As a result, the luddites of today have taken
a vastly different approach to opposing inevitable change. In the
case of Wal-Mart, luddites have cunningly masked their arguments to
portray a successful company as the next evil empire. Wal-Mart is now
a company that destroys lives, wrecks communities, and puts society
in an upheaval.
From the way that Wal-Mart has been portrayed
would make people think that the Walton family steals babies and
drinks blood from skulls inside of a cave.
In the past few decades, Wal-Mart has built
their success upon technology and efficiency. Their implementation
of technology and their economies of scale of their inventory and
distribution system is definitely breathtaking but is it evil?
Of course not, especially since companies like
Wal-Mart has been predicted in economic books for decades.
The economics for efficiency is simple but it
is not sinister.
If an organization can offer the same or
similar product at lower prices and is able to effectively market
that price and make their products available to the general public,
then that organization is going to outperform its competitors.
But this is not anything new. In fact, new
companies have always found ingenious and creative ways to end the
dominance of a major player. Ford did that to the small independent
auto makers and in turn General Motors did that to Ford and then
Toyota has done that General Motors.
And the list is almost infinite.
The luddites claim that Wal-Mart is destroying
the mom and pop proprietors but in order to criticize Wal-Mart, the
luddites would have to criticize just about every industry.
Supermarkets devastated mom and pop grocery stores. Home Deport and
Lowes have obliterated the mom and pop hardware store. And again,
the list could almost go on infinitely.
In fact, major retailers have already wiped
out many mom and pop proprietors. The big retail chains have already
created the upheavals that dramatically changed the cultural fabric
of society decades ago from restaurants, to movie theaters, shopping
malls, and just about any other place a consumer goes shopping. And
the big retail chains did so long before the emergence of Wal-Mart.
So why all the demonizing of Wal-Mart?
The luddites insist that the only way that
Wal-Mart can have low prices is because of their massive inventory.
But before Wal-Mart, the large retailers already had big inventories
albeit not the mammoth size of Wal-Mart but they were big nonetheless
and big enough to devastate mom and pop outfits. The same goes with
the distribution system.
Mass production by technological innovation
does lower prices and it has been doing so since the industrial
revolution so this is nothing new. Industries have come and gone
because of mass production and technology although today, technology
is far more sophisticated and advanced. But then again, that was the
case a hundred years ago and two hundred years ago.
Today, the digital camera is now ruining the
film development market but is that a bad thing? Unresponsive
competitors such as Kodak are being demolished and plenty of
livelihoods are directly being affected but does that mean that the
digital camera industry should be banned? Should the government
subsidize Kodak so that they can continue to offer products that
fewer and fewer consumers want?
Blame technology? Blame mass production?
It is hard to do so if this has been happening
for centuries.
Will technology and mass production continue
to destroys lives, wrecks communities, and put society in an
upheaval?
Unless you are happy with your eight-track
tape and in paying $2000 for a 286 microprocessor with 640k of
memory, ten megs of hard drive disk space, and a 5.25 inch floppy
drive, let us hope that there are more plenty more upheavals in the
future.
We want your opinion! Tell us what you thought about
this article. Click the
Your Feedback menu item to send us
your comments.
