The happy misers
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Walmart is the conservative mindset run amok, it's like it's run by Ebenezer Scrooge on a 1980s coke binge. They make no secret of the fact that they want to destroy the competition. They don't just want to win. They don't just want to beat other companies by a wide margin. They want other businesses to die, they literally want to be the only store left in town. They want Target to go away and Borders to go away, they want Michael's to go away and CVS to go away. They want everybody else to go away. There shall be only Walmart! Forevermore!
I wonder if they've given any thought to what happens after all of the other stores go away, when everybody who used to work for all of those companies is out of a job, when getting a crappy greeter job at Walmart for slave wages is the best anybody can hope for. If they totally crush the competition, where do they think people are going to earn their money to shop at Walmart?
It boggles my mind that as this recession deepens, Walmart is still trying to slit the throats of any other company that could possibly compete for profits ever. It's absolutely childish. No... That's an insult to children. It's insane.
I'm getting a flashback of Ali Baba Bunny, that old Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck cartoon with the genie. You know, the one that ends with a miniaturized Daffy Duck inside of a clam shell, pathetically grasping onto a pearl as he mutters to himself in a little Gollum voice. "I'm rich! I'm rich! I'm a happy miser!"
The people who run Walmart are happy misers.
(Yes, I know this is straying quite a bit from our usual fare, here. But I read an article like that news story I linked to above, and the America of 2009 sure feels like sci-fi to me.)
1 comments:
You seem surprised by the fact that Walmart wants to eliminate its competition. What business doesn't want to do that?
And you miss the most appalling tactic Walmart has adopted to eliminate its competition: support for health care reform, in particular, employer mandates. Not content with using just their own massive market power, the company is trying to get the government in on the crushing as well. Since most (about 90%) Walmart employees already have health care coverage, mandates won't hurt Walmart all that much, but will add potentially ruinous additional costs to its competitors.
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