Wall-Mart: Good or Evil?

[Eukaryote]

A lot of people hate Wall Mart for ruining small buisnesses and mistreating workers, but it's occured to me that in a year or two I'll be heading off to collage and I sure would like to avoid borrowing too much money by buying all my no name groceries there.

So I just thought I'd ask what everyone thinks, is Wall Mart good for society, bad for society, or neutral.

 

[amadeus]

Very good, just like K-mart, Woolworths, Sears and Roebuck, and Montgomery Ward before it.

 

[Bigfoot3814]

It's true that Wal-Mart and stores like it can wreck small businesses, but they can also give a community job opportunities and make things more affordable to people. Penn & Teller did a great show about Wal-Mart hatred.

 

[Bill3000]

It's true that Wal-Mart and stores like it can wreck small businesses, but they can also give a community job opportunities and make things more affordable to people. Penn & Teller did a great show about Wal-Mart hatred.

downtown would know more about this, but IIRC, Walmart is a revenue loss for towns.

With that said, Wal Mart is freaky. Not good or bad, just freaky. Stores should not be that big, hold that much stuff, and have prices that low. It's just... unhuman.

 

[Gogf]

Something about Wal-Mart really rubs me the wrong way. I have no idea why. It's definitely not rational. I have no problem with K-Mart, Sears, and any other similar places, either.

 

[Mowque]

Walmart is doubleplus good

 

[gangleri2001]

Walmart is doubleplus good

I come from the room 101 and I totally agree with mowque. I love Walmart.

 

[LucyDuke]

Evil.
Period. They're not even the lowest prices (unless they're in the middle of a price war), usually there are other shops around that beat them on most items. They drive other businesses out of town, and pay their workers crap. Seriously, take a look at their labor practices. (They don't give "full-time" workers 40 hours/week, for starters. There's a lot more. It's a lot worse.)

Really. Go do some research.

 

[amadeus]

Stores should not be that big, hold that much stuff, and have prices that low. It's just... unhuman.

Why shouldn't they be big or have low prices?

Walmart is doubleplus good

That might make more sense if Wal-Mart wasn't a privately-owned entity, the antithesis to 1984 and its vision of a society where everything is provided by the state.

 

[eastsidebagel]

I just care for the low prices in Wal-Mart.
LESS TALKING, MORE DISCOUNT SALES! Screw the working class!
(Am I joking? Yeah, well maybe...)

 

[amadeus]

I just care for the low prices in Wal-Mart.
LESS TALKING, MORE DISCOUNT SALES! Screw the working class!
(Am I joking? Yeah, well maybe...)

The working class tend to benefit the most from Wal-Mart, though.

 

[luiz]

If it wasn't good people would not go there. Are people being forced to shop at Wal-Mart?

People that don't like it are more than free to not go there. Personally I don't go to the cheapest places because I can afford to pay more to shop in better places with better quality. That doesn't mean that I would force everybody to give up hiper-markets, because, well, I am not an imbecile.

 

[Bill3000]

Why shouldn't they be big or have low prices?

Because it just freaks me out about how massive a store like that can be. One ought to go to a store that specializes in the things that you want to buy, not some massive hyper-store. The cheap prices part is a matter of feeling incredible about how that is possible.

That might make more sense if Wal-Mart wasn't a privately-owned entity, the antithesis to 1984 and its vision of a society where everything is provided by the state.

Orwell was a socialist and hated all forms of totalitarianism.

 

[El_Machinae]

In my estimation, they're strip-mining the American economy.

 

[warpus]

Wall-mart? Pretty useful, if you're looking for a wall or two.

 

[eastsidebagel]

Three simple words: "Don't buy there"! Wal-Mart was not always the super-massive, international conglomerate as we happen to know it now. They made all the way up to reach that market-leading position they own now. Isn't exactly that one of the most basic rules of a free market that you can choose where to purchase your stuff? I prefer to buy food and household articles for a cheap price in trade for a reasonable quality. Wal-Mart employs thousands of people and doe not destroy small town business. It just happens that most people have to think twice where to spend their bucks.

 

[eastsidebagel]

Paris Hilton once said: "Wal-Mart? Like, you can buy walls there?" May she be long remembered.

 

[Narz]

It's bad on thousands of levels. Good on a maybe hundreds. Overall .

BTW : dunno how anyone could vote nuetral. Walmart is anything but nuetral, that's like saying George W. Bush or WW II was "nuetral".

 

[LucyDuke]

The working class tend to benefit the most from Wal-Mart, though.

Total nonsense. Not in small towns.

Wal-Mart employs thousands of people and doe not destroy small town business.

It's company policy.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Although I voted "don't know" I have a deep distrust of Wal-Mart. I do know that they have an impressive(ly bad) record of labor abuses.