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Understanding ‘The Wal-Mart Effect’

The Wal-Mart Effect

Some of you–especially those living outside the U.S.– may have missed this book last year (which I happen to be reading at the moment), so I thought I’d post a link to Charles Fishman’s interview by National Public Radio: Understanding ‘The Wal-Mart Effect’.

Rather than repeating the stock doomsday scenarios, I’ll just ask this: How in goodness name did we allow a discount retailer to crush all of its rivals, swallow the grocery industry, and become the dominant player in the American economy? We don’t seem to have very much control over how our collective needs are being served. Or is cold comfort for a few extra pennies on the dollar an acceptable trade for us?

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This entry was written by Steven Nishida and posted on February 21, 2007 at 2:41 pm and filed under the corporation, perspective, human nature, community, business. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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5 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

  1. Who is “we”?

    1. Marco Polo on February 22nd, 2007 at 9:15 am

  2. And what makes you think “we” (whoever they are) give a shit about “our” (whoever we are) “collective needs”? Making a lot of assumptions here, aren’t “we”?

    2. Marco Polo on February 22nd, 2007 at 9:16 am

  3. Marco:

    We = Sentient consumers who can recognize the inherent dangers in allowing megaconglomerate corporations to become more powerful than the average world government.

    Of course, those who hold a stake in the success of such corporations (IE. stockholders, corporate management, etc) are likely to “give a shit” only about those consumer needs that are translatable to increased business.

    In any case, it would be incredibly naive to assume that corporate decision-makers could be entrusted to act conscientiously on behalf of consumers. Otherwise, we wouldn’t find it necessary to invent these EU laws and these U.S. laws.

    So here are my questions (as clearly as possible this time):

    i. Do competition and antitrust laws sufficiently protect against ‘anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices’?

    ii. Do we/Does someone ( I nominate Marco;-) have to become more active in this arena?

    iii. Do consumers consider the total savings on purchases from megaconglomerate corporations in retail and grocery industries to be worth the added risks associated with reduced competition? or do consumers just not ‘consider’ the trade off at all?

    3. realityonastick on February 22nd, 2007 at 6:38 pm

  4. I do know that the mom-and-pop shop owners associations here in Japan fought like the devil for years to keep the small business laws in force, but they eventually lost out to the large business owners. That’s when Toys R Us got the green light to open in Japan.

    WalMart is not coming into Japan directly, but has invested heavily in one of the Japanese biggies — can’t remember which one.

    4. Life After Sixty on February 26th, 2007 at 12:29 pm

  5. Life After Sixty:

    Yes, it’s too bad about the decline of mom-and-pop shops in Japan. I was showing a friend around Kyoto yesterday and ran across a Starbucks in the middle of Gion! Truly depressing.

    It looks like Wal-Mart’s heavy investment in Seiyu is finally starting to pay off.

    5. realityonastick on February 26th, 2007 at 4:52 pm

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