12 ms·

Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

39 points by nickwritesit 3y ago

starside 3y ago
[flagged]
rambojohnson 3y ago
[flagged]
ilyt 3y ago
Author is delusional. A bunch of small stores close is nowhere near similar. I just want to go to one shop, get the stuff, and leave, not to go to 8 shops, pay 8 times, pack groceries 8 times and overall walk more edit: that is not to say opening big supermarkets is great, just that once they are there that's why people skip local stores and go to the big supermarket
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  Deal with 8 different potential return policies. Have 8 different conversations. Deal with whether all 8 take Amex or not.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    So you are advocating for large monolithic monopolies? Reduce the complexity by reducing choice?
  - freeopinion 3y ago
    Let different people shop at different stores depending on their preference for return policies or credit cards. Heh, let one store try to differentiate itself by accepting crypto payments. Or sell only products produced within 100 miles of the store. Or only employee people shorter than two meters. Just because there are 8 stores doesn't mean that everyone has to use all 8 of them. It does mean that anyone could use any of them. Sounds like a win to me.
    - freeopinion 3y ago
      I should point out that the presence of Walmart does not preclude the existence of seven other local stores. Walmart didn't drive all the moms and pops out of town with a shotgun. They competed on price, return policy, credit card choice, quality, and everything else. If the store that only employed people shorter than two meters left town, it was probably because that wasn't a priority to consumers in that town. In the end, consumers get to choose to support Walmart exclusively or to support a variety of businesses. Walmart doesn't get to make that choice. If you are unhappy with the outcome, is it right to blame Walmart?
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      >Let different people shop at different stores depending on their preference for return policies or credit cards. to be fair, the people did choose. I know it's out of vogue to blame the general populace for the actions of coporations, but at the end of the day corps can do this because it works. Every single time. Not sure if anything can be done, but I think it's also worth considering WHY people don't consider much past their immediate convenience when shopping.
- light_hue_1 3y ago
  Yeah. The 8 stores are far better. There's competition. There's variety. Employees can move around. I can get to know the shop owners. I can take a wonderful stroll. Instead. You get to enjoy one corporation, that does anything it wants, pays horribly, employees have no choice, you have no choice in what garbage you buy. And your downtown now consists of 8 banks. Yup. You're living the dream!
  - throwawaysleep 3y ago
    Walmart was the competition that lowered prices. Those 8 stores may have had more variety, but not lower prices.
    - cagey 3y ago
      Recently I needed to replace my car's battery (size 24F; I opted to upgrade to an AGM battery). In my town of 45,000 (medium-small?) there is one Walmart superstore (sans auto shop), a bunch of chain auto parts stores, and some non-chain stores. Shopping online, I determine: Walmart: Everstart $180, 4 year "free replacement" warranty. Napa: house brand $250, Odyssey $371 (both 3 yr warranty) OReilly: house brand $250, Optima $290 (both 3 yr warranty) AutoZone: house brand $250, Optima $290 (both 3 yr warranty) Walmart gets my business in this case as it does in most others. The few employees I interact with there don't seem to be unhappy, and their return policy is awesome (and is consistently applied). Walmart hasn't forced the competition out of business, but I see no reason why I should shop elsewhere in order to pay $70 (38%) more for an equivalent battery with 1 year less warranty. Yes, Walmart is evil./s
  - cykotic 3y ago
    And from a typically American perspective one doesn’t have to walk. They’ll even provide motorized carts to use when you are buying gallons of cola.
  - moolcool 3y ago
    Not to mention that the product you get from dedicated merchants will invariably be better. The worst bakery in my city is leagues better than the best bread available at Wal Mart
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  I think the issue is more about the systematic destroying of the small town. They open multiple Walmart's, the small town stores go out of business, then they can close some percentage of the Walmart's to consolidate into a few stores in central locations, now all of the small town people have to drive farther to get anything at all. And the small town dies.
  - notyourday 3y ago
    There's nothing great about small towns. All of this is waxing of people who don't live in small towns that think it is oh so nice to be able to go to a cute little store on vacation at 11:30am to get a muffin on Saturday. Never mind that the store itself is closed Monday to Friday.
    - User23 3y ago
      The DMV experience in a small town versus a big city is night and day in the small town’s favor. That’s true for pretty much all government services from the Post Office down to the County office. The main benefit of small towns is that social capital matters and reputation matters. Of course those are disadvantages to misbehavers.
      - gottorf 3y ago
        > social capital matters and reputation matters. Of course those are disadvantages to misbehavers. This is something that many young adults have forgotten, because it's increasingly more trendy to move around a lot in your 20s while developing your career. Nobody cares in a big city if you're an asshole, because there's a million other people to associate with and most likely the asshole and everyone around them aren't going to still be there in five years. The downside of the small town social setting is that it can be cliquey.
      - tstrimple 3y ago
        What?! This runs completely counter to my experience living in a small town. A town small enough that the post office doesn’t do to door delivery, you’ve got to go pick it up and the closest DMV is an hour away in the city. Small towns don’t generally have services like that at all.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  The quaint downtown stores were also probably open from 9-5, maybe 9-12 on Saturday, closed Sunday. That was fine in the 1950s when housewives didn't work and could go shopping during the day. Today, nobody's going to want to take time off work to go buy bread, eggs, and socks. They want to go to Walmart on Sunday afternoon, or on their way home after work.
- m_0x 3y ago
  > overall walk more Walking more is better for your health. Or are you saying you walk too much already?
  - ilyt 3y ago
    I'd rather spend time saved on bicycle, but I wasn't talking about myself but people that already spend 1-2h in commute and have kids so spending extra time on walking around shopping is probably the thing they want to do the least, hence they go to markets rather than local stores.
- audunw 3y ago
  Would you really be going to 8 shops every time though? Realistically I would go to a grocery store or supermarket and maybe one other store (like clothes or sports supplies, maybe a butcher or something if the town has that and I want something really special that week) I guess what Americans are missing from how smaller towns work in other countries is that they tend to be more dense, with more mixed zoning. Not as overfilled with way too big parking lots, way too wide “stroads”, and endless suburban sprawl. So the trip to town is shorter/faster, you go into town more often, for more different kinds of activities, and so you don’t have to buy everything all at once. Take a look at the Strong Town initiative and the YouTube channel “not just bikes”. Being in town - to me - is a part of living life. It’s where you’d have a third place, where you’d do various activities, meet people and discover new things. If you’ve felt the need to optimise your life to maximise your time at work and in your house.. that feels really sad to me.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    > I guess what Americans are missing from how smaller towns work in other countries is that they tend to be more dense, with more mixed zoning. Not as overfilled with way too big parking lots, way too wide “stroads”, and endless suburban sprawl. So the trip to town is shorter/faster, you go into town more often, for more different kinds of activities, and so you don’t have to buy everything all at once. Well I'm not american and I lived in village and in small town. If I have supermarket in "range" I will go to supermarket, choice is bigger and prices are lower. Sure, if I have store nearby and want to get an icecream or something, or forgot to buy something on weekly shopping trip I'd buy it there. > Being in town - to me - is a part of living life. It’s where you’d have a third place, where you’d do various activities, meet people and discover new things. ...when going on grocery shopping ? And for some reason you're prevented from speaking to people in supermarket ? > If you’ve felt the need to optimise your life to maximise your time at work and in your house.. that feels really sad to me. I dunno from which arse you've got that conclusion. Do you have nothing more interesting to do in your life than going around shopping ? Groceries are chore not a fucking adventure, regardless of shop size. And saving money means I can spend it on things I actually enjoy and places I actually want to go to.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
- fantasticshower 3y ago
  Part of me hates Walmart and part of me loves it. I love that I can go to one place and get 80% of whatever I'm looking for. But I also like the specialty stores my town has. N of one but since Walmart moved in ~20y ago I haven't noticed much changing with the makeup of small businesses. Since Walmart moved in there have been more of the other big box stores, though.
no_wizard 3y ago
The layout is entirely by design to feel like you’re strolling down “Main Street” Americana. I learned this decades ago when I worked for Walmart setting up stores and training folks. It was explicitly made clear to us this is what the layout was designed to elicit
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I would be surprised if most people under 60 or even 50 know what strolling down “Main Street” means. In my 30+ years, I have never once strolled down a Main Street. I have always gone to big stores and malls (and now online shopping).
  - tantalor 3y ago
    > I have never once strolled down a Main Street You know it doesn't have to be named "Main Street" to be a Main Street
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Yes, I meant shopping while walking around an old school downtown with a clothing store next to a grocer next to a shoe store next to a diner next to hardware store etc. I only ever remember going to Walmart, Home Depot, Costco, Best Buy, malls, Kroger, etc.
      - saalweachter 3y ago
        The Hudson Valley has something analogous to bedroom communities, scenic small towns which have vibrant downtowns with all sorts of little shops for weekenders to stroll around.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    I consider it the fact that Walmart for a long time had a mostly rural and suburban strategy that skews demographics to people 40+. It’s a Sam Walton hold over that I think is being slowly replaced. What WalMart hates the most is that they can’t get people of affluence who want to save money to shop at one though. When I worked there the complaint out of HQ I heard the most is that Michelle Obama and Oprah would shop at a Target but never step foot in a Walmart despite having identical goods but Walmart has better prices
throwawaysleep 3y ago
It’s price and the ease the price enables. Low price demonstratably rules in everything from plane tickets to groceries to basic services to clothing as it enables a life of abundance and mental ease. A friend loves Walmart as it means he no longer has to maintain his lawnmower. He just throws it away and buys a new one annually at the start of the season. He can still mow his lawn while abandoning the need to maintain mechanical knowledge. I love Walmart as I no longer need to really consider how many of an item I need. When socks are $5 a pair at some of the more expensive stores, buying a huge pile is pricy. Walmart let’s me buy 40 pairs of socks for like $20 and just not keep track of their wash status or where they are in the house. Walmart makes it so that everyone can solve their problems with a bit of money. Small stores can’t replicate any of that due to economies of scale. Sure, their workers might be experts in lawnmowers, but when lawnmowers are so cheap as to be single season items, that expertise no longer has value.
- jarofghosts 3y ago
  And certainly there is no price to be paid for this accelerated garbage-production loop!
- rubyn00bie 3y ago
  Tangential: but I’d really like to call out what a life hack, lots of cheap socks are. I got the idea myself long ago, as a kid, from the South Park creators, as they demanded unlimited new socks while making the movie. Once a year I buy like a 50 pack on Amazon and it’s great. 10/10 would recommend.
  - nathancahill 3y ago
    Like this quote from Dumbledore, when he looks in the mirror that shows your deepest desire: "What do you see when you look in the mirror?" "I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks." "One can never have enough socks. Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books."
    - 3y ago
chromaton 3y ago
Sam Walton points out in his autobiography that big cities are changing all the time, yet somehow people expect that small towns will not.
- ThisIsMyAltFace 3y ago
  He's completely missing the point, but I suspect he knows that
  - solarmist 3y ago
    From my understanding Sam Walton was a pretty quality leader, the company went to shit went he died and his kids took over.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      Being good at making money with Walmart has nothing to do with whether Walmart destroys small towns. Number of small businesses destroyed is probably a positive metric for Walmart.
      - solarmist 3y ago
        What I mean is that he cared about things beyond making money. Early Walmarts were good places to work for and shop at. They were genuinely good for the communities they came to. And they didn't have enough power yet to dictate insane terms to their suppliers either. Back then, they were way better than the alternatives like Kmart and JCPenny's. I say this as someone who grew up in rural Minnesota (a town of less than 10k), and when Walmart came to my town it mattered a lot to the whole town. But this stopped being true by the mid-90s (about ten years after he died).
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Small towns should be able to change and adapt, but Walmart being the corporate small town core is another version of enshitification (Walmart being your IRL ecomm platform), with your town's core dictated and governed by Bentonville, Arkansas. Build strong, local communities and economies instead: https://ilsr.org/ https://ilsr.org/ | https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/how-small-towns-and-cities-can-use-local-assets-rebuild-their-economies https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/how-small-towns-and-cities-c... (it will not be extremely economically efficient, but you are trading efficiency for resiliency and local governance and control)
gdsdfe 3y ago
This is wrong on so many levels, are we really talking about urbanism inside of a walmart?
- pessimizer 3y ago
  You don't understand. Both the departments in Walmart and buildings in a town are roughly oblong when viewed from above, so they're actually the same. Also, aisles meant to convey you between those departments are like roads conveying you between buildings. What more evidence do you need? /s
  - gdsdfe 3y ago
    right so if the city wants to plant trees between the aisles they can do so, right? lol
lawkwok 3y ago
Here’s a podcast that talks about how Dollorama (and Walmart) is changing city design. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-strong-towns-podcast/id369032477?i=1000615699792 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-strong-towns-podca...
pessimizer 3y ago
What's the difference? The point is that when the Walmart closes, the small town becomes a hellhole.
- mcdonje 3y ago
  That's because the Walmart opened.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    What's because the Walmart opened? If you're saying that Walmart's crush local commerce, then close when it's in their business interest to do so (they'll just have to drive to the next Walmart anyway), then that is also what I was saying.
    - mcdonje 3y ago
      Ok, yes, we're saying the same thing.
gtowey 3y ago
This article is pure corporate propaganda. Walmart isn't good for small towns no matter how you look at it because they turn entire small town economies into a line item on a gigantic global multi national's ledger. And once done, there is no going back. They build a new store and then sell at a loss to bankrupt the competition. They can do this because they have billions of dollars in reserve and are subsidized by other stores. How can local businesses compete? Once they all go out of business and there are no choices left Walmart is free to raise prices and recoup their losses and more. Then there are the jobs. Low wage, dead end. They create the new working poor where you can't survive even with a job so you go on government assistance as well. Subsidized serfdom. And to top it all off, if they aren't profitable, they won't hesitate to close up shop and leave a smoking crater in the economy of that same small town that is near impossible to recover from. There are no more small business and it's near impossible to start them again because local employees have been subsisting on starvation wages. Sure, if you ignore all the horrible realities of the Walmart lifecycle, it sure is nice that they provide a convenient way to buy lots of cheap garbage!
- dmoy 3y ago
  > sell at a loss They don't even necessarily need to sell at a loss. They can also just get economies of scale that don't work for tiny local businesses. Still has the same effect in the end.
  - professoretc 3y ago
    Or they sell "the same" (looks the same but it's lower quality) product as other stores but at a lower price, as a Walmart -exclusive.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  Walmart won't run an unprofitable store, as you mentioned. From my time working there[0] their strategy was mostly to put stores as far out as possible from a warehouse hub and work backward. To be honest, Walmart isn't known for closing alot of stores, they tend be very good at figuring this stuff out, at least. Which is to say, I know they don't take a loss on stores, even news ones. They may have loss leaders, but they make a small (and I mean small) profit on most things sold in the store. Its all about volume. Their labor practices are quite abhorrent. Not to mention they employ enough people to make a small city (2 Million+ last I checked). I don't know if they been good on balance or not, I do know they are the epitome of Corporate Exploitative Practices[1] They also have an entire division that exists just to extract tax favor-ability for building in places. They've gotten really good at pitting towns against each other for their business. That said, all of this is true for Target too. All of it. It just doesn't have the same poor brand reputation and it being the smaller of the two it gets less media attention for its poor practices. [0]: I really resent them after working there though. I haven't stepped foot in an WalMart since that time period. It worked for that time in my life and I had one of the "better" jobs for sure, but it was rough to see what they did to associates and being part of that machine. [1]: Its well studied that they have an enormous amount of their workforce on government subsidies / benefits. To the point that they have handouts to help people get on assistance that work there, rather than pay them a living wage. Its nuts when you really think about it.
kipchak 3y ago
>"Walmart didn’t just compete with the small town. Maybe it didn’t exactly compete with it at all, per se. Rather, it replicated it. And, in stripping the frills and ornamentation of the indoor mall, it managed to replicate it quickly, cheaply and at scale." The author's focus seems to be more on Walmart's walkability indicating a desire of the public for walkable areas, but I wonder how much of the difference between Walmart and Malls is due to decreased costs versus the monolithic bargaining power of Walmart. As the author points out, malls were originally modeled by Victor Gruen off of shopping areas like Ferstel Passage in Vienna, with the intent to have the mall be a part of an overall urban space with parks and apartments nearby, but the urbanism never came. Malls became versions of these "shopping arcades" replicated quickly, cheaply and at scale. Instead of being one step down the ladder of cost, and closer to a small town layout, the greater distinction between a mall and Walmart seems to be customers and suppliers only having one potential avenue to go through with Walmart.
RF_Enthusiast 3y ago
Focusing here on the "Walmart Didn’t Kill the Small Town" part of the story. I recently purchased some land in one of the rare US towns that does not have a Walmart (or any big box store). In fact, there are no big box stores within 100 miles of this town. It's a town with about 2,500 people, all within the town core, almost no population in the outlying areas. Not enough population to support a box store. The business in this town is absolutely booming right now. For example, the coffee shop I was at the other day had eight employees working at the time I was there, and it was quite busy. Main Street is lined with retail merchants that appear to be doing well. Restaurants are packed. People are really nice. I'm even building a business there. About 100+ miles south is a larger, but still isolated, community with a Walmart. It took me about 30 minutes of driving around to find a coffee shop, and the one I finally found was understaffed and mediocre. Most small retail strips were deserted. People in this town seemed miserable. I think there are multiple reasons why the first town is doing so well right now, but the thing that struck me immediately when I came to this town was that there was no Walmart. I really believe that is the main reason this town is thriving.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  Cherish it, because that's a rare small town in the US. Usually the reason they don't have big box stores is because they're becoming economically desolate by that point where no economic engine can really help it along. I've heard of it referred to as "zombie towns". The fact its that small, and thriving, and I hope has a reason COL, makes it a rare gem. I'm curious too, do you have fiber internet out there? An interesting phenomenon we had in the midwest is that rural-ish areas got fiber to the home years faster than most major urban or suburban metros did because the cost to run the fiber was cheap and often the ISPs out there are co-ops
  - RF_Enthusiast 3y ago
    My understanding is that the town had a few rough stretches, but came out strong and resilient on the other side. Yes, COL is quite reasonable, food costs about 60-75% of what it does in the metropolitan suburb area that I'm coming from. The only drawback to the area is that the hospital closed many years ago, but they are in the final planning stages of a new one. So medical emergency costs are temporarily higher. And yes, there is fiber internet. I just looked up the company that provides it, and it's registered as a Cooperative with the Secretary of State.
taeric 3y ago
Wasn't this exact observation made with big book stores and libraries, at one point?
xnx 3y ago
Small towns are a legacy from 100 years ago when 10 million people worked on farms. Mechanization has cut that number to 2 million while dramatically increasing productivity. It's natural that the quantity and size of small towns would fade.
scoofy 3y ago
I think the problem with this thesis is that Walmart can combine the downtowns of many small towns into one Walmart in between them. It's actually only in the cities where you have enough concentration of wealth to kept niche departments alive. In the cities the only reason why the big-box model works is exactly because it inverts the urban paradigm with a suburban one. Walmart's model would never work in an urban core exactly because the costs of property (and taxes) to build such on inefficient marketplace would be way too high, and could never compete with the cheap, edge-of-town model that they have built. The irony, of course, is that much of the value of the suburban model is exactly in the form of subsidy capture. So while folks are happy to get discounts at Walmart, they will likely have to pay the difference 30 years later in taxes on an inefficient suburban wastewater system that must be developed to support this type of infrastructure. Urbanism is more efficient, thus it should be cheaper, but it's the second, and third order effects that will eventually cause the rustbelt-ification of much of the United States. At least this is the thesis of books like Strong Towns that focus on the acceleration deterioration of finances and bankruptcies in many american municipalities.
drewcoo 3y ago
> not its car orientation but its (indoor) car-free urbanism Which is why suburban Americans spend all their time at the shopping mall . . . /s

39 points by nickwritesit 3y ago

starside 3y ago

[flagged]

rambojohnson 3y ago

[flagged]

ilyt 3y ago

Author is delusional. A bunch of small stores close is nowhere near similar. I just want to go to one shop, get the stuff, and leave, not to go to 8 shops, pay 8 times, pack groceries 8 times and overall walk more edit: that is not to say opening big supermarkets is great, just that once they are there that's why people skip local stores and go to the big supermarket

throwawaysleep 3y ago
Deal with 8 different potential return policies. Have 8 different conversations. Deal with whether all 8 take Amex or not.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  So you are advocating for large monolithic monopolies? Reduce the complexity by reducing choice?
- freeopinion 3y ago
  Let different people shop at different stores depending on their preference for return policies or credit cards. Heh, let one store try to differentiate itself by accepting crypto payments. Or sell only products produced within 100 miles of the store. Or only employee people shorter than two meters. Just because there are 8 stores doesn't mean that everyone has to use all 8 of them. It does mean that anyone could use any of them. Sounds like a win to me.
  - freeopinion 3y ago
    I should point out that the presence of Walmart does not preclude the existence of seven other local stores. Walmart didn't drive all the moms and pops out of town with a shotgun. They competed on price, return policy, credit card choice, quality, and everything else. If the store that only employed people shorter than two meters left town, it was probably because that wasn't a priority to consumers in that town. In the end, consumers get to choose to support Walmart exclusively or to support a variety of businesses. Walmart doesn't get to make that choice. If you are unhappy with the outcome, is it right to blame Walmart?
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >Let different people shop at different stores depending on their preference for return policies or credit cards. to be fair, the people did choose. I know it's out of vogue to blame the general populace for the actions of coporations, but at the end of the day corps can do this because it works. Every single time. Not sure if anything can be done, but I think it's also worth considering WHY people don't consider much past their immediate convenience when shopping.
light_hue_1 3y ago
Yeah. The 8 stores are far better. There's competition. There's variety. Employees can move around. I can get to know the shop owners. I can take a wonderful stroll. Instead. You get to enjoy one corporation, that does anything it wants, pays horribly, employees have no choice, you have no choice in what garbage you buy. And your downtown now consists of 8 banks. Yup. You're living the dream!
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  Walmart was the competition that lowered prices. Those 8 stores may have had more variety, but not lower prices.
  - cagey 3y ago
    Recently I needed to replace my car's battery (size 24F; I opted to upgrade to an AGM battery). In my town of 45,000 (medium-small?) there is one Walmart superstore (sans auto shop), a bunch of chain auto parts stores, and some non-chain stores. Shopping online, I determine: Walmart: Everstart $180, 4 year "free replacement" warranty. Napa: house brand $250, Odyssey $371 (both 3 yr warranty) OReilly: house brand $250, Optima $290 (both 3 yr warranty) AutoZone: house brand $250, Optima $290 (both 3 yr warranty) Walmart gets my business in this case as it does in most others. The few employees I interact with there don't seem to be unhappy, and their return policy is awesome (and is consistently applied). Walmart hasn't forced the competition out of business, but I see no reason why I should shop elsewhere in order to pay $70 (38%) more for an equivalent battery with 1 year less warranty. Yes, Walmart is evil./s
- cykotic 3y ago
  And from a typically American perspective one doesn’t have to walk. They’ll even provide motorized carts to use when you are buying gallons of cola.
- moolcool 3y ago
  Not to mention that the product you get from dedicated merchants will invariably be better. The worst bakery in my city is leagues better than the best bread available at Wal Mart
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
I think the issue is more about the systematic destroying of the small town. They open multiple Walmart's, the small town stores go out of business, then they can close some percentage of the Walmart's to consolidate into a few stores in central locations, now all of the small town people have to drive farther to get anything at all. And the small town dies.
- notyourday 3y ago
  There's nothing great about small towns. All of this is waxing of people who don't live in small towns that think it is oh so nice to be able to go to a cute little store on vacation at 11:30am to get a muffin on Saturday. Never mind that the store itself is closed Monday to Friday.
  - User23 3y ago
    The DMV experience in a small town versus a big city is night and day in the small town’s favor. That’s true for pretty much all government services from the Post Office down to the County office. The main benefit of small towns is that social capital matters and reputation matters. Of course those are disadvantages to misbehavers.
    - gottorf 3y ago
      > social capital matters and reputation matters. Of course those are disadvantages to misbehavers. This is something that many young adults have forgotten, because it's increasingly more trendy to move around a lot in your 20s while developing your career. Nobody cares in a big city if you're an asshole, because there's a million other people to associate with and most likely the asshole and everyone around them aren't going to still be there in five years. The downside of the small town social setting is that it can be cliquey.
    - tstrimple 3y ago
      What?! This runs completely counter to my experience living in a small town. A town small enough that the post office doesn’t do to door delivery, you’ve got to go pick it up and the closest DMV is an hour away in the city. Small towns don’t generally have services like that at all.
SoftTalker 3y ago
The quaint downtown stores were also probably open from 9-5, maybe 9-12 on Saturday, closed Sunday. That was fine in the 1950s when housewives didn't work and could go shopping during the day. Today, nobody's going to want to take time off work to go buy bread, eggs, and socks. They want to go to Walmart on Sunday afternoon, or on their way home after work.
m_0x 3y ago
> overall walk more Walking more is better for your health. Or are you saying you walk too much already?
- ilyt 3y ago
  I'd rather spend time saved on bicycle, but I wasn't talking about myself but people that already spend 1-2h in commute and have kids so spending extra time on walking around shopping is probably the thing they want to do the least, hence they go to markets rather than local stores.
audunw 3y ago
Would you really be going to 8 shops every time though? Realistically I would go to a grocery store or supermarket and maybe one other store (like clothes or sports supplies, maybe a butcher or something if the town has that and I want something really special that week) I guess what Americans are missing from how smaller towns work in other countries is that they tend to be more dense, with more mixed zoning. Not as overfilled with way too big parking lots, way too wide “stroads”, and endless suburban sprawl. So the trip to town is shorter/faster, you go into town more often, for more different kinds of activities, and so you don’t have to buy everything all at once. Take a look at the Strong Town initiative and the YouTube channel “not just bikes”. Being in town - to me - is a part of living life. It’s where you’d have a third place, where you’d do various activities, meet people and discover new things. If you’ve felt the need to optimise your life to maximise your time at work and in your house.. that feels really sad to me.
- ilyt 3y ago
  > I guess what Americans are missing from how smaller towns work in other countries is that they tend to be more dense, with more mixed zoning. Not as overfilled with way too big parking lots, way too wide “stroads”, and endless suburban sprawl. So the trip to town is shorter/faster, you go into town more often, for more different kinds of activities, and so you don’t have to buy everything all at once. Well I'm not american and I lived in village and in small town. If I have supermarket in "range" I will go to supermarket, choice is bigger and prices are lower. Sure, if I have store nearby and want to get an icecream or something, or forgot to buy something on weekly shopping trip I'd buy it there. > Being in town - to me - is a part of living life. It’s where you’d have a third place, where you’d do various activities, meet people and discover new things. ...when going on grocery shopping ? And for some reason you're prevented from speaking to people in supermarket ? > If you’ve felt the need to optimise your life to maximise your time at work and in your house.. that feels really sad to me. I dunno from which arse you've got that conclusion. Do you have nothing more interesting to do in your life than going around shopping ? Groceries are chore not a fucking adventure, regardless of shop size. And saving money means I can spend it on things I actually enjoy and places I actually want to go to.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
fantasticshower 3y ago
Part of me hates Walmart and part of me loves it. I love that I can go to one place and get 80% of whatever I'm looking for. But I also like the specialty stores my town has. N of one but since Walmart moved in ~20y ago I haven't noticed much changing with the makeup of small businesses. Since Walmart moved in there have been more of the other big box stores, though.

no_wizard 3y ago

The layout is entirely by design to feel like you’re strolling down “Main Street” Americana. I learned this decades ago when I worked for Walmart setting up stores and training folks. It was explicitly made clear to us this is what the layout was designed to elicit

lotsofpulp 3y ago
I would be surprised if most people under 60 or even 50 know what strolling down “Main Street” means. In my 30+ years, I have never once strolled down a Main Street. I have always gone to big stores and malls (and now online shopping).
- tantalor 3y ago
  > I have never once strolled down a Main Street You know it doesn't have to be named "Main Street" to be a Main Street
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Yes, I meant shopping while walking around an old school downtown with a clothing store next to a grocer next to a shoe store next to a diner next to hardware store etc. I only ever remember going to Walmart, Home Depot, Costco, Best Buy, malls, Kroger, etc.
    - saalweachter 3y ago
      The Hudson Valley has something analogous to bedroom communities, scenic small towns which have vibrant downtowns with all sorts of little shops for weekenders to stroll around.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  I consider it the fact that Walmart for a long time had a mostly rural and suburban strategy that skews demographics to people 40+. It’s a Sam Walton hold over that I think is being slowly replaced. What WalMart hates the most is that they can’t get people of affluence who want to save money to shop at one though. When I worked there the complaint out of HQ I heard the most is that Michelle Obama and Oprah would shop at a Target but never step foot in a Walmart despite having identical goods but Walmart has better prices

throwawaysleep 3y ago

It’s price and the ease the price enables. Low price demonstratably rules in everything from plane tickets to groceries to basic services to clothing as it enables a life of abundance and mental ease. A friend loves Walmart as it means he no longer has to maintain his lawnmower. He just throws it away and buys a new one annually at the start of the season. He can still mow his lawn while abandoning the need to maintain mechanical knowledge. I love Walmart as I no longer need to really consider how many of an item I need. When socks are $5 a pair at some of the more expensive stores, buying a huge pile is pricy. Walmart let’s me buy 40 pairs of socks for like $20 and just not keep track of their wash status or where they are in the house. Walmart makes it so that everyone can solve their problems with a bit of money. Small stores can’t replicate any of that due to economies of scale. Sure, their workers might be experts in lawnmowers, but when lawnmowers are so cheap as to be single season items, that expertise no longer has value.

jarofghosts 3y ago
And certainly there is no price to be paid for this accelerated garbage-production loop!
rubyn00bie 3y ago
Tangential: but I’d really like to call out what a life hack, lots of cheap socks are. I got the idea myself long ago, as a kid, from the South Park creators, as they demanded unlimited new socks while making the movie. Once a year I buy like a 50 pack on Amazon and it’s great. 10/10 would recommend.
- nathancahill 3y ago
  Like this quote from Dumbledore, when he looks in the mirror that shows your deepest desire: "What do you see when you look in the mirror?" "I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks." "One can never have enough socks. Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books."
  - 3y ago

chromaton 3y ago

Sam Walton points out in his autobiography that big cities are changing all the time, yet somehow people expect that small towns will not.

ThisIsMyAltFace 3y ago
He's completely missing the point, but I suspect he knows that
- solarmist 3y ago
  From my understanding Sam Walton was a pretty quality leader, the company went to shit went he died and his kids took over.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    Being good at making money with Walmart has nothing to do with whether Walmart destroys small towns. Number of small businesses destroyed is probably a positive metric for Walmart.
    - solarmist 3y ago
      What I mean is that he cared about things beyond making money. Early Walmarts were good places to work for and shop at. They were genuinely good for the communities they came to. And they didn't have enough power yet to dictate insane terms to their suppliers either. Back then, they were way better than the alternatives like Kmart and JCPenny's. I say this as someone who grew up in rural Minnesota (a town of less than 10k), and when Walmart came to my town it mattered a lot to the whole town. But this stopped being true by the mid-90s (about ten years after he died).
toomuchtodo 3y ago
Small towns should be able to change and adapt, but Walmart being the corporate small town core is another version of enshitification (Walmart being your IRL ecomm platform), with your town's core dictated and governed by Bentonville, Arkansas. Build strong, local communities and economies instead: https://ilsr.org/ https://ilsr.org/ | https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/how-small-towns-and-cities-can-use-local-assets-rebuild-their-economies https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/how-small-towns-and-cities-c... (it will not be extremely economically efficient, but you are trading efficiency for resiliency and local governance and control)

gdsdfe 3y ago

This is wrong on so many levels, are we really talking about urbanism inside of a walmart?

pessimizer 3y ago
You don't understand. Both the departments in Walmart and buildings in a town are roughly oblong when viewed from above, so they're actually the same. Also, aisles meant to convey you between those departments are like roads conveying you between buildings. What more evidence do you need? /s
- gdsdfe 3y ago
  right so if the city wants to plant trees between the aisles they can do so, right? lol

lawkwok 3y ago

Here’s a podcast that talks about how Dollorama (and Walmart) is changing city design. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-strong-towns-podcast/id369032477?i=1000615699792 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-strong-towns-podca...

pessimizer 3y ago

What's the difference? The point is that when the Walmart closes, the small town becomes a hellhole.

mcdonje 3y ago
That's because the Walmart opened.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  What's because the Walmart opened? If you're saying that Walmart's crush local commerce, then close when it's in their business interest to do so (they'll just have to drive to the next Walmart anyway), then that is also what I was saying.
  - mcdonje 3y ago
    Ok, yes, we're saying the same thing.

gtowey 3y ago

This article is pure corporate propaganda. Walmart isn't good for small towns no matter how you look at it because they turn entire small town economies into a line item on a gigantic global multi national's ledger. And once done, there is no going back. They build a new store and then sell at a loss to bankrupt the competition. They can do this because they have billions of dollars in reserve and are subsidized by other stores. How can local businesses compete? Once they all go out of business and there are no choices left Walmart is free to raise prices and recoup their losses and more. Then there are the jobs. Low wage, dead end. They create the new working poor where you can't survive even with a job so you go on government assistance as well. Subsidized serfdom. And to top it all off, if they aren't profitable, they won't hesitate to close up shop and leave a smoking crater in the economy of that same small town that is near impossible to recover from. There are no more small business and it's near impossible to start them again because local employees have been subsisting on starvation wages. Sure, if you ignore all the horrible realities of the Walmart lifecycle, it sure is nice that they provide a convenient way to buy lots of cheap garbage!

dmoy 3y ago
> sell at a loss They don't even necessarily need to sell at a loss. They can also just get economies of scale that don't work for tiny local businesses. Still has the same effect in the end.
- professoretc 3y ago
  Or they sell "the same" (looks the same but it's lower quality) product as other stores but at a lower price, as a Walmart -exclusive.
no_wizard 3y ago
Walmart won't run an unprofitable store, as you mentioned. From my time working there[0] their strategy was mostly to put stores as far out as possible from a warehouse hub and work backward. To be honest, Walmart isn't known for closing alot of stores, they tend be very good at figuring this stuff out, at least. Which is to say, I know they don't take a loss on stores, even news ones. They may have loss leaders, but they make a small (and I mean small) profit on most things sold in the store. Its all about volume. Their labor practices are quite abhorrent. Not to mention they employ enough people to make a small city (2 Million+ last I checked). I don't know if they been good on balance or not, I do know they are the epitome of Corporate Exploitative Practices[1] They also have an entire division that exists just to extract tax favor-ability for building in places. They've gotten really good at pitting towns against each other for their business. That said, all of this is true for Target too. All of it. It just doesn't have the same poor brand reputation and it being the smaller of the two it gets less media attention for its poor practices. [0]: I really resent them after working there though. I haven't stepped foot in an WalMart since that time period. It worked for that time in my life and I had one of the "better" jobs for sure, but it was rough to see what they did to associates and being part of that machine. [1]: Its well studied that they have an enormous amount of their workforce on government subsidies / benefits. To the point that they have handouts to help people get on assistance that work there, rather than pay them a living wage. Its nuts when you really think about it.

kipchak 3y ago

>"Walmart didn’t just compete with the small town. Maybe it didn’t exactly compete with it at all, per se. Rather, it replicated it. And, in stripping the frills and ornamentation of the indoor mall, it managed to replicate it quickly, cheaply and at scale." The author's focus seems to be more on Walmart's walkability indicating a desire of the public for walkable areas, but I wonder how much of the difference between Walmart and Malls is due to decreased costs versus the monolithic bargaining power of Walmart. As the author points out, malls were originally modeled by Victor Gruen off of shopping areas like Ferstel Passage in Vienna, with the intent to have the mall be a part of an overall urban space with parks and apartments nearby, but the urbanism never came. Malls became versions of these "shopping arcades" replicated quickly, cheaply and at scale. Instead of being one step down the ladder of cost, and closer to a small town layout, the greater distinction between a mall and Walmart seems to be customers and suppliers only having one potential avenue to go through with Walmart.

RF_Enthusiast 3y ago

Focusing here on the "Walmart Didn’t Kill the Small Town" part of the story. I recently purchased some land in one of the rare US towns that does not have a Walmart (or any big box store). In fact, there are no big box stores within 100 miles of this town. It's a town with about 2,500 people, all within the town core, almost no population in the outlying areas. Not enough population to support a box store. The business in this town is absolutely booming right now. For example, the coffee shop I was at the other day had eight employees working at the time I was there, and it was quite busy. Main Street is lined with retail merchants that appear to be doing well. Restaurants are packed. People are really nice. I'm even building a business there. About 100+ miles south is a larger, but still isolated, community with a Walmart. It took me about 30 minutes of driving around to find a coffee shop, and the one I finally found was understaffed and mediocre. Most small retail strips were deserted. People in this town seemed miserable. I think there are multiple reasons why the first town is doing so well right now, but the thing that struck me immediately when I came to this town was that there was no Walmart. I really believe that is the main reason this town is thriving.

no_wizard 3y ago
Cherish it, because that's a rare small town in the US. Usually the reason they don't have big box stores is because they're becoming economically desolate by that point where no economic engine can really help it along. I've heard of it referred to as "zombie towns". The fact its that small, and thriving, and I hope has a reason COL, makes it a rare gem. I'm curious too, do you have fiber internet out there? An interesting phenomenon we had in the midwest is that rural-ish areas got fiber to the home years faster than most major urban or suburban metros did because the cost to run the fiber was cheap and often the ISPs out there are co-ops
- RF_Enthusiast 3y ago
  My understanding is that the town had a few rough stretches, but came out strong and resilient on the other side. Yes, COL is quite reasonable, food costs about 60-75% of what it does in the metropolitan suburb area that I'm coming from. The only drawback to the area is that the hospital closed many years ago, but they are in the final planning stages of a new one. So medical emergency costs are temporarily higher. And yes, there is fiber internet. I just looked up the company that provides it, and it's registered as a Cooperative with the Secretary of State.

taeric 3y ago

Wasn't this exact observation made with big book stores and libraries, at one point?

xnx 3y ago

Small towns are a legacy from 100 years ago when 10 million people worked on farms. Mechanization has cut that number to 2 million while dramatically increasing productivity. It's natural that the quantity and size of small towns would fade.

scoofy 3y ago

I think the problem with this thesis is that Walmart can combine the downtowns of many small towns into one Walmart in between them. It's actually only in the cities where you have enough concentration of wealth to kept niche departments alive. In the cities the only reason why the big-box model works is exactly because it inverts the urban paradigm with a suburban one. Walmart's model would never work in an urban core exactly because the costs of property (and taxes) to build such on inefficient marketplace would be way too high, and could never compete with the cheap, edge-of-town model that they have built. The irony, of course, is that much of the value of the suburban model is exactly in the form of subsidy capture. So while folks are happy to get discounts at Walmart, they will likely have to pay the difference 30 years later in taxes on an inefficient suburban wastewater system that must be developed to support this type of infrastructure. Urbanism is more efficient, thus it should be cheaper, but it's the second, and third order effects that will eventually cause the rustbelt-ification of much of the United States. At least this is the thesis of books like Strong Towns that focus on the acceleration deterioration of finances and bankruptcies in many american municipalities.

drewcoo 3y ago

> not its car orientation but its (indoor) car-free urbanism Which is why suburban Americans spend all their time at the shopping mall . . . /s