The Conservative Case Against Wal-Mart

Thanks to Amy Welborn, for reminding me to post a link to MOJ-friend Steve Bainbridge's post, "The Conservative Case Against Wal-Mart."  After a review of the data and facts, Steve quotes Russell Kirk:

All my life I have known the city of Detroit, called-during World War II "the arsenal of democracy." ... In the shocking decay of that great city nowadays, we behold the consequences of an inhumane economy-bent upon maximum productive efficiency, but heedless of personal order and public order. Henry Ford's assembly-line methods had much to do with the impersonality and monotony of Detroit's economic development; and so, in some degree, did Ford's concentration of his whole productive apparatus at the Rouge Plant; but of course Henry Ford had no notion, in the earlier years of his operation, of what might be the personal and social effects of his highly successful industrial establishment; nor did the other automobile manufacturers of Detroit. Indeed, they seem still to be ignorant of such unhappy consequences, or else indifferent to the consequences, so long as profits continue to be made. Consider the wiping out of Poletown through the unholy alliance of industrial, municipal, and ecclesiastical power structures, regardless of the rights and the wishes of Poletown's inhabitants-all to build on the site of Poletown a new industrial complex, which already, far from supplying the promised increase in tax revenues for Detroit, is involved in grave difficulties.

Steve continues:

Outside the most heavily urbanized areas, Wal-Mart typically builds on the edge of town, putting up a huge (and butt-ugly) big box building surrounded by acres of bare concrete parking lots. There are few sights in the American scene less attractive or appealing to the eye.

Kirk observed that "Detroit, during my own lifetime, has produced tremendous wealth in goods and services. But it has been a social failure. And so have nearly all of America's other major cities." I put it to you that Wal-Mart contributed to moving those failures into small town America by shuttering local business and creating huge barriers to entrepreneurial entry into fields traditionally the province of local small business men and women.

Being a conservative is supposed to be about things like tradition, community, and, yes, aesthetics. If I'm right about that, it's hard to see why a conservative should regard Wal-Mart as a societal force for good even if Hugh's right about the job story.

So what do we do? Well, we must strike a balance between respect for private property rights (see my Kelo post) and our other values. How? On the one hand, government should not legislate against Wal-Mart and its ilk. On the other hand, government should not subsidize Wal-Mart either through zoning or tax breaks. Wal-Mart’s a big boy, so to speak, who can take care of itself. We ought to let it compete in a free market. And those of us with a bully pulpit out to use it to encourage Wal-Mart to become a better neighbor and citizen.