The story’s a familiar one, isn’t it, a shopkeeper is paid a
visit by a group of thugs who suggest that they are there to provide protection
for the store owner…for a small monthly fee. It’s a polite way of saying that
if you don’t pay them a hefty percentage of your profits they’re going to destroy
your business and you will be without a livelihood. A crime organization puts
the squeeze on all the businesses in town and soon the innocent little town of
free people becomes a place of fear and intimidation. The criminal organization
is like some blood-sucking leech that gets fat while the healthy and
hardworking hosts are sucked dry until they are barely living.
I thought of this the other day while sitting in the car at
a strip mall while waiting for my wife. Around me was a group of stores, the
same stores you’re likely to see at a strip mall near you. There was a tax
preparation business, a hair stylist, a nutrition store, a sandwich shop, and a
nail spa. And every single one of them was a chain store. Every single one of
them was identical to the one in the strip mall closest to you.
It didn’t used to be that way. I’m old enough to remember
independent businesses in my home town, which by the way was the epitome of
suburbia, not Mayberry. We had a pharmacy, a hair salon, a tax preparer, a book
store, a record store, garden shop, an optician, an electronics dealer and a
grocery. Today we call that Walmart.
The thing is, every one of those independent business men
are now working for Walmart at whatever price Walmart decides to pay them. And
if it’s not Walmart, it’s some other chain. All those small business owners
used to play a special role in the town, used to know that they contributed to
their community in a meaningful way. Now they are interchangeable cogs in the
corporate machine. Where once they met their neighbors and chatted while doing
their job, now they seem like lifeless drones as the plod through their working
day. Visit a Walmart pharmacy sometime if you don’t know what I’m talking
about.
An independent pharmacist, butcher, or shop owner used to
know his customers and was able to accommodate them. Now they have to work by
the rules the corporate entity sets out for them. My grandfather was a butcher
and I remember hearing stories about how he’d slip a little extra to people he
knew were having trouble making ends meet. You can’t do that sort of thing
these days.
Like I said, my grandfather was a butcher. He had his own
store. He managed to raise thirteen children doing that sort of work. Today the
average wage for a butcher is $12.40 an hour. Try feeding a family of fifteen
on that. Oh, I know, they’ve simplified the process so that a butcher no longer
needs to be as knowledgeable as he was fifty years ago, his skill set is no
longer worth as much. But how is that progress when it only hurts the person
doing the work? Who is profiting? It’s not the butcher, the baker, the barber
or clerk. Society is no longer based on what is best for the individual or the
community but what is most profitable for the corporations. And it’s only
getting worse. The theory is we all end up benefitting, but try telling that to
the butcher with mouths to feed.
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