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Title: The Era Of Giant Chain Stores Is Over — And They've Ruined America
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URL Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/scale-implosion-2013-2
Published: Feb 18, 2013
Author: James Kunstler, Kunstler.com
Post Date: 2013-02-18 17:18:48 by tom007
Keywords: None
Views: 344
Comments: 13
The Era Of Giant Chain Stores Is Over — And They've Ruined America James Kunstler, Kunstler.com | Feb. 18, 2013, 10:36 AM | 15,399 | 68 inShare28 Email More walmart James Kunstler URL James Kunstler is the editor of Kunstler.com Recent Posts The Real State Of The Union Is Bleak Cattle Drive The Master Meme RSS Feed Scale Implosion State of the Union Cattle Drive Back in the day when big box retail started to explode upon the American landscape like a raging economic scrofula, I attended many a town planning board meeting where the pro and con factions faced off over the permitting hurdle. The meetings were often raucous and wrathful and almost all the time the pro forces won — for the excellent reason that they were funded and organized by the chain stores themselves (in an early demonstration of the new axioms that money-is-speech and corporations are people, too!). The chain stores won not only because they flung money around — sometimes directly into the wallets of public officials — but because a sizeable chunk of every local population longed for the dazzling new mode of commerce. "We Want Bargain Shopping" was their rallying cry. The unintended consequence of their victories through the 1970s and beyond was the total destruction of local economic networks, that is, Main Streets and downtowns, in effect destroying many of their own livelihoods. Wasn't that a bargain, though? Despite the obvious damage now visible in the entropic desolation of every American home town, WalMart managed to install itself in the pantheon of American Dream icons, along with apple pie, motherhood, and Coca Cola. In most of the country there is no other place to buy goods (and no other place to get a paycheck, scant and demeaning as it may be). America made itself hostage to bargain shopping and then committed suicide. Here we find another axiom of human affairs at work: People get what they deserve, not what they expect. Life is tragic. The older generations responsible for all that may be done for, but the momentum has now turned in the opposite direction. Though the public hasn't groked it yet, WalMart and its kindred malignant organisms have entered their own yeast-overgrowth death spiral. In a now permanently contracting economy the big box model fails spectacularly. Every element of economic reality is now poised to squash them. Diesel fuel prices are heading well north of $4 again. If they push toward $5 this year you can say goodbye to the "warehouse on wheels" distribution method. (The truckers, who are mostly independent contractors, can say hello to the re-po men come to take possession of their mortgaged rigs.) Global currency wars (competitive devaluations) are about to destroy trade relationships. Say goodbye to the 12,000 mile supply chain from Guangzhou to Hackensack. Say goodbye to the growth financing model in which it becomes necessary to open dozens of new stores every year to keep the credit revolving. Then there is the matter of the American customers themselves. The WalMart shoppers are exactly the demographic that is getting squashed in the contraction of this phony-baloney corporate buccaneer parasite revolving credit crony capital economy. Unlike the Federal Reserve, WalMart shoppers can't print their own money, and they can't bundle their MasterCard and Visa debts into CDOs to be fobbed off on Scandinavian pension funds for quick profits. They have only one real choice: buy less stuff, especially the stuff of leisure, comfort, and convenience. The potential for all sorts of economic hardship is obvious in this burgeoning dynamic. But the coming implosion of big box retail implies tremendous opportunities for young people to make a livelihood in the imperative rebuilding of local economies. At this stage it is probably discouraging for them, because all their life programming has conditioned them to be hostages of giant corporations and so to feel helpless. In a town like the old factory village I live in (population 2500) few of the few remaining young adults might venture to open a retail operation in one of the dozen-odd vacant storefronts on Main Street. The presence of K-Mart, Tractor Supply, and Radio Shack a quarter mile west in the strip mall would seem to mock their dim inklings that something is in the wind. But K-Mart will close over 200 boxes this year, and Radio Shack is committed to shutter around 500 stores. They could be gone in this town well before Santa Claus starts checking his lists. If they go down, opportunities will blossom. There will be no new chain store brands to replace the dying ones. That phase of our history is over. What we're on the brink of is scale implosion. Everything gigantic in American life is about to get smaller or die. Everything that we do to support economic activities at gigantic scale is going to hamper our journey into the new reality. The campaign to sustain the unsustainable, which is the official policy of US leadership, will only produce deeper whirls of entropy. I hope young people recognize this and can marshal their enthusiasm to get to work. It's already happening in the local farming scene; now it needs to happen in a commercial economy that will support local agriculture. The additional tragedy of the big box saga is that it scuttled social roles and social relations in every American community. On top of the insult of destroying the geographic places we call home, the chain stores also destroyed people's place in the order of daily life, including the duties, responsibilities, obligations, and ceremonies that prompt citizens to care for each other. We can get that all back, but it won't be a bargain. For a complete list of books by James Howard Kunstler and purchase links, CLICK HERE. Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/clusterfucknation/~3/8S2F4x1ProU/scale-implosion.html#ixzz2LI99HarQ
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#1. To: tom007 (#0)
I am continually amused by idiotic "libertarians" who support Wal-Mart and corporations without realizing Wal-Mart is the biggest tax money parasite in the U.S. and corporations are monsters created by the State.
"Have Brain, Will Travel
i found a chair that works good for my setup... no arms, so i can play the guitar, just the right height for the table my gear is on, comfortable, etc etc... bought it at a chain hardware store --true value-- made in china, of course... but each chair only lasts a few months... it's a great design, these chairs, and if i still had my welding stuff, i could glue reinforcements on the weak spots and they'd last forever... but that's where we're headed... a nation of scavengers and make-do artists... . meanwhile, the stuff the chinese turn out is so uniformly shitty, i got to wonder if it's deliberate... or is it just another symptom of terminal capitalism? i dont know
I am not at all certain that the era of big chair stores has passed. We may be in for even more of them, as the small shops suffer from the economy. Unfortunately the same people who complain about how small family stores are being plowed under, will, to save a few bucks or a few minutes, shop at a big chain store ... and even buy stuff made in the third world, because, well, money's tight.
Walmart is like the military in two senses: 1) No one wants to join either organization, they are a last ditch effort to avoid a life of penury. 2) This one requires more research and hard numbers, but my basic thesis is that Walmart derives a large portion of its revenues from the kept class. Going back to point #1, who wants a cashier that smells like pee handling our produce? No one! No one who has a choice anyway. "I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it." - William S Burroughs
it becomes a problem of getting to the store, and getting home again with the stuff you bought. if you cant afford a car, or gas for the car, then what? what if people are simply too poor to buy junk? what if little neighborhood repair shops spring up... if something breaks or wears out, maybe it can be fixed instead of sending it to the landfill... . mabye little fabrication shops will spring up, guys who go to the landfill every week or so, look for stuff that can be fixed... or look for stuff that can be used to make stuff that will last but you people cant believe the basic premise, can you? the basic premise is: we're all gonna be lots poorer, because energy is getting so expensive and our wastefulness is catching up with us.
What was once old is now new again. Welcome back to the 1930s. We've done it before. We will do it again only this time the EBT cards will be flashing "ERROR". Become a scrap metal person. Collect lead. It will be very useful in the future. A people unwilling to use force, once diplomatic efforts have been exhausted, in order to preserve or obtain their liberty deserves the tyrants that rule over them.
This is the worst effect. "Mr. Prime Minister, there is only one important question facing us, and that is the question whether the white race will survive." -- Leonid Brezhnev to James Callahan
Yes. Here in Colorado Springs the city just gave WM a huge tax exemption for them to put a call center here (or something) so the citizens our our city now work to pay the taxes that WM does not because they are more special than the citizens. good post and likely future. Here in Colorado Springs the city just gave WM a huge tax exemption for them to put a call center here (or something) so the citizens our our city now work to pay the taxes that WM does not because they are more special than the citizens. In cases like these I often wonder about the legality of walking into such a tax subsidized place and taking whatever I like. Not to be a crummy thief but to enjoy what our tax monies have paid for. __ Their are only two kinds of americans left in the USA those opposed to the tyranny and those that are wrong. Resist propaganda, Support strict constitutional adherence!
Welcome back to the 1930s. We've done it before. We will do it again only this time the EBT cards will be flashing "ERROR". Become a scrap metal person. Collect lead. It will be very useful in the future. Business-owner in 2015:
#2. To: tom007 (#0)
#3. To: tom007 (#0)
#4. To: Turtle (#1)
I am continually amused by idiotic "libertarians" who support Wal-Mart and corporations without realizing Wal-Mart is the biggest tax money parasite in the U.S. and corporations are monsters created by the State.
#5. To: Shoonra (#3)
I am not at all certain that the era of big chair stores has passed
#6. To: lead.and.lag (#2)
but that's where we're headed... a nation of scavengers and make-do artists...
#7. To: tom007 (#0)
At this stage it is probably discouraging for them, because all their life programming has conditioned them to be hostages of giant corporations and so to feel helpless. In a town like the old factory village I live in (population 2500) few of the few remaining young adults might venture to open a retail operation in one of the dozen-odd vacant storefronts on Main Street.
#8. To: Turtle (#1)
I am continually amused by idiotic "libertarians" who support Wal-Mart and corporations without realizing Wal-Mart is the biggest tax money parasite in the U.S. and
"Satan / Cheney in "08" 
#9. To: lead.and.lag (#5)
mabye little fabrication shops will spring up, guys who go to the landfill every week or so, look for stuff that can be fixed... or look for stuff that can be used to make stuff that will last
"Satan / Cheney in "08"
#10. To: tom007 (#8)
Yes.
#11. To: mirage (#6)
What was once old is now new again.
-Alex Kurtagic
#12. To: X-15 (#11)
Oral health provider 2013
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
#13. To: All (#5) (Edited)
she'd say, "here's a list..." and i'd get on my bike and go... narrow two-lane blacktop after they paved it... log trucks whizzing past, close if there was a car in the other lane... scary... pop gail had good gritty cheddar in big wheels, he'd cut a wedge off for you... or or slice you a pound of bacon after he'd held the slab up for you to look at... slices as thick as you wanted kegs of nails, nuts and bolts, tools, canned goods... everything a pot-bellied stove you could back up to and thaw out and gossip... a horseshoe pit... pop gail and his cronies throwing all afternoon while mrs boulter tended the store it was a Y in the road... pop gail's store on one corner, the beer joint on another, jack's shop of the other corner... but in our house, the beer joint was "the corner", because my mom was too refined to say "beer joint"... unless she was yelling at my dad for spending too much time there... "too much time" being any time at all... jack would fix anything except his shop, which was a junkpile... tools, machines, old machines, junk machines, parts of lord-knows-what, heaps of it... but you never knew when you'd need a part or a piece just like that... chaos... except for in jack's mind... he could find anything in there, and if he couldnt remember seeing it, you didnt need it there seemed to be a certain amount of beer involved in jack's projects... more yelling... characters... the whole little valley was filled with characters
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