Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[childers.paula AT epamail.epa.gov]

>>>Zerfinger's Hardware was killed by the people who used to buy stuff
there (and hence generate their revenue stream) and who stopped buying
stuff there, right?

True, in the most basic way.

>>>I mean, it's possible that Wal-Mart shows up at a place, everyone
loves their local stores that they've been shopping at forever, they
keep shopping at those local stores, and Wal-Mart is the one driven
out of business (at that location, of course, they'd move on to
greener pastures).

Again, true, basically. This can be seen in the case of K-Mart closings,
or the Roses' bankruptcy. However, the final parenthetical comment
begins to highlight the true problem - localism v. globalism. Where is
the profit going? To individuals in the community who will reinvest in
the community, or to international corporate shareholders with no
personal investment in ANY community?

>>>It's still certainly possible for Wal-Mart to create their lower
prices through various unfair business practices, and those are valid
concerns, but in the hypothetical case where a Wal-Mart comes in and
creates lower prices through various economies of scale (the same ones
available to other businesses if they choose to attempt them, even
Zerfinger's Hardware) who is really to blame?

The economies of "scale" are actually much more than simple numbers.
They are the dollars going away from NC textile mills to Chinese
sweatshop laborers. They are the gallons of pollution emitted from
factories in third world countries where fewer environmental safeguards
allow mfg plants to lower costs by avoiding cleanup. They are the hours
spent by our neighbors in lines at the unemployment office. And they are
the numbers of exactly identical items which end up making everything
and everyone look the same.

Perhaps we cannot "blame" Wal-Mart for being more effective at being a
corporation (which, by definition, has no purpose or guiding moral
principle beyond making the greatest profit possible for its
shareholders), but I think it's past time to try and reform notions of
"corporate responsibility" to include being good global "citizens," or
at least take back the power of the purchase to support those businesses
that support US.

Shop your job, folks. Shop your job. And shop your community, and your
values. Or pretty soon, you won't be able to.

Paula