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For anyone reading this thread who still has an open mind, I recommend this 2009 episode of the EconTalk podcast that talks about actually working at Walmart an

For anyone reading this thread who still has an open mind, I recommend this 2009 episode of the EconTalk podcast that talks about actually working at Walmart and how supposedly-great the "mom and pops" were before Walmart took over: https://www.econtalk.org/platt-on-working-at-wal-mart/ https://www.econtalk.org/platt-on-working-at-wal-mart/ The truth about the mom and pops is that they had very limited selection, high prices, long delivery times, and often were owned by the local business man rather than a decentralized group of independent business owners. I recommend listening to the podcast before knee-jerk deciding that you know everything.

hnbad 5y ago
> often were owned by the local business man rather than a decentralized group of independent business owners You imply this is undesirable. Care to elaborate? A large talking point during the protests last year was businesses in Black communities being owned by people outside those communities, or more often than not, by large corporations. Or are you suggesting that a lot of the owners actually owned multiple such shops and that this isn't true for the shops that replaced them?
- seibelj 5y ago
  If the idea is that every mom and pop was ran by self-directed, profit-motivated independent business persons who captured more of the profit, this is not often the case - the employees of these stores made the same going labor rate of any retail employee, it was just a local business man who ran the businesses rather than a conglomerate. One benefit of a large corporation like Walmart is the share holders are far more distributed. My general point is that this fantasy of a "mom and pop utopia" of small businesses that Walmart and similar destroyed is just that - a total fantasy. They were not a dream situation and they went away because they were not the best for consumers or their community, not because of some grand conspiracy.
Joeri 5y ago
That's just a set of anecdotes though. Maybe mom and pop stores came in all kinds of varieties, some were better and some were worse. Maybe we shouldn't automatically praise them but maybe we shouldn't also automatically assume that because some of them weren't good most of them weren't good. I doubt anyone has the data to advance a definitive view of mom and pop vs walmart. What I do think we can say definitively is that any market that has few competitors over time will atrophy. Having the store landscape reduced to a few big chains with little variety is not healthy for that market.

hnbad 5y ago

> often were owned by the local business man rather than a decentralized group of independent business owners You imply this is undesirable. Care to elaborate? A large talking point during the protests last year was businesses in Black communities being owned by people outside those communities, or more often than not, by large corporations. Or are you suggesting that a lot of the owners actually owned multiple such shops and that this isn't true for the shops that replaced them?

seibelj 5y ago
If the idea is that every mom and pop was ran by self-directed, profit-motivated independent business persons who captured more of the profit, this is not often the case - the employees of these stores made the same going labor rate of any retail employee, it was just a local business man who ran the businesses rather than a conglomerate. One benefit of a large corporation like Walmart is the share holders are far more distributed. My general point is that this fantasy of a "mom and pop utopia" of small businesses that Walmart and similar destroyed is just that - a total fantasy. They were not a dream situation and they went away because they were not the best for consumers or their community, not because of some grand conspiracy.

Joeri 5y ago

That's just a set of anecdotes though. Maybe mom and pop stores came in all kinds of varieties, some were better and some were worse. Maybe we shouldn't automatically praise them but maybe we shouldn't also automatically assume that because some of them weren't good most of them weren't good. I doubt anyone has the data to advance a definitive view of mom and pop vs walmart. What I do think we can say definitively is that any market that has few competitors over time will atrophy. Having the store landscape reduced to a few big chains with little variety is not healthy for that market.