Wal-Mart is Scary

"People ask, 'How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?' Sure, it's held inflation down, and it's great to have bargains," says Dobbins. "But you can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs."

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know

So many articles have been published about Wal-Mart recently, describing everything from their incursions into Japan (with scary descriptions of their relentlessly outgoing corporate culture) to their dominance in holiday toy sales (pushing traditional toy stores such as F.A.O. Schwarz into bankruptcy), that I've found that lately, Wal-Mart seems to hold a far more frightening future than even Microsoft.

With Microsoft, at least, there appears to be a figure behind the Evil Empire -- Bill Gates -- and that lends the hope that, should he be locked away on a deserted island somewhere, his kingdom would crumble in his absence. But Wal-Mart is more than the brainchild of a madman -- it's a philosophy, a culture -- a brainwash.

It's like Big Brother's come to roost in a parking lot.