Thursday, July 31, 2014

The Wal-Mart Dilemma

The moral mandate is to boycott Wal-Mart and that's probably not so hard if you've got the big bucks but it's difficult if you don't.

BUT

Yevette says this is bullshit.  Saving money at Wal-Mart is, overall, an illusion.  I'm pretty good at playing "The Price is Right" so long as we're guessing the price of food rather than sofas or televisions but she surprised me so both of us will look at this some more.

When it makes no sense that way, I have to turn it the other way around.  What has Wal-Mart got that nowhere else has.  Other than that French bread, I can't think of a thing.

If you want to break Wal-Mart, you can't wait for some I'm-not-gay-no-really militia, space aliens, or Rick Perry's Band of Freeedom-Fighting Rednecks.  It's on you, pal.

The purpose is not to restore neighborhood markets as they were in "Leave it to Beaver" days as this has nothing to do with the past.  What it has to do is with a neighborhood model that works.  The market provides a nucleus for the neighborhood.  There's no big sociology in it.  There's the same principle in the corner bar.  It'll be the same in 2060 as it was in 1960, people want the corner bar as, if they will embarrass themselves, they want to do it with friends.  We need a place where we can meet but just for mingling and letting the neighborhood news flow about, you know ... all the stuff that people do and all the stuff that Wal-Mart can never provide.

There's no way I can know how important this is to you but among poor bums, this is an extremely high priority.  We don't have much power but we do have that one.  If we change our thinking a little bit to go to the Hispanic supermarket not so far from here and maybe get some different stuff, different sizes ... wtf ... adapt.  I have no reason to believe it costs more but even if it does the money goes to real people rather than the Waltons.

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