I love this essay. As a self described environmentalist and a person who goes into convulsions when I enter one of those Big Box store parking lots, 75 acres of asphalt on a 95 degree day is nearly hell for me. Anyway the point is we rarely shop at these stores and prefer to support local folks, we go to the local coffe shop, we go to the local groccer, we shop at the funky second hand store, etc.

We had a situation here in Fort Collins Colorado where a developer wanted to get a zoning change at a key highway interchange to put up a Pottery Barn and all the other strip mall stuff. The arguement being the tax base would increase (why conservatives support more taxes in this case seems contradictory). However, wouldn't that be corporatism? The government would have given the zoning change to benifit a developer and a corporate entity and the desire of the people of Fort Collins to have one highway interchage that remains natural would have been ignored.

I am always battling my contradictory ideology of free markets vs. control of over development...

Good stuff Mr. Wyatt

Our time is NOW.

I think we can all agree that it is Government in the economy that makes it hard for smaller business to compete. When excessive regulation, taxation, and in many cases extortion and obstruction fall upon a smaller business, it is difficult for them to compete in any marketplace. I have a lot of first hand experience with dealing with government from city/county to state/federal and many of their sub tiers of bureaucracy, and have found nothing but incompetence and obstructionists along the way. I can count on one hand the number of elected officials and staff that were actually helpful to me with something I did.

Mostly I deal with executive branches... but I also see legislative corruption constantly. Is it just me or do they pass some new horrible law (loaded with earmarked wealth distribution) all the time? I am always hearing about it. Finally, how confident are you guys in the judicial branch? If you were accused of a murder you didn't commit, how sure would you be that you weren't going to spend the next 20 years in prison? I have no confidence in them at all... and am always reading about one judge or another selectively and subjectively interpreting various laws as he/she sees fit.

It is extremely disturbing. A little off topic I know... but to use an Atlas Shrugged metaphor, this great oak has been rotting away from the core for years, and now is just an empty shell... like a great lie.

In this case, I think it's not size that matters. Big businesses are neither worse nor better than small businesses. "Generalist" businesses like Walmart are great for people who don't have a lot of time to shop and want to buy everything they need in one place. A business that sells huge quantities of stuff can sell it cheaper, which benefits us as well.

Big or small, what does matter is whether the business is receiving money or favors from the government. This use of ill-gotten loot gives the business in question an unfair advantage over the others, so they are robbing us in two ways. They are taking our money, and they are using it to tamper with the free market. Small businesses do it too. A "mom and pop" business that gets tax money for employing disadvantaged teens, or medical doctors, who benefit from their licence to practice (which is denied to other people), are guilty of the same thing.

I really don't understand what anyone could have against large companies such as Mc Donalds or Walmart as long as they are not taking money or favors from the government. Why wish for their demise? They seem to provide services that people need, and if you ask, I think most people will tell you that they would not wish for a world without Walmart. I certainly wouldn't.