A few days ago, Mark Sumner of The Daily Kos surveyed the data concerning travel in the era of shelter-in-place and its kin, and makes an interesting connection at the prompting of Christopher Hale:
How miles traveled has changed in the era of COVID-19. Red isn’t good.
But there’s another reason that the red states are also “red states” when it comes to their travel distance. As former Obama White House official Christopher Hale points out, these maps correspond closely to areas that are “food deserts,” where the nearest grocery story requires making an extended trip. “Food deserts” is a term that is often applied to urban neighborhoods where good nutrition is outside of walking range, but these are counties where it takes an extended auto trip to find any kind of nutrition, even bad nutrition. Why? The simple answer is Walmart. These areas represent locations where big box retailers like Walmart have annihilated local grocers, and where the quest for an apple or a box of Pop-Tarts means crossing the county to a store that also sells tires, televisions, and potting soil.
And it’s not as if the Army comes in, kicks out the mom ‘n pops, and installs Walmart. The traditional answer is that Walmart outcompetes the locals and then reaps the rewards, which, given the Walmart resources, is not entirely accurate, but will do for here.
How big is the area that a Walmart normally drains and picks over? I don’t know offhand, but I had never thought about this in the context of the pandemic. The Walmart phenomenon is clearly an example of centralization, and while centralization, much like specialization, has its advantages, it also has its vulnerabilities.
Take this Internet thing you’re on right now. It’s a prime example of decentralization. Pieces of it are farmed out all over the place, especially critical pieces such as directories. The Internet is designed to keep multiple copies of important information available in case the primary becomes unreachable, and to flow around unpredictable holes in the network.
Walmart, designed or not to kill off all the local competitors, by being all things to all shoppers that prices everything cheaper (typically by selling cheaply made crap) and making it up on volume, becomes a centralization point in non-urban areas; by contrast, the mom ‘n pop shops, perhaps more expensive and not carrying everything in the world, are / were examples of decentralization by providing duplicate resources, made shopping more convenient and, incidentally, gave more entrepreneurial opportunities to those so inclined.
I’ve never cared for Walmart. From the awful atmosphere and unhappy workers to the bottom of the barrel products and the crappy way the vendors were treated, I really didn’t want to have anything to do with them. I made a conscious decision decades ago that saving money means spending it up front to get quality. That means Walmart is out.
One can say, But when they’re the only game in town … and why is that? My experience with the previous generation to me (I shan’t say mine) is that they were obsessed with quantity over quality. How much food will $5 get me, and can I get it all down my throat? In the end, quality didn’t seem to matter.
So Walmart shoveled it down their throats, and today they still do. I can’t help but wonder, if this happens two or three more times, will Walmart be publicly identified as inimical to the safety of the citizens of the United States? Or will the Federal government look into breaking them up?
