Wal Mart Options

[sixfive]

Wal-Mart is often seen as a microcosm of the globalization process. Using its enormous retailing power it has been able to provide an array of consumer goods at rock bottom prices. However, it has also been widely criticized for paying low wages, a lack of adequate benefits, and driving small retailers out of business. So too, Globalization has been praised for lifting millions of people from poverty in China and India, but denounced for failing to improve the lot of most of the world’s poor, undermining living standards in developed countries as industries have migrated overseas to exploit low wage labor, and for unleashing industrial developments that have damaged the global environment. Do you believe that the impact of WalMart and the larger process of Globalization has been largely positive or negative?

[mifff]

Wal-Mart is good in the sense that it provides for a lot of middle-class families, arguably at the price of driving out smaller businesses. Honestly the only thing that bothers me is the whole mass cheapo product thing. Stronger businesses don't always mean better products, and I would rather pay a little more for quality.. I'd just have to prioritize what I can sacrifice being crappy and cheap (like toilet cleaner) and what can't be (clothes.. truthfully :X) for it to work within my financial situation. If Wal-Mart keeps stamping out small businesses in their effort to settle on mass-pleasing brands, where will the diversity come from? Innovation is born out of diversity.. Those businesses won't even get a chance to really develop their product. In some cases, the depletion of those businesses can mean erosion of a culture or art like soap-making. Competition between companies = happiness for everyone


As for globalization, idk.