Author: Aaron Weber

Whirl Mart, Mall Wart

Last month, there was this really laudatory Fortune article about Wal*Mart, pointing out how it has lowered prices and brought competition to every area it could, shrinking the margins of every competitor and benefiting even the consumers who hate it.

Of course, when a band or fashion trend gets that kind of coverage from a major magazine, I assume it’s on the way out. I don’t know as much about business, though. News coverage for the company points to flailing competitors and an open field to become a trillion dollar firm. It can get larger and it probably will.

A lot of people say they dislike Wal*Mart because it’s a big-box, sprawl-based, homogenizing merchandiser. But I think it’s because it’s got what Fortune calls a “downhome twang.” I argue with people who dislike Starbucks — are you opposed to it because it’s bad, or because you prefer your version of cafe culture? Starbucks makes pretty good coffee, they offer organic and fair-trade coffee, and it’s a pretty good place to work. Now, Wal*Mart has fewer of those plusses, and it really is a bad place to work: low pay, no unions, no employee power, allegations of unpaid overtime. Still, it’s got one major advantage over any other store: it’s cheaper.

It’s the bottom line that matters most to the most people, and that vast majority is the Wal*Mart customer base. That’s what makes the company so big. Fortune points out a few tidbits of bigness: its annual loss through theft, incorporated as a business, would be a Fortune 1000 company. It is the largest employer in 21 states. It has more employees than the Army. It is the largest customer for a huge number of huge manufacturers: Tandy, Rubbermaid, P&G, Clorox, Revlon…

Wal*Mart has a wider appeal than most other stores, and its growth has been organic rather than through acquisition. They don’t waste money. They have a fantastic distribution system. Even their annual reports are printed on no-frills paper. They have an amazing reputation for cutting costs all along the supply chain. All of these things are good signs.

Still, I wonder about the example of McDonald’s: associated for so long with cheap food, McDonald’s is now regarded as the food of poor, stupid, fat people. Also, I’m concerned about overextension: they sell staples and groceries and media and electronics and gasoline, and are adding cars, computers, software… at some point they’re going to make a mistake and add something that their customers simply won’t associate with them. But for now, they look like one of the few stable retailers out there.

Obituary

The Weavers had a line about getting up in the morning and reading the obituary section in the newspaper: “and if I’m not there, I know I’m not dead, so I roll myself over and go back to bed.”

Fives, from Kung Fu Grippe has a rather different set of obituary requirements, like “there will be no use of the phrase ‘looking down on us.'” Of course, I think that Kitty Winn at Vomitola really would prefer to be described as “looking down on us” no matter what. I mean, if it’s accurate now, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be accurate after she dies.

A Excite Game

Two rather interesting web-based multiplayer games with a persistent universe:
Blogshares is a virtual stockmarket where you buy and sell shares of weblogs. Price is based both on the number of incoming links and also on the market supply/demand. Something like the Hollywood Stock Exchange and its affiliate at MuchMusic.

The Game Neverending is like an adventure game, but much, much sillier. Neat technology behind it, and a lot of thought in the economics, theology, philosophy, sociology. Basically, a playground with lots of puns and funny names for objects. Still in beta.

Finance and War

Dear Financial Advisor:
    You recently sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal which closed with the statement that “the meek may not inherit the earth, but at least they’ll get to retire”. With that in mind, I’d like to ask you about avoiding investment in Halliburton. I have read that they recieved a $1bn no-bid contract to put out oil fires in Iraq, and there’s every reason to believe that they’ll get more work rebuilding the country once we’ve levelled it.
    My concern is that destroying and rebuilding Iraq isn’t a viable long-term business plan. They do have a lot of coverage in the financial press, and it’s true that this is the second time they’ve rebuilt Iraqi oil fields, and possibly the third time they’ve built them, but I’m still unsure that they’ll be able to scale this sort of operation.
    I look forward to your thoughts on the matter.

   Yours,
       Aaron Weber

Hilarity

Well, it’s Friday. People keep stealing the campaign signs from politician
Pat Stoner. He’s amused by it, but he says he was born a Stoner and will stay that way. The folks over at Bong State Park aren’t so sure about their name though. Elsewhere, police investigated a man advertising crack sales but it turned out he’d just run out of room trying to write cracklins, as in pork rinds.

Devout Fundamentalist Belief

People who believe sincerely in something can be blind to the facts. Sometimes, it’s funny, like the guy demanding a cervical exam because he’s convinced he’s actually a woman.

Sometimes it’s harmful, as in the case of Dick Cheney’s energy task-force which more or less created and exacerbated the California energy crisis.

Sometimes, it’s both laughable and fatal. Just look: Congress has voted us a day of prayer and fasting, while the radicals worry about the religious right and the religious right gears up for a mass conversion campaign. To try and deflect terrorism and criticism, US students abroad are pretending to be Canadian.

It all begins to make sense when you see headlines like this: Price of Darkness Quits Bush Team. Conflict of interest rules, apparently.

Upstanding Citizens Against the War

You may see protestors out there protesting and think, do they know what they’re doing? We can’t let the Iraquis know we don’t have the heart for a real fight. And look at them. They’re not organized. They haven’t bathed. White kids with dreadlocks! They think they can change the world by pretending to throw up at city hall?

Well, I’m glad to let them shout. This is my shout right here. I don’t give a damn about Mumia. I don’t want to smash capitalism. I think “globalization” is a a word and not an evil. I’m all for free trade and free movement of goods services and people around the world. And I’m opposed to this war.

So is George Soros. Yes, that George Soros. The billionaire financier and philanthropist is the latest to object, sanely and forcefully, to the Bush policies.

I call on moderates and conservatives, preppies and yuppies and button-down shirt wearers, to reject this war! Join me, and the fiscal-responsibility lobby, and the soverign-international-law advocates! Take common cause with the Pope and the WTO and the godless anarchist hippies!

I consider myself a patriot, I really do. And I do not object to all war or all violence. I know a bit about other countries and I like this one because it is my home. But because I love it I can acknowledge its flaws and mistakes (e.g. Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973) and speak out against repeating them. I love my country and I would be willing to die for it, and I appreciate the valor of the soldiers who are out there fighting for … whatever it is. But I know this: The US Armed Forces are not in Iraq to protect me or to promote freedom. They’re pawns bleeding for someone else’s empire, or madness, or blind rage. And all the while our executives in the White House and the board room stay home undermining everything we stand for, dividing us, tearing us apart.

I know it’s too late to stop the war, really. It’s obvious by now that a fair number of the Iraqi people support Saddam despite their dislike of him, just like a lot of Americans hold their noses and support Bush in wartime. Bush is our leader, we have to support him, for national pride and for strength in unity. Saddam is their leader, they have to support him for just the same reasons. People have begun to make comparisons with Stalingrad: as awful as Stalin was, and as much as the Russians hated him, they fought to the death to defend their country because Stalin was their evil and they would not trade him for another.

Well, we’ll see be fighting house to house, and civilian bombardment, and we’ll level Baghdad and Basra, and send another half a million troops and quarter trillion dollars before it’s over. We’ll all suffer for this folly. And because I am a patriot I I will suffer with the rest of my country. But I’m not going to just lie down and take it, and I have no intention of letting George W. Bush escape the consequences for what he’s done.