Wal-mart Nation at War

It is not unusual that Wal-Mart has become a leit-motif of this blog. The company is the actual and symbolic enemy of anti-corporate, pro-labor, slow food, home-made, community based lifestyles and rhetoric for a while now. There are a lot of good reasons to dislike Wal-Mart, any of which should make you think twice about shopping there, but no one disputes its power and influence. I don’t know the exact figure, but if Wal-mart was a country, I believe that it would have a GDP that would put it in the top ten in the world. Maybe the corporation is the force that will end the boundaries of that modern phenomenon of the nation state. Much of Europe is unified under a single currency, but the difference in Europe is that the breaking down of the boundaries is to spread the wealth, whereas with Wal-mart, the goal is to expand the power of the empire of cheap merchandise. If any one doubts that Wal-mart sees itself as an empire, take a look at this article that appeared in the Times today discussing two job openings for marketing “generals.” In the age of information, war’s are won by who controls this information and there is little difference between Alexander’s march across the subcontinent and Wal-marts attack on culture except the weapons used. Many people are fighting back, but I have a feeling we are in for a show of how Wal-mart takes over the information age as if our own thoughts were cheap commodity.