Of course they do. It doesn’t matter whether you have one, or half a dozen mom and pop stores, you still have small entities that simply don’t have the buying power of a large store and therefore they don’t have the ability to offer the same sorts of price breaks as a result of buying in very large quantity as you see in the big box stores. The possibility exists, I suppose that a group of mom and pops could pool their resources and buy in sufficient quantity to get the price breaks you find in big box stores, but then, the mom and pops would have effectively become big boxes themselves.
My experience has been that customer service is far superior in big box stores. It has been my experience that mom and pop are loathe to give you your money back if you find that your purchase doesn’t meet your expectations or you simply decide that you don’t want it. Big box stores will very often simply exchange a product that is defective as well rather than asking you to jump through the warranty hoops as is the case with mom and pop who will try every means to get you to deal with the manufacturer on warranty issues.
Of course there are. One only need look at walmart to see that their management is fully staffed. Maybe you wouldn’t want to do it, but you shouldn’t suggest that there are not many when in fact, there are more than plenty.
First off, mom and pop aren’t for sale on the exchange and second of all, few could afford to actually buy 10% of a small business even if it were for sale. Since small business is far more likely to fail than large established companies, the risk of owning 10% of a mom and pop is considerably greater than owning a similar amount of stock in larger corporations. And if mom and pop’s children decide not to follow in the family tradition, your investment would be lost all together.
Things are not bad for walmart. Three years ago the stock was trading at slightly over $50. Today the stock is trading at slightly over $60. Bad press should not be confused with bad business. The chance of walmart slipping down the drain is pretty remote and anyone that lost money on Kmart did so because they were sleeping. The writing was on the wall far in advance of their actual losses. Another advantage to investing in large companies over mom and pop. When mom and pop go under, it generally is without warning and even if you do have warning, who is going to buy you out?
One only need look at companies that have been in existence for over 100 years to see the how. Generally, there is an upper limit to the amount of profit that can be had in any market and a good business man works within that margin. Using resources that can not be turned into profit is a recipe for failure.
Lumber is a renewable resource. We didn’t go in and manage much of the public land and as a result, those 100 year old trees burned to the ground. Of what use are they now? Is it better that they were burned as a result of mismanagement of the resource than if they had been harvested and put to good use? Conservation of resources doesn’t mean hoarding or refusing to allow anyone to use them.
And we are more efficient in the use of our resources today than we were in the 80’s. Not because of government regulation. I would argue that we are more efficient in spite of it.
But modern liberalism also tries to remove the concept of community and one’s responsibility to community and make the individual the end all and be all and as such make what the individual wants, more important than what the society needs.
Personally, I believe we should be in Iraq doing what we are doing. Iraq represented a long term threat to us. I also believe we should be in Darfur. Not because it represents a threat to us, but because it is the right thing to do. Being strong places a responsibility upon us to protect those who can’t defend themselves.
Social security is a failure. It doesn’t provide security to those who depend upon it. It creates old age poverty and dependence. Considering the amount of money that one is required to pay in over the course of a working career, the pay back is near criminal. If you wonder about the effectiveness of social security consider the fact that federal employees are not part of the system. They retire quite comfortable since their money does not go into social security. Most state government employees are outside of the social security program as well.
I find that very hard to believe. Pubic schools fare poorly when compared to even mediocre private schools and for the money most public schools spend per student, a child could go to private schools that are far above the mediocre.
What do you mean greedy? And define civic minded. My bet is that your definitions will fall short of anything that could be called freedom.
One can trace the ancestry of elephants back through mammoths and mastodons as well, but modern elephants are not mammoths. And while you may trace conservatism back to a point in history, conservatism has evolved as well. As we can see, it was good that Burke withheld his congratulations to France since in the end, they forfeited freedom in exchange for the false security of socialism.
