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Walmart has a history of building stores in areas where local stores already exist, letting them bleed money while they outcompete everyone with their lower pri

Walmart has a history of building stores in areas where local stores already exist, letting them bleed money while they outcompete everyone with their lower prices, dominating the local area and driving other stores out of business. They can afford to this due to their enormous size and domination of their suppliers, which means they can sell their wares at lower prices than anyone else. They can afford to bleed money for as long as they have to, in order to win in an area. That is almost the textbook definition of a local monopoly, facilitated by sheer size and entrenched market position on a larger scale. They are so large that they can have everything in all of their stores, they don't have to worry too much about certain items not being profitable in certain areas, because they're big enough to carry everything everywhere, unlike smaller local stores, who cannot afford the space nor the losses. Walmart banks hard on the convenience of everything being available in the same store, which is something they can only do because of their sheer clout and economies of scale that only work for really big powerful companies. The end effect is that Walmat (and other similarly huge chains) drive smaller businesses out of the market, because a free market always rewards those who dominate others, and rewards domination by affording even better tools and methods for dominating competitors. It's a surefire way to make sure the market is owned and run by just a small handful of very large and powerful entities. A truly free market is one that is sensibly regulated, in order to foster competition and prevent monopolies from taking over, according to Adam Smith, not one that is completely unregulated, as many free market proponents seem to argue for.

Natsu 6y ago
> Walmart has a history of building stores in areas where local stores already exist, letting them bleed money while they outcompete everyone with their lower prices, dominating the local area and driving other stores out of business. So it's not a monopoly at all, they just offer things at cheaper prices and drive more expensive businesses out of business, while many reasonably efficient competitors still exist.
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  Walmart leverages their dominance over the supply chain and their position as a huge chain with locations all over the country, to outcompete local competitors who do not have the same benefits to draw upon. As a consequence of this, local businesses die, jobs are lost and people either have to move away or accept Walmart jobs with well-documented bad pay and bad working conditions. All of this is a deliberate business strategy by Walmart, because the US political climate and "business-friendly" ideology from both major parties prioritizes giant corporations with enormous lobbying power, over small business owners. As a further local effect, business life is driven from the city centers to outside the cities, causing fewer people from the suburbs to go into the city centers, leading to urban neglect and decay.
  - Natsu 6y ago
    That's competition. Monopoly is when you don't have real competitors. And yet somehow they compete vs. Amazon, Target and a thousand other stores. They don't have control over the supply of any particular good, it's not like an ISP where they have covenants with local governments that limit competition, they're not Standard Oil. They're not even at the level of Microsoft, because there's not much they can do to exclude competition. But I guess some people have tried this tact, before. Here's an article which discusses many of the points you've made and explains why they don't make sense: https://truthonthemarket.com/2006/07/10/the-unconvincing-antitrust-case-against-wal-mart/ https://truthonthemarket.com/2006/07/10/the-unconvincing-ant...
    - KozmoNau7 6y ago
      Walmart quickly becomes a local monopoly, because they dominate over the local competitors who cannot leverage the same economies of scale to lower distributor prices nor afford to bleed money in one area in order to take over the local market. Honestly it seems you either refuse to read what I wrote, or you are invested in a free market ideology. The link you posted is nothing more than a hard-libertarian free market fanatic opinion blog, heavy on snark and lacking in value. Read about the damage Walmart does to communities and why even their mere presence in the market completely distorts it: https://money.com/walmart-stores-closing-small-towns/ https://money.com/walmart-stores-closing-small-towns/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/09/radiating-death-how-walmart-displaces-nearby-small-businesses/3272/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/09/radiating-death-how-wal... https://popularresistance.org/new-report-wal-mart-destroys-local-economy/ https://popularresistance.org/new-report-wal-mart-destroys-l... https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2013/03/28/1197622/-The-Walmartization-of-the-American-food-chain-is-making-communities-poor-and-poorly-fed https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2013/03/28/1197622/-The-Walma... This goes for all megamart chains, Amazon and the like, but Walmart is among the very worst.

Natsu 6y ago

> Walmart has a history of building stores in areas where local stores already exist, letting them bleed money while they outcompete everyone with their lower prices, dominating the local area and driving other stores out of business. So it's not a monopoly at all, they just offer things at cheaper prices and drive more expensive businesses out of business, while many reasonably efficient competitors still exist.

KozmoNau7 6y ago
Walmart leverages their dominance over the supply chain and their position as a huge chain with locations all over the country, to outcompete local competitors who do not have the same benefits to draw upon. As a consequence of this, local businesses die, jobs are lost and people either have to move away or accept Walmart jobs with well-documented bad pay and bad working conditions. All of this is a deliberate business strategy by Walmart, because the US political climate and "business-friendly" ideology from both major parties prioritizes giant corporations with enormous lobbying power, over small business owners. As a further local effect, business life is driven from the city centers to outside the cities, causing fewer people from the suburbs to go into the city centers, leading to urban neglect and decay.
- Natsu 6y ago
  That's competition. Monopoly is when you don't have real competitors. And yet somehow they compete vs. Amazon, Target and a thousand other stores. They don't have control over the supply of any particular good, it's not like an ISP where they have covenants with local governments that limit competition, they're not Standard Oil. They're not even at the level of Microsoft, because there's not much they can do to exclude competition. But I guess some people have tried this tact, before. Here's an article which discusses many of the points you've made and explains why they don't make sense: https://truthonthemarket.com/2006/07/10/the-unconvincing-antitrust-case-against-wal-mart/ https://truthonthemarket.com/2006/07/10/the-unconvincing-ant...
  - KozmoNau7 6y ago
    Walmart quickly becomes a local monopoly, because they dominate over the local competitors who cannot leverage the same economies of scale to lower distributor prices nor afford to bleed money in one area in order to take over the local market. Honestly it seems you either refuse to read what I wrote, or you are invested in a free market ideology. The link you posted is nothing more than a hard-libertarian free market fanatic opinion blog, heavy on snark and lacking in value. Read about the damage Walmart does to communities and why even their mere presence in the market completely distorts it: https://money.com/walmart-stores-closing-small-towns/ https://money.com/walmart-stores-closing-small-towns/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/09/radiating-death-how-walmart-displaces-nearby-small-businesses/3272/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/09/radiating-death-how-wal... https://popularresistance.org/new-report-wal-mart-destroys-local-economy/ https://popularresistance.org/new-report-wal-mart-destroys-l... https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2013/03/28/1197622/-The-Walmartization-of-the-American-food-chain-is-making-communities-poor-and-poorly-fed https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2013/03/28/1197622/-The-Walma... This goes for all megamart chains, Amazon and the like, but Walmart is among the very worst.