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If the idea is that every mom and pop was ran by self-directed, profit-motivated independent business persons who captured more of the profit, this is not often the case - the employees of these stores made the same going labor rate of any retail employee, it was just a local business man who ran the businesses rather than a conglomerate. One benefit of a large corporation like Walmart is the share holders are far more distributed.

My general point is that this fantasy of a "mom and pop utopia" of small businesses that Walmart and similar destroyed is just that - a total fantasy. They were not a dream situation and they went away because they were not the best for consumers or their community, not because of some grand conspiracy.




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