[Vision2020] Wal-Mart Changes How We Think

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (January 26, 2006) Spokesman Review with a special thanks to
Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel -

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Even if you never set foot inside their store, you're paying the price of
their market domination, Kathleen Parker says.

 

Wal-Mart changes how we think 

Kathleen Parker 

Orlando Sentinel

January 26, 2006

 

If you love buying cheap salmon from Wal-Mart, you might not after reading
Charles Fishman's new book, "The Wal-Mart Effect."

 

Few issues in American life, except perhaps the war in Iraq, are as
polarizing these days as how Wal-Mart sits in our landscape, our economy and
our consciousness. Fishman, a friend and former editor - but more important,
the kind of reporter for whom no detail or decimal is too small to fascinate
- tells the Wal-Mart story in such intricate detail that you'll never see
your local store the same way again.

 

Wal-Mart isn't just a company. It's a global market force - a nation unto
itself.

 

Ponder this: Americans spend $35 million every hour at Wal-Mart, 24 hours a
day, every day of the year. Wal-Mart is so huge and so powerful, you'll
wonder how you failed to notice that the company affects not just how we
shop, but how we think and live - even if we never set foot in a Wal-Mart
store.

 

Not everyone has missed the Wal-Mart effect, of course. The company has
plenty of critics, but Fishman puts in perspective not just the power of
Wal-Mart, but the good that the mega-corporation does and could do.
Recently, for instance, Wal-Mart announced energy- and fuel-saving plans for
its stores and trucks that, if successful, could serve as a model for the
nation. No one will cheer louder than Fishman if that happens. Such is the
kind of global good Wal-Mart can and should do, he says.

 

On the home front, Fishman argues that critics are wrong when they say that
Wal-Mart puts little people out of business. We (consumers) put little
people out of business, he says. We vote with our wallets, and we're the
ones who choose Wal-Mart over local stores. Wal-Mart, in that sense, is the
ultimate model of democracy.

 

Consumers also have made possible the company's phenomenal growth. In 1990,
Wal-Mart had just nine supercenters in the United States. By 2000, there
were 888. Wal-Mart is the No. 1 grocery retailer in the world. Between 1990
and 2000, 31 supermarket chains sought bankruptcy protection, including 27
that cited Wal-Mart as a factor.

 

Ah well, we say, so it goes in love, war and business. Competition is the
engine that drives a capitalist society. But Fishman argues that Wal-Mart's
power and scale hurt capitalism by strangling competition.

 

"It's not free-market capitalism," he says. "Wal-Mart is running the market.
Choice is an illusion."

 

Wal-Mart not only changes the way we buy, but the way we think, Fishman
says. If Wal-Mart charges $5 per pound for salmon, then shoppers wonder why
a restaurant charges $15. We expect salmon to cost only $5. Or a microwave
to cost only $39. The Wal-Mart effect first changes our expectations, then
changes the quality of merchandise, which is cheap, because it isn't always
well- or ethically made.

 

Take salmon. Wal-Mart, which buys all its salmon from Chile, sells more than
anyone else in the country and undersells all other retailers by at least $2
per pound. That's a lot of market power, which prompts Fishman to ask: "Does
it matter that salmon for $4.84 a pound leaves a layer of toxic sludge on
the ocean bottoms of the Pacific fjords of southern Chile?"

 

Salmon in Chile are raised in packed underwater pens - as many as 1 million
per farm - and fed prophylactic antibiotics to prevent disease. Here's a
fact you'd rather not know: A million salmon produce the same amount of
waste as 65,000 people. Combine that waste with unconsumed food and
antibiotic residue, and you've got a toxic seabed.

 

Does it matter?

 

Only if consumers say it does, says Fishman. Wal-Mart listens to "voters."
If shoppers say they won't buy salmon until Wal-Mart insists on higher
standards from suppliers, then Wal-Mart will make those demands. Incentive
is the engine that drives the company that promises low prices - "always."

 

Fishman also raises questions about worker wages, health insurance and
working conditions in other countries where Wal-Mart suppliers treat human
workers little better than Chile treats fish.

 

In the final analysis, he asserts that the scale of Wal-Mart makes it a
different species of animal than we've ever known before and that,
therefore, horse-and-buggy business rules no longer apply. He insists that
transparency, which corporations (and especially Wal-Mart) resist, is key
not only to preserving the capitalist system we value, but to ensuring fair
and humane business practices here and abroad.

 

Ultimately, Fishman's book posits a question of values: What kind of country
are we going to be?

 

It is a worthy question that consumers will have to answer.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Take care, Moscow.

 

Tom Hansen

Moscow, Idaho

 

****************************************************************************

 

"A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men." 

 

- Thomas Paine (English Writer, 1737-1809)

 

****************************************************************************

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20060126/b7b3196a/attachment-0001.htm