Editorial
Wal-Mart as the Borg: Resistance is Futile
By Ivan Potter
Wal-Mart is big.
Wal-Mart is the premier image of the American business model with sales of $45 billion last year at 5,779 stores in 13 countries, employing 1.9 million people.
Wal-Mart is America and at the same time Wal-Mart is not American.
Wal-Mart in 2007 would not take kindly to its founder, Sam Walton walking into any of the stores that he built. Sam stood for buying American products, not so much as they were American, but because it was good business to buy American made products to sell to the American middle class.
In name only is Wal-Mart an American company. In practice, Wal-Mart is a global conglomerate of interlocking world suppliers and vendors, forced to cut costs each year by using inferior ingredients and almost slave labor. Wal-Mart is a global corporation that reaches out for global domination of the marketplace.
The television and movie series, “Star Trek, The Next Generation”, introduced an enemy of humanity that destroyed worlds and civilizations by assimilating the people into a collective hive ruled by a queen. This enemy was called the Borg. All thought in the hive was for the collective group with no value given to the individual.
The Wal-Mart of 2007 has become the Borg.
Wal-Mart the Borg seeks to destroy all competition as it assimilates all consumers in any of its 5,779 stores, each with a 20 mile radius local marketplace. Resistance from small business has been futile.
In fiction, Captain Picard and his crew on the Starship Enterprise found a way to stop the Borg.
They fought back with skills of imagination, creativity, determined that they would not give up their individual freedoms to become mindless slaves to a collective.
The marketplace of 2008 will see more and more communities fighting back against the Wal-Mart (Borg) mindless race to the bottom for goods and products. Americans are beginning to question the entire Wal-Mart business model when, in this 2007 Christmas season, parents now have to worry about toys that could harm their children or food that could kill.
Sam Walton understood that business only works when you enter into a partnership with your consumers. He fought to gain their trust about offering quality products at a fair price. Sam’s vision of Wal-Mart defined how a retail store would work with a community to help build for a new economy.
Sam is long gone and with him his vision of small town America.
The Wal-Mart (Borg) of the 21st Century is all about corporate profits. Community is just a market concept to conquer. It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.
Is resistance futile? |
