> All that was really died was the general store, and we saw a rise in boutique storefronts. Ouch, head outside a major metro area sometime. There's small town

> All that was really died was the general store, and we saw a rise in boutique storefronts. Ouch, head outside a major metro area sometime. There's small towns all over the country with a Walmart on one side of town and a Dollar General on the other with nothing but shuttered buildings in between save for the occasional fast food joint. Walmart destroyed businesses in small towns. They bought up cheap land on the outskirts of town and leveraged their huge infrastructure to undercut all local retailers. The local retailers would be paying Main Street rents with little to no economies of scale. There's just no competing with Walmart in many small towns.