Nice guys you admire there ole chum.
Posted on 10/10/2012 8:09:47 AM PDT by Beowulf
Does any one have any experience or insight into fighting Walmart expansion that they would be willing to share?
Well of course I do. I exercise my free choice.
And I'll add analogously, for instance, that I also get my dental work at a quality office and not a clinic mill. Prices are higher but the staff isn't stressed out by having to run volume to compensate for small profit margin, and they can take the time to do it right.
People have a choice and if you want cheap work it is always available.
It seems to me that these people fighting Walmart have a choice, too. Sounds like their community is currently protected by zoning which must be changed to open the way for Walmart crap, and they don't want it.
Consider this: A majority of the American people have always been against ObamaCare but the elites are still forcing it on us.
Or this: a majority of Americans want the illegal immigrant gates closed, but again the political elites do not listen
Or this: the Kelo v. City of New London (2005) eminent domain case where the local government took homes from citizens because they expected developers to build businesses that would increase New London's tax revenues. Last I heard the developers bailed, the land is barren with no prospect of development, and little or no tax revenue to the government.
So, do these Walmart resistors face a similar betrayal by their tax-revenue-voracious government entity with this proposed change of zoning that will change their community?
Good grief. Guess what? I liked my bucolic little America the way it was when I grew up and I do not like the change --- this trend to overbearing big government (even a government-capitalism-tax-revenue complex) but I'll be damned if I'm going to cut and run, but rather fight for what is right.
In other words, you are willing to pay for better service. Yet here the issue is really your argument why people shouldn't favor a place that sells Folger's for $7.99 a can over one that sells Folger's for $12.99.
Your statement shows that you either have no faith in your fellow citizens or you are just spouting words to provoke. The US can produce more quantity and quality products if we get government out of business.
But we're getting away from the point, aren't we?
The issue here is a community that invested in homes and businesses and now they face possibility of the rules (rezoning) being changed on them after the fact in a way that they don't want.
It's a basic issue of fairness and who was there first, I think.
Why should they be forced to chose between picking up roots or living under circumstances that they didn't buy into?
So if you now want to return to the issue of zoning, I'll agree that that there should be no shenanigans regarding its change, if it occurs.
One point I will add to my own (I'm not saying you do not understand this, but I assure you that there are people on this thread who do not), the money that someone saves by going to a low-cost dental clinic does not the evaporate.
So the equation is:
$ = high cost dental + good service
$ = low cost dental + poor service + some other purchase
Capitalist + a believer in strong Central Authority = Fascist (shoe fits in this case)
A pure capitalist holds no allegiance to any nation or creed. Judas was a pure capitalist.
Did you get your last two comments from Marx, also? [snort]
Marx and Engels are your boys, Madison, Jefferson and Washington are my boys. Don’t forget it.
Nice guys you admire there ole chum.
Don't you ever tire of chanting slogans?
No Costco in the area?
No Costco in the area?
If there are that many wal-marts, there should be about a third as many Costcos.
Do you want me to post Marx’s treatise on Free trade AGAIN? So you can not read it AGAIN?
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Liddy.shtml
Content:
The Suicide Of Marlboro Man
The Price Of Freedom Is Slavery. Sort Of. A Little Anyway
The other days I was reading G. Gordon Liddy’s book of conservative nostalgia, When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country. He paints a sunset picture of former times when America was free, farmers could fill in swamps without violating wetland laws, and guns were just guns. People were independent and had character, and made their own economic decisions. The market ruled as it ought, and governmental intrusion was minimal.
The picture is accurate. I lived it. I wish it would come back, which it won't. It was a world certain to kill itself.
What happens is that, in an independent-minded rural county full of hardy yeomen, the density of population grows, either nearby or at distant points on each side. A highway comes through because the truckers lobby in Washington wants it. Building a highway is A Good Thing, because it represents Progress, and provides jobs for a year.
It also makes the country accessible to the big city fifty miles away. A real-estate developer buys 500 acres along the river from the self-reliant character-filled owner. He does this by offering sums of money that water the farmer's eyes.
First, 500 houses go up in a bedroom suburb called Brook Dale Manor. A year later, 500 more go up at Dale View Estates. This is A Good Thing, because the character-filled independent now-former farmer is exercising his property rights, and because building the suburb creates jobs. The river now looks ugly as the devil, but this is a wacko issue.
At Safeway corporate headquarters, way off God knows where, the new population shows up as a denser shade of green on a computer screen. A new Safeway goes in along the highway. This is A Good Thing, exemplifying free enterprise in action and creating jobs in construction. Further, Safeway sells cheaper, more varied and, truth be known, better food than the half-dozen mom-and-pop stores in the county, which go out of business.
Soon the mall men in the big city hear of the county. A billion-dollar company has no difficulty in buying out a character-filled, self-reliant farmer who makes less than forty thousand dollars a year. A shopping center arrives with a Wal-Mart. This is A Good Thing, etc. Wal-Mart sells almost everything cheaply.
It also puts most of the stores in the country seat out of business. With them go the restaurants, which no longer have the walk-by traffic previously generated by the stores. With the restaurants goes the sense of community that flourishes in a town with eateries and stores and a town square. But this is granola philosophy, appealing only to meddlesome lefties.
K-Mart arrives, along with, beside the highway, McDonald's, Arby’s, Roy Rogers, and the other way stations on route to coronary occlusion. Strip development is A Good Thing because it represents the exercise of economic freedom. The county's commerce is now controlled by distant behemoths to whom the place is the equivalent of a pin on a map.
This is A Good Thing. The jobs in these outlets are secure and comfortable. The independent, character-filled frontiersmen are now low-level chain employees, no longer independent because they can be fired.
A third suburb, Brook Manor View Downs, appears. The displaced urbanites in these eyesores now outnumber the character-filled etcs. They are also smarter, have lawyers among their ranks, and co-operate. They quickly come to control the government of the county.
They want city sewerage, more roads, schools, and zoning. The latter isn't unreasonable. In a sparsely settled county, a few hogs penned out back and a crumbling Merc on blocks don't matter. In a quarter-acre yuppie ghetto, they do. Next come leash laws and dog licenses. The boisterous clouds of floppy-eared hounds turn illegal.
Prices go up, as do taxes. The profits of farming and commercial crabbing in the river do not go up. The farmers and fishermen are gradually forced to sell their land to developers, and to go into eight-to-fiving. Unfortunately you cannot simultaneously be character-filled and independent and be afraid of your boss. A hardy self-reliant farmer, when he becomes a security guard at the Gap, is a rented peon. The difference between an independent yeoman and a second-rate handyman is independence.
People make more money, and buy houses in Manor Dale Mews, but have less control over their time, and so no longer build their own barns, wire their houses, and change their own clutch-plates. Prosperity is A Good Thing. Its effect is that the children of the hardy yeoman become dependent on others to change their oil, fix their furnaces, and repair their boats.
The new urban majority are frightened by guns. They don't hunt, knowing that food comes from Safeway and its newly-arrived competitor, Giant. They do not like independent countrymen, whom they refer to as rednecks, grits, and hillbillies. Hunting makes no sense to them anyway, since the migratory flocks are vanishing with the wetlands.
Truth be told, it isn't safe to have people firing rifles and shotguns in what is increasingly an appendage of the city. The clout of the newcomers makes it harder for the independent whatevers to let their weapons even be seen in public. The dump is closed to rat-shooting.
The children of the hardy rustics do not do as well in school as the offspring of the commuting infestation, and are slowly marginalized. Crime goes up as social bonds break down. Before, everyone pretty much knew everyone and what his car looked like. Strangers stood out. Teenagers raised hell, but there were limits. Now the anonymity of numbers sets in and, anyway, there's no community any longer.
And so the rural character-filled county becomes another squishy suburb of pallid yups who can't put air in their own tires. The rugged rural individualists become cogs in somebody else’s wheel. Their children grow up as libidinous mall monkeys drugging themselves to escape boredom. The county itself is a hideous expanse of garish low-end development . People's lives are run from afar.
What it comes to is that the self-reliant yeoman's inalienable right to dispose of his property as he sees fit (which I do not dispute) will generally lead to a developer's possession of it. The inalienable right to reproduce will result in crowding, which leads to dependency, intrusive government, and loss of local control.
I'd like to live again in Mr. Liddy’s world. Unfortunately it is self-eliminating. Freedom is in the long run inconsistent with freedom, because it is inevitable exercised in ways that engender control. As a species, we just can't keep our pants up. But it was nice for a while.
Wasn’t there a brand of cough drops back in the day that used their pictures on the box?
Just the relevant section, please. So I can demonstrate that you have the reading comprehension of a ten-year-old.
One of the greatest contributions the United States can make to the world is to promote freedom as the key to economic growth. A creative, competitive America is the answer to a changing world, not trade wars that would close doors, create greater barriers, and destroy millions of jobs.
We should always remember: protectionism is destructionism.
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