I don't even shop at Wal-Mart

I tried to buy some athletic shirts at Wal-Mart once, but the only size I could find was XXL. Every Wal-Mart on earth could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn't care one bit. That being said, I fully support Wal-Mart because I believe it has every right to exist in a free society.

The following is a letter addressed to the omniscient folks at Wal-Mart Watch (http://walmartwatch.com/). They insist on spending their time (and earning a living) criticising Wal-Mart and the business decisions of its executives. This is all despite having little to no - probably no - expertise running a global retail store. They are also the self-proclaimed guardians of the unfortunate souls who choose to work at Wal-Mart. Oh Wal-Mart employees! When will you learn that you are much better off without a job than working at Wal-Mart! And Wal-Mart Watch provides this advice for free! What a bargain!

This letter starts with a long quotation from their assessment of the prospects of Wal-Mart in New York City. The good people at Wal-Mart Watch responded to my letter by adding my email to their mailing list.



“Does Wal-Mart even fit in NYC? Outside of labor unions, New Yorkers are notoriously trendy and activist oriented. New York is widely known as one of the trendiest cities on Earth, and Wal-Mart, known for cheap goods, has failed to appeal to the more innovative, fashion-conscious urban set. Though Wal-Mart set up a design studio in New York to be more in-touch with the urban trends, Wal-Mart cannot seem to appeal to urban-dwellers. Especially in Manhattan, the city’s wealthiest borough, expensive luxury items are commonplace and some critics argue that Wal-Mart would struggle to meet urban consumers’ shifting tastes, compared with smaller boutique shops.39” (http://walmart.3cdn.net/20822f86bfd7795bfa_i8m6iieru.pdf)


I am confused why there is so much concern for blocking Wal-Mart from establishing a store in New York City if it will most likely fail to attract customers? If New Yorkers are extremely trendy and being trendy equates to a refusal to shop at Wal-Mart, then what harm is there in letting Wal-Mart set up a store and compete with other retailers for New Yorkers’ spending money? If New Yorkers prefer “smaller boutique shops” to big-box retailers like Wal-Mart, then Wal-Mart should pose no threat to the existing shops because they will continue to attract customers and stay in business. Why not allow Wal-Mart to make the mistake of spending many millions of dollars to build a store, hire workers and stock the shelves only to find out that they cannot generate enough money to stay in business? It would settle the issue for good and prevent further legal battles in the future.

One potential objection to allowing Wal-Mart to begin construction of a store despite its certain failure is to prevent environmental destruction. I am sympathetic to local government’s concern for the environmental health of its jurisdiction: local government should be able to preclude construction that will have an egregious impact on the environment. In the case of large cities like Chicago and New York, however, I don’t believe that a Wal-Mart store could not be constructed within city limits that respect current efforts to maintain green space and neighborhood diversity.

The environmental argument and most other arguments for why Wal-Mart should be kept out of neighborhoods are nothing more than red herring offered by detractors because they refuse to speak their true intentions. The truth is that detractors believe their judgment of the merits of Wal-Mart should carry more weight than the consumers who might choose Wal-Mart over the “smaller boutique shops” and the workers who might choose to file an application for a job at Wal-Mart.