoy and places I actually want to go to.

johnnyanmac8• 3 years ago

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.

Probably, I live in a California Suburb. There really is no such thing as "walkable" here in the same way some older eastern US cities and other countries have them.

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.

Yeah, that doesn't exist here. We don't really have a "community" in my town. Or perhaps I'm too old and too young for that part of community. No kids to bring to activities but way too old to simply show up for "community activities".

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.

well the cool thing about land in the US is that it's also huge. I'm in a 1600 ft house, so if you have friends it's great for arranging get togethers and house parties.

fantasticshower• 3 years ago

Part of me hates Walmart and part of me loves it. I love that I can go to one place and get 80% of whatever I'm looking for. But I also like the specialty stores my town has. N of one but since Walmart moved in ~20y ago I haven't noticed much changing with the makeup of small businesses. Since Walmart moved in there have been more of the other big box stores, though.

no_wizard7• 3 years ago

The layout is entirely by design to feel like you’re strolling down “Main Street” Americana.

I learned this decades ago when I worked for Walmart setting up stores and training folks. It was explicitly made clear to us this is what the layout was designed to elicit

lotsofpulp4• 3 years ago

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).

tantalor• 3 years ago

I have never once strolled down a Main Street

You know it doesn't have to be named "Main Street" to be a Main Street

no_wizard7• 3 years ago

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 at a Target but never step foot in a Walmart despite having identical goods but Walmart has better prices

mrits2• 3 years ago

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

thoughtpalette• 3 years ago

Ancedotal experience from a 35 yo here.

Growing up in Metro Detroit, there were "Main Streets" in most of the Cities/townships and IIRC it's a pretty common term. I'd argue most people under 60 and 50 know what "Main Street" means just to counter.

Nickersf• 3 years ago

I still do it. There are many Americans who still do it daily. There's a certain charm and feel to walking down a commercial street in a small town instead of walking through a fluorescent lit generic corporate branded super store. Online shopping is inevitable. There are products you just don't find in local shops anymore. I think a good example of that is Radio Shack. When I was a kid, that's where you went for you electronics needs as a hobbyist. There were even a few locally owned electronics shops in the area. Now you get that off of Amazon.

scottLobster4• 3 years ago

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".

chollida1• 3 years ago

Interesting.

I've lived in cities since I've been an adult and every neighborhood I've lived in still has a main street for our small community inside the city. Granted this is only 4 different places, but most cities have many smaller communities inside of them with their own "main streets"

The neighborhood I currently live in, is considered by its residents to be its own little town inside of the city with everything being walkable along the main street.

We even talk about leaving our neighbourhood to go to other places within Toronto.

sudosteph• 3 years ago

You've missed out then! I grew up in a town with a thriving Main St (Davidson, NC) and loved every minute there. The great coffee shop, diner, drug store, bookstore, library, ice cream shop, and gift store all come to mind. Its popularity was an outlier when I was younger, but since then I've actually seen other local towns with formerly dilapidated main streets turn it around (Mooresville for example). Walkability is in huge demand, and these older communities are some of the best options in the region for that.

paleotrope2• 3 years ago

Not enough Nail Salons/Hair salons in a Walmart though.

throwawaysleep4• 3 years ago

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 maintain mechanical knowledge.

I love Walmart as I no longer need to really consider how many of an item I need. When socks are $5 a pair at some of the more expensive stores, buying a huge pile is pricy. Walmart let’s me buy 40 pairs of socks for like $20 and just not keep track of their wash status or where they are in the house.

Walmart makes it so that everyone can solve their problems with a bit of money.

Small stores can’t replicate any of that due to economies of scale. Sure, their workers might be experts in lawnmowers, but when lawnmowers are so cheap as to be single season items, that expertise no longer has value.

rubyn00bie• 3 years ago

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.

nathancahill2• 3 years ago

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."

batch126• 3 years ago

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.

goosinmouse• 3 years ago

I'd like to call out what a life hack merino wool socks are. Cheap cotton socks smell after a few hours, merino wool socks smell after a few days and last forever. Also if you get a decent pair, they don't itch at all. Amazon sells some cheaper 6 packs for $20 that will for sure change your mind on socks.

jarofghosts• 3 years ago

And certainly there is no price to be paid for this accelerated garbage-production loop!

cykotic2• 3 years ago

That is one of the problems with Walmart. It facilitates overconsumption. The world can’t sustain such a lifestyle for everyone. We end up paying for the negative externalities partially by living in a world we have poisoned. Whilst we drink water containing micro plastics we will be able to relish the fact that we were able to buy many more socks than we needed.

shortlongterm• 3 years ago

Is this satire?

Lawn equipment ain't complicated enough to maintain to justify throwing out every season. This is insane consumerism.

ssharp• 3 years ago

Every season seems beyond insane.

However, let's say you make some common mistake like leaving the engine filled with gas during the winter (assuming you're in such a climate). How would you go about getting it fixed? Assume the carb is gummed up -- it's a $10-20 part, plus labor, plus the hassle of finding a small engine repair service to fix it, dropping off, and picking up. It's this vs. going to the Walmart website, clicking a button, and having the lawn mower show up at your house in a day or two.

I always bias towards maintenance and repair but there are tons of people with no knowledge of how to fix something and no desire to learn to. With services costing more and more, buying new is often a more appealing choice, sadly.

kikokikokiko• 3 years ago

Lawnmowers nowadays are coming with "engines that do not require oil changes, ever!!!"... Either the lawnmower industry has deciphered the code to create frictionless moving parts and unoxidizable oils, or maybe the cynic in me is right in thinking that they just want you to throw away your perfectly serviceable lawnmower every couple years and buy a new one.

rblatz5• 3 years ago

Blades need sharpened, gas maybe needs to be drained, are there other fluids that need take care of? Do I need to oil bits, are there bolts that I need to tighten?

I could spend hours learning to do this, and then buying the tools and materials to actually do the maintenance, plus the few hours of effort of actually doing it. Walmart has several mowers listed under $200, I can see why someone would find it not worth the time/effort/money to maintain a mower and just buy a new one. Hopefully, they are setting it out on the curb with a sign that says free for someone that does find that tradeoff worth it.

throwbadubadu• 3 years ago

Except that we should have more long lasting things and should not add to the garbage pile because of cheapness and laziness :( But money sure trumps environmentalist idealism.

Different topic: As a foreigner, really every visit to a Wallmart left me with a very strange feeling, because almost every employee had a zombie like appearance one or the other way, demotivated, sad or emotionless looking, slurping slowly through the shop.. like employees super abused or completely lost and aimless. Nowhere else, even in cheap fast foods or similar I got that, why?

gottorf10• 3 years ago

almost every employee had a zombie like appearance one or the other way

For what it's worth, in my area (a midsize Deep South city; the customary environment for Walmart), I don't see this. But it is also a city experiencing some amount of growth with a viable future. Starting pay at my local Walmarts are the same as starting pay at a McDonald's or any other entry-level retail job.

I'm curious, where were the Walmarts you visited? I've been to "sad" Walmarts like that, and in my experience it correlates most strongly with the general sadness of the town -- places ravaged by the opioid epidemic, with few jobs and no hope in the residents' hearts.

batch126• 3 years ago

every employee had a zombie like appearance one or the other way, demotivated, sad or emotionless looking, slurping slowly through the shop.. like employees super abused or completely lost and aimless. Nowhere else, even in cheap fast foods or similar I got that, why?

When I worked there, the job felt pointless. It's a neverending pile of meaningless work that you can never make progress on. You're disrespected by customers, paid little, and know you're really just a cog in the machine. I didn't show up for work for a week before I quit. Nobody noticed I was gone and they were as surprised when I quit as I was that I wasn't fired. Every time I clocked in, I was hit with the feeling of purgatory. The useless drag of another day-- all for the benefit of -- ?

johnnyanmac8• 3 years ago

But money sure trumps environmentalist idealism.

every time, yup.

demotivated, sad or emotionless looking, slurping slowly through the shop.. like employees super abused or completely lost and aimless. Nowhere else, even in cheap fast foods or similar I got that, why?

Wal mart tends to attract some of the worst folk, and they aren't only there for 5 minutes to pick up a burger. That plus a dead end minimum wage part time job with zero hopes of progression dont make for happy employees

nathancahill2• 3 years ago

This is your brain on consumerism.

batch126• 3 years ago

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 maintenance is alien to me. Why even own a lawnmower at this point-- just pay someone to mow your grass for you. The milk and honey has flowed so freely for so long that when the tap turns off, people really won't know how to take care of themselves.

throwawaysleep4• 3 years ago

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

The lawnmower is so cheap that it is the same price as two mows.

It is indeed wasteful, but that isn't a problem you deal with directly.

jake_morrison• 3 years ago

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 still more expensive than doing it yourself.

Merad• 3 years ago

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.

oski• 3 years ago

Sorry but this attitude towards material goods, while quite common in America, is quite depressing.

r00fus3• 3 years ago

Simply amazing. And I thought I was wasteful. What happens to the old mowers? Does your friend sell or give away his old mower?

I almost feel like our way of life (artificially cheap) is going to hit a brick wall once gas stops being cheap (peak oil).

SoftTalker3• 3 years ago

Peak oil was supposed to happen a decade ago (maybe more?). It ain't happening. Adjusted for inflation, gasoline is as cheap as ever.

leetcrew3• 3 years ago

also what is the guy doing with his mowers that they only last a year? my dad neglects his mowers pretty badly and it still runs fine 10+ years later. only issue is the dull blade.

balls187• 3 years ago

Ever wonder why socks are 40 for $20?

Or what happens to all those socks when they’re disposed of?

Also tossing lawnmowers every year seems beyond stupid.

I can’t imagine the cost of replacing a mower every year being cheaper than buying a $300 ryobi that will last you for years to come.

chromaton• 3 years ago

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

ThisIsMyAltFace• 3 years ago

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

solarmist2• 3 years ago

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

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

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 economically efficient, but you are trading efficiency for resiliency and local governance and control)

dingnuts• 3 years ago

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.

troyvit• 3 years ago

Exactly. Just because a guy who's gigantic paycheck depends on hollowing out small towns says small towns should change, doesn't mean that they need to change the way wants them to. After reading (most of) the article it's a little mind blowing. Walmart took the map of a town, made it car-free, and people flocked to it. Towns can take that same model, apply it to down town, and people will love it.

I also love your point that what we're talking about here trades economic efficiency for resilience and local governance. Always pushing for growth is eventually going to hit a wall when either there's no more room to grow and no more good land to grow food on.

gottorf10• 3 years ago

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.

jxramos4• 3 years ago

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.

gdsdfe2• 3 years ago

This is wrong on so many levels, are we really talking about urbanism inside of a walmart?

pessimizer4• 3 years ago

You don't understand. Both the departments in Walmart and buildings in a town are roughly oblong when viewed from above, so they're actually the same. Also, aisles meant to convey you between those departments are like roads conveying you between buildings. What more evidence do you need? /s

gdsdfe2• 3 years ago

right so if the city wants to plant trees between the aisles they can do so, right? lol

lawkwok• 3 years ago

Here’s a podcast that talks about how Dollorama (and Walmart) is changing city design.

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-strong-towns-podca...

pessimizer4• 3 years ago

What's the difference? The point is that when the Walmart closes, the small town becomes a hellhole.

mcdonje2• 3 years ago

That's because the Walmart opened.

pessimizer4• 3 years ago

What's because the Walmart opened? If you're saying that Walmart's crush local commerce, then close when it's in their business interest to do so (they'll just have to drive to the next Walmart anyway), then that is also what I was saying.

gtowey• 3 years ago

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 other stores. How can local businesses compete? Once they all go out of business and there are no choices left Walmart is free to raise prices and recoup their losses and more.

Then there are the jobs. Low wage, dead end. They create the new working poor where you can't survive even with a job so you go on government assistance as well. Subsidized serfdom.

And to top it all off, if they aren't profitable, they won't hesitate to close up shop and leave a smoking crater in the economy of that same small town that is near impossible to recover from. There are no more small business and it's near impossible to start them again because local employees have been subsisting on starvation wages.

Sure, if you ignore all the horrible realities of the Walmart lifecycle, it sure is nice that they provide a convenient way to buy lots of cheap garbage!

dmoy• 3 years ago

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.

professoretc• 3 years ago

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.

no_wizard7• 3 years ago

Walmart won't run an unprofitable store, as you mentioned. From my time working there[0] their strategy was mostly to put stores as far out as possible from a warehouse hub and work backward. To be honest, Walmart isn't known for closing alot of stores, they tend be very good at figuring this stuff out, at least.

Which is to say, I know they don't take a loss on stores, even news ones. They may have loss leaders, but they make a small (and I mean small) profit on most things sold in the store. Its all about volume.

Their labor practices are quite abhorrent. Not to mention they employ enough people to make a small city (2 Million+ last I checked). I don't know if they been good on balance or not, I do know they are the epitome of Corporate Exploitative Practices[1]

They also have an entire division that exists just to extract tax favor-ability for building in places. They've gotten really good at pitting towns against each other for their business.

That said, all of this is true for Target too. All of it. It just doesn't have the same poor brand reputation and it being the smaller of the two it gets less media attention for its poor practices.

[0]: I really resent them after working there though. I haven't stepped foot in an WalMart since that time period. It worked for that time in my life and I had one of the "better" jobs for sure, but it was rough to see what they did to associates and being part of that machine.

[1]: Its well studied that they have an enormous amount of their workforce on government subsidies / benefits. To the point that they have handouts to help people get on assistance that work there, rather than pay them a living wage. Its nuts when you really think about it.

bryanlarsen• 3 years ago

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?

frumper4• 3 years ago

I think you’ve reinvented the mall.

1letterunixname• 3 years ago

Yep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercatus_Center

Brought to you by the same folks who denied global warming for years like Cato to shill for corporate interests at the expense of our survival and that of all life.

joshspankit• 3 years ago

You’ve missed mentioning another effect on the area: siphoning cash out.

No matter how big their local profit is, the only money reliably returned to the local area is a portion of those minimum-wage incomes.

And of those, a not-insignificant amount comes right back in to Walmart as the employees shop for basics. The rest of the money gets pulled out for corporate capital expenditures never to be seen by the local area again.

Walmart basically runs like a giant cash-vacuum.

kipchak• 3 years ago

"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.

RF_Enthusiast2• 3 years ago

Focusing here on the "Walmart Didn’t Kill the Small Town" part of the story.

I recently purchased some land in one of the rare US towns that does not have a Walmart (or any big box store). In fact, there are no big box stores within 100 miles of this town. It's a town with about 2,500 people, all within the town core, almost no population in the outlying areas. Not enough population to support a box store.

The business in this town is absolutely booming right now. For example, the coffee shop I was at the other day had eight employees working at the time I was there, and it was quite busy. Main Street is lined with retail merchants that appear to be doing well. Restaurants are packed. People are really nice.

I'm even building a business there.

About 100+ miles south is a larger, but still isolated, community with a Walmart. It took me about 30 minutes of driving around to find a coffee shop, and the one I finally found was understaffed and mediocre. Most small retail strips were deserted. People in this town seemed miserable.

I think there are multiple reasons why the first town is doing so well right now, but the thing that struck me immediately when I came to this town was that there was no Walmart. I really believe that is the main reason this town is thriving.

no_wizard7• 3 years ago

Cherish it, because that's a rare small town in the US. Usually the reason they don't have big box stores is because they're becoming economically desolate by that point where no economic engine can really help it along. I've heard of it referred to as "zombie towns".

The fact its that small, and thriving, and I hope has a reason COL, makes it a rare gem.

I'm curious too, do you have fiber internet out there? An interesting phenomenon we had in the midwest is that rural-ish areas got fiber to the home years faster than most major urban or suburban metros did because the cost to run the fiber was cheap and often the ISPs out there are co-ops

RF_Enthusiast2• 3 years ago

My understanding is that the town had a few rough stretches, but came out strong and resilient on the other side.

Yes, COL is quite reasonable, food costs about 60-75% of what it does in the metropolitan suburb area that I'm coming from. The only drawback to the area is that the hospital closed many years ago, but they are in the final planning stages of a new one. So medical emergency costs are temporarily higher.

And yes, there is fiber internet. I just looked up the company that provides it, and it's registered as a Cooperative with the Secretary of State.

xethos• 3 years ago

I really believe that is the main reason this town is thriving.

Well yeah - Walmart (or any major corporation) is extractive. Profits from your small town will not stay in the small town. But where else will the coffee shop owner invest their profits back into if not their business and community?

taeric• 3 years ago

Wasn't this exact observation made with big book stores and libraries, at one point?

xnx• 3 years ago

Small towns are a legacy from 100 years ago when 10 million people worked on farms. Mechanization has cut that number to 2 million while dramatically increasing productivity. It's natural that the quantity and size of small towns would fade.

scoofy• 3 years ago

I think the problem with this thesis is that Walmart can combine the downtowns of many small towns into one Walmart in between them. It's actually only in the cities where you have enough concentration of wealth to kept niche departments alive.

In the cities the only reason why the big-box model works is exactly because it inverts the urban paradigm with a suburban one. Walmart's model would never work in an urban core exactly because the costs of property (and taxes) to build such on inefficient marketplace would be way too high, and could never compete with the cheap, edge-of-town model that they have built.

The irony, of course, is that much of the value of the suburban model is exactly in the form of subsidy capture. So while folks are happy to get discounts at Walmart, they will likely have to pay the difference 30 years later in taxes on an inefficient suburban wastewater system that must be developed to support this type of infrastructure.

Urbanism is more efficient, thus it should be cheaper, but it's the second, and third order effects that will eventually cause the rustbelt-ification of much of the United States. At least this is the thesis of books like Strong Towns that focus on the acceleration deterioration of finances and bankruptcies in many american municipalities.

drewcoo• 3 years ago

not its car orientation but its (indoor) car-free urbanism

Which is why suburban Americans spend all their time at the shopping mall . . .

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

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