The Big Box Swindle

There's a new force lighting up the political horizon, and we Southerners started it.

Localism, localvores, local food (or food patriotism), subsidiarity, regional government -- all of these powerful new trends are the offspring of Southern agrarianism. Agrarianism argued that small freeholders enjoyed greater prosperity, financial and economic independence, and, most important, as owner-operators of their own family businesses, a richer, deeper sense of belonging to one's family and the greater community. Sadly, families have been dispossessed by the giant corporations that arose with the giant nation-state. The good news is that the tide is turning.

Here's a book that exposes the waste, cronyism, and massive harm to our social and political fabric caused by the government-supported megastores. It's "The Big Box Swindle," written by Stacy Mitchell. She's with The Hometown Advantage, which promotes locally owned small business, and the Institute for Self-Reliance, which seeks to strengthen communities. I've just started the book, and intended to do a review after reading it, but am so excited about what I've seen so far, I couldn't wait to mention it.

This is from the book's web site:

Drawing on examples from virtually every state in the country, she unearths the extraordinary impact of these stores and the big-box mentality on everything from soaring gasoline consumption to rising poverty rates, failing family farms, and declining voting levels. Along the way, Mitchell exposes the shocking role government policy has played in the expansion of mega-retailers and builds a compelling case that communities composed of many small, locally owned businesses are healthier and more prosperous than those dominated by a few large chains.

The Big Boxes, whether Wal-Mart, Lowe's, or Home Depot, may advertise themselves as community boosters and entrepreneurs, but are anything but. They enjoy political connections which they use to artificially boost profits. Taxpayers all over the country have been saddled with subsidies to these seemingly unstoppable corporation.

And of course these incentives come from taxpayers, including the local, family-owned businesses who are forced to finance their own demise. With Wal-Mart’s cheap foreign suppliers and government subsidies, no wonder local businesses cannot compete. Many small-town Main Streets have been transformed into ghost towns thanks to the nearby Wal-Mart. Not only do these “superstores” suck the life out of small towns, they also erase their unique character, too. A chain-store, “standard-operating-procedure” mentality replaces the neighbor-to-neighbor contact of small, family-owned businesses. This destroys community, which Southern traditionalists recognize as an essential foundation for the freedoms and principles that make free-market capitalism possible.

Expect to see much more on the resurgence of community, tradition, and place as a corrective to the giantism that dominated the past century.