Daytona Beach, FL. Look at the Big Picture

Missing the big picture as Wal-Mart plans for us [Daytona Beach News Journal]

Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer but elected officials in our community are treating it like “Joe’s Ice Cream Shoppe.” Apparently, it plans to double its sales here. That will have a profound effect. Not being considered are the loss of local stores in convenient locations, the loss of a merchant class that supports all manner of community affairs and reduction of job quality for employees. These effects are well documented elsewhere. Our local governments are not up to the task of dealing with this company’s plan.

Please do not mistake this as a diatribe about Wal-Mart. It would apply regardless of the company involved.

In making its plan for this area, the company is armed with elaborate studies and reports on its operations. These obviously give it confidence that it can increase its business here substantially. Consequently, it has a sophisticated plan for this area. The plan announced so far starts with a new distribution center. New stores to join the seven already here are proposed. We do not know what additional stores may be part of the plan.

Many local businesses report poor sales. Neither population nor retail sales are increasing, so where are the customers? What does Wal-Mart know about us that existing stores do not? Based on its plan, the company has applied for the necessary permits from the various governments involved.

What seems to be going on is a typical negotiation between a behemoth and a local government. David will not win this fight with Goliath. Each of the local governments is armed only with a local understanding of what is at stake. They are not expected to consider the surrounding areas. Do they even talk to each other? Certainly, they do not have research or a plan as comprehensive and sophisticated as the company’s.

Because the economy of the area is integrated, however, businesses draw customers and employees from the entire market, regardless of the political boundaries. The company is not constrained by these limits. No local government considers it a responsibility to have a thorough understanding of the larger economy. No one has mentioned the effect on existing businesses, taxes, licenses and customers throughout the community.

As a result, negotiations with Wal-Mart center on mundane and minor issues such as location of driveways, the height of a wall and the truck traffic. Although each of these is important, especially to the immediate neighbors, none of them is particularly significant to the community as a whole. At this time, no one is speaking for the whole community, nor the interests of small business or civic organizations.

We citizens should not complain, however, because we are the ones who repeatedly support fragmented and inadequate government. We have placed severe limits on government employment. One result is to constrain our elected officials with inadequate information to deal with the issues presented to them. We are abdicating decisions on our economic future to one corporation. At least for our retail sector, we are becoming a “one-company town” no less than the factory towns many of us left “up north.”

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, November 26, 2007

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