Quote:
Originally Posted by meraxes
That is protectionism on a small parochial scale. Of course you can "keep the wealth locally", but that means there's so much less wealth available to begin with, whether to keep or to spread, because of inefficiency. If they can't compete fairly, they deserve to disappear.
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I'm sorry, but since when have you been in a competition that you truly wanted to win? No one wants a fair fight but the people that would automatically lose in the fight if they jumped in. The fact is that wal-mart is competing on an international level right now, getting things from a third world country on a price level that is lower than a mom-and-pop could because they can't order in quantities nearly as vast as Wal-mart's. As such Wal-mart is offering things at a lower price that families tend to jump at because it saves them money as well.
Wal-mart may or may not be responsible for the death of small businesses, however I believe (and this is a statement of personal belief, nothing that I can back with hard evidence or fact) that people in these cities will adapt. It may take a generation or two but people are inherently hard to kill off and will come up with something that will allow them to survive.
I personally don't like wal-mart because I've gotten products from them that tend to be of a lesser quality than I could get elsewhere, and I've gotten worse customer service as well.