Cars, Breasts and Homes: Why America Likes Big | Hacker News Reader

Cars, Breasts and Homes: Why America Likes Big

time.com

7 pointsbhavin8 comments

From the article regarding Walmart opening effects on a community: "the unemployment rate goes up, the voter-participation rate and the PTA-participation rate go down, the infant-mortality rate goes up and the pollution rate goes up, because people are driving farther and spending more time on the road than if they were going to a local mom-and-pop store"

Does anyone have sources for the above claims? My cursory research on the interwebs cannot confirm them. To my skeptical ear they sound like agenda driven hand-wavery, but I have an open mind.

this movie had some facts - http://www.amazon.com/WALMART-HIGH-COST-PRICE-Format/dp/B000...

Yea, if by "facts" you mean cherry-picked situations without showing the other side's benefits.

Try these facts out as well:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/iap-walmart.html

Quote: "For families with incomes less than $10,000 annually, a super center makes a 30 percent difference in what they can buy. "The marginal utility on the poor is greater," he noted."

Yea, utterly hand-wavy! It's funny how much they hate WalMart. I'm sure they have an organic plasma TV in their right-sized (500 sq ft) living room they used their hybrid SUV to bring home...

I am not sure what is the worst thing about this interview: Offhandedly blaming Walmart for infant mortality (!) or the unbearable smugness of describing your own personal preferences as "right-sizing."

Also, going to the country's largest landfill showed me a lot about how much waste we create in our search for the next thing. We throw away a lot of stuff that works perfectly fine simply to get the bigger and better model.

The landfill problem is interesting in context (as the interviewee mentions Wal-Mart). First of all is the combination of Wal-Mart + rural America + lack of recycling education (in rural America). Wal-Mart got big by basically exploiting small town USA's country bumpkin mentality.

Second of all: Rural America does not recycle. . . it's actually kind of infuriating. Case in point: after I moved to Utah from Florida, I spearheaded a paper recycling program at my high school. Most of my elementary and middle-school years I'd been drilled with the very liberal environmental studies education, so I was pretty astonished that people in the country didn't recycle anything. . . one garbage bin by the curbs, and all of the trash into a landfill. Shortly thereafter the local Wal-Mart moved to the end of town and opened up as a brand new "Super Wal-Mart". The trash cans stopped being big enough, so the city bought people newer and bigger ones.

What it ultimately boils down to is Corporate Social Responsibility. Wal-Marts could do more to address the issue by offering recycling facilites and education. But for the most part things that get purchased in bulk / supersized containers from the Wal-Marts and Sams Clubs across middle America will never get recycled.

You are on the right track but I think slightly misguided. The responsibility does not rest on the corporate shoulders but on the shoulders of government. If the people value reduced/recyclable packaging they can pass laws to mandate it in a variety of ways. Look at the outlawing of plastic shopping bags in San Francisco and other locales.

And meals.

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