What happened when Walmart left | Hacker News Reader

What happened when Walmart left

theguardian.com

48 pointsprawn7 comments

Since nobody's touching this (comment-wise) w/ a ten-foot-pole, I'll put in my 2c just to say that this article illustrates well how large corporations squeeze the wealth out of small, already poor communities, leaving them worse for wear.

It was a big deal in my town when the city allowed the local Walmart to start selling grocery items. The concern was that the long-running local grocers wouldn't be able to compete.

I'm under the impression that the majority of commenters on HN are pro-Capitalist, and while these Capitalism-critical articles occasionally make it to the second or third pages of HN, nobody really wants to talk about the deletrious effects that Capitalism wreaks on the working poor. It's not just Walmart, the article also mentions McDonald's, as a provider of "cheap", "bad food", which is making people sick.

I know that a lot of people in tech are really, actually trying to make the world a better place; but... if we can't start discussing and unpacking some of our base assumptions about how the world actually works, we're just adding more fuel to the fire, feeding the beast, enriching the rich while impoverishing the poor.

I'm not starting a war... nor do I think that the other "ism", Socialism, however it might have been, or be, implemented, is the "one true economic theory" that will save the world from poverty. The world is not Black and White, no matter how many "Cops" episodes might portray otherwise.

I do think that we should question the status quo, and meaningfully consider, and attempt, alternatives to it.

My personal experience with pro-Capitalist folk is that they tend to view the world as a zero-sum-game, whereas I see it as a non-zero-sum-game. If there are any pro-Capitalists here who also see the world as a non-zero-sum-game, I would love to hear about your perspective. Hell, I'd love to hear your zero-sum-game perspectives as well, although I don't think they'll change my mind. But who knows?

People already in power have no incentive to change the rules of the game (as far as I can see). But people just now gaining power (e.g., people in tech), do have an opportunity to change some of those rules, and could very well "undo" some of the damage that has been done by the incumbents.

Again, just my 2c.

It's not zero-sumness that makes me distrustful of unregulated capitalism, but this quote from the article:

"with numerous studies recording how it sucks the energy out of a locality, overpowering the competition through sheer scale and forcing the closure of mom-and-pop stores"

I.e., bigger companies have advantage over smaller ones due to economies of scale, even without resorting to corrupting public officials. This means money and power get ever more concentrated, and power -is- a zero-sum game. And no-one wants to be at the mercy of multinational corporations - at least kings had to (at least pretend to) care about their subjects.

How did you come to the conclusion that HN is majority pro-capitalist? Did you look at the comment threads on political articles?

Recently there's been tons of favorable discussion about:

- the "right to repair" (I.e. regulators forcing a ban on non-repairable products)

- basic income (I.e wealth redistribution, to people who don't even need it)

- EU fines on FB buying Whatsapp (I.e. regulators enforcing vague laws, that, if interpreted consistently, would lead to a ban on all B2C acquisitions (obviously they're not intended to be enforced consistently))

- EU fining Google for entering the online shopping market(I.e. regulators forcing a company to modify what they display on their website)

- net neutrality (I.e regulators controlling the pricing model of ISPs)

Confusing matters is the fact that people have a fuzzy definition of capitalism (especially in the case of net neutrality, which is painted as a way to protect competition, but that's a more philosophical debate).

Basically, HN skews overwhelmingly liberal - like most liberals, they are not anti-business, but believe in a regulated free market with high taxes to pay for public services. (I.e. a mixed economy).

Likewise, who are these pro-capitalist folk who see the world as a zero-sum game? Care to share some actual quotes from these people? Every pro-capitalist thinker from Adam Smith to von Mises to Ayn Rand makes the case that capitalism is all about non-zero-sum transactions. (If a trade is entirely voluntary, both parties need to benefit or they went enter the trade). The supposed negatives of capitalism (like that in the article) are when one party either refuses to trade with another or exits an existing trade relationship (as Walmart exited the small town). That sucks for the people in the town, but Walmart aren't their slaves. Walmart is free to close their stores as they please and the townspeople are free to set up new retail stores to capture the new market.

More fundamentally, every society in the pre-capitalist era was essentially stagnant, with minimal growth, and required slavery to function. In the modern era, a simple glance at East and West Germany, or North and South Korea, makes clear which of capitalism or socialism is zero-sum. The only legitimate debate is between pure capitalism (as in 19th century America) and the mixed economy (as in modern Europe, and modern America, which only differs on the details). But almost no-one argues for pure capitalism. You talk like you're an open-minded rebel yet you seem to have missed the glaring fact that your views are entirely mainstream, on HN and elsewhere.

Not that it was intended, but I focused on two points of this post.

"I know that a lot of people in tech are really, actually trying to make the world a better place".

OP made some incorrect assumptions, but I think this one is right on.

Also,

"But people just now gaining power (e.g., people in tech), do have an opportunity to change some of those rules, and could very well "undo" some of the damage that has been done by the incumbents."

A great deal of the American economy over the last forty or fifty years has consisted in mining the wealth built up over the previous thirty or forty. Think of casinos, for example. On that basis, why should Walmart stick around when the mine is tapped out? AMAX wouldn't keep a mine operating when the returns no longer make sense.

Well by your reasoning they never should have been allowed inside in the first place, and I agree. However, it's too late for that. We could just nonchalantly observe that the town asked for it, but that would be cruel towards the townspeople who are now struggling in the aftermath. The point of this piece is to highlight the effect it had on the locals, how it just left without any responsibility towards the drain it caused. The point isn't to somehow change Walmart's character as a corporation, but rather show others that maybe they shouldn't welcome a devil in disguise despite what it offers, that maybe they should support local businesses and focus on self-sustainability.

I think the bigger issue not given enough attention to is that the town is dying in general. If young people are leaving in droves and business are closing left and right, that's not the sign of a healthy town at all. From the article I got the impression that the town boomed as a coal town, but we all know that the industry is declining now. The town needs to revitalize itself somehow or accept that once its natural resources are no longer enough, maybe it can't be sustained. (there are plenty of ghost towns in the US that were once sites of gold or oil riches)

Regarding Walmart though, this article demonstrates painfully well the cold soul of a corporation. Lots of megacorps love touting that they are people-first or refer to themselves as a "family", but the truth of the matter is that they have no loyalty: once the profits aren't large enough, they start axing jobs. (note I'm not saying they should run an unprofitable business, but in general it seems they prefer to fire employees and cut salaries rather than paying the CEO less exorbitantly or trying to run leaner and at a cost for a while for the economy to get better; you won't improve it by giving the local populace less money) Walmart especially comes in displacing local businesses, hiring hundreds and creating a strong dependency on themselves. Like a parasite, it enters an area and drains its resources, and once it runs dry it moves elsewhere. The sad truth of it all is that at the end of the day, everyone cares about getting cheap goods rather than studying the local economic effects of allowing such a business to encroach on their town. The suits will just tell you that, at the end of the day, it's just capitalism. And maybe that says more about the soul of America than it does just about Walmart.

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