Wal-Mart: It Came, It Conquered, Now It’s Packing Up and Leaving

The Town’n Country grocery in Oriental, North Carolina, a local fixture for 44 years, closed its doors in October after a Wal-Mart store opened for business. Now, three months later — and less than two years after Wal-Mart arrived — the retail giant is pulling up stakes, leaving the community with no grocery store and no pharmacy.

Though mom-and-pop stores have steadily disappeared across the American landscape over the past three decades as the mega chain methodically expanded, there was at least always a Wal-Mart left behind to replace them. Now the Wal-Marts are disappearing, too.

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Commentary by The Secular Jurist:  This story poignantly illustrates why the corporate consolidation of wealth and power is so damaging to society.  Wal-Mart’s only motive is to make money.  It has no enduring ties to the local economy and its residents.  Using a cold, calculating amorality to determine its actions, these business behemoths are as quick to leave localities – when profit expectations fail to be met – as they were quick to exploit such localities in the first place.  The end result is an economic wasteland, and the ruination of countless lives.