The Economy

My father sold fertilizer to small town garden shops and hardware stores in central and western Kansas back in the 80's, when Wal-Mart was spreading through the state like a prairie fire. Every year my Dad's company would have a convention for their dealers and and hire a relatively well known conservative to speak. Small town business owners are generally very conservative and garden shop owners even more so because they all despise the EPA,

One year the featured speaker was a sociology professor. I asked my Dad why the company would hire an obscure sociology professor. My Dad said the guy studied the impact of a Wal-Mart coming into a rural area, Wal-Mart would take out the local businesses. These businesses were the supporters of the local Little Leagues, etc. that a community was built around. The guy studied how Wal-Marts damaged the community social infrastructure and turned small towns into extended suburbs with Main Streets full of empty storefronts. My Dad said the guy's speech was very well received.

 

I have the strange perspective of a small town kid who also happened to be best friends of a son whose dad ran the family business of a furniture manufacturer with sales now over $1 billion a year.

His great-grandfather invented ready-to -assemble furniture. He built a historic village, funded the library, employed 5,000 people in a town of 3,500 people and lived humbly, faithfully and simply. His truck had 350,000 miles on it. The family was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were capitalists through and through. But they understood that if you put the company above the town you exist, you’ve destroyed America.

My mom retired from the company this year. She cleaned the CEO’s office. He kept her on for years, paying for her health insurance even when she was part-time, even when my dad had cancer treatments.

I don’t want to live in the country where business must be ruthless. It’s shortsighted. It’s cruel. It’s inhuman.

This is a country with vast resources and good people. We can be prosperous and keep our souls and humanity.

 

I personally don't "shop" at Dollar General, but if I need something immediately (pack of batteries, roll of tape, bottle of bbq sauce, etc), and that's the closet option, that's when I go there. Most of there stuff isn't exactly quality.
In my county, there are four towns, so to speak. All of your retail places are in the center of the county in the main town city limits. People on the fringes could be a 30-45 minute drive each way if they needed to run out to get something. The Dollar Generals are scattered in those areas and thriving.

 

The only Dollar General I’ve ever gone to is down the street from my sister-in-law’s house in a godforsaken pocket of Pennsyltucky.

I had to get diapers and it was the only place within 10 miles. It always looks like it was just looted before a big storm comes. Shit just strewn all over random shelves and/or the floor.

IIRC, they actually sold individual diapers like they were loosies.

 

Until the pandemic, the Dollar Store had 20 oz. Cokes for $1. Best grocery value in town.

 

Diapers and cleaning supplies are all I ever bought there. Aldi’s cleaning supplies are even cheaper now and hopefully I don’t need to buy diapers again until I’m in my 80s.

 

This is a fine sentiment and one that likely resonates with many people here. I have to wonder, though, how much traction such thinking would get among those who can carry it out when so many of the great and the good of the business world are taught to sing from the same hymn sheet as the man who famously wrote this.
A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits (Published 1970)

 

And very prescient. Then when Walmart closes in those towns like I’ve seen in Texas, there’s nothing left. Except probably a DG.

 

I have gotten old enough to know I am yelling into a void. I don’t expect anything I believe to matter or change anything. They will do as their religion tells them. And to steal Alma’s thunder, it is a religion. It is what they worship. I have a place like this to vent. In real life I can only live debt-free and slowly but surely detach from the system. I work a manual labor job, am on the last battery life of an iPhone that will no longer be supported and try to live as small of a life as I can while trying to raise a child who is agile enough to escape their trap. (Of course my parents thought the same when they sent me off to college as the first in our family to attend.) I don’t see a place for people of average ability and intelligence in their future plans. They’ve squeezed every ounce of profit out of us. Now all that’s left is a post-labor world. Profits from businesses that require no humans other than menial service industry jobs.

 

In the 80's Wal-Mart was not yet in the grocery/supercenter business. When they consolidated the smaller stores into larger SuperCenters they turned a lot of small towns into bedroom communities.

 

I've said for years, the people who complain most about Walmart (and now Amazon because it's giving Walmart a dose of its own medicine) are those who can afford not to shop there.
I was having a conversation about Walmart with someone I know many years ago. He proudly proclaimed, "I've never been in one of the son of bitches" (which I'm certain was a lie).
I replied, "Well, you own a gas distributorship and a string of convenience stores. But when my family needs socks or toothpaste or lightbulbs, it's pretty nice."

 

I know they're hated, but there is something about going to get your oil changed and a tire replaced while you're buying a new toaster, some groceries, some mulch, a pair of pants and a crochet needle.