Here is something I read about in regards to Walmart. It is long, but interesting. I would love to know what your opinions are about this issue.
Kathleen
Wal-Mart: a.k.a. Big Brother Walley
By Wayne Hicks
A friend observed today that some of my better articles may well have come
from my temper, as in when I’ve lost it over some example of tyranny. After the
events that inspired this particular rant, I guess she was right. And, while
I've been hearing for years the quiet rumblings about the mega-corp known as
Wal-Mart, I've got to say that. this time, they've just gone too far.
Picture this: Having noticed that the family mini-van has a flat tire, I
calmly jack it up and remove the tire so that I can take it to be repaired, toss
it in the back of DOT (Dad’s Old Truck), and head for the Wal-Mart Tire and
Lube Center to get it plugged. This scenario is reenacted probably five hundred
times a day across the nation, so there’s certainly nothing sinister about it,
right?
Well, this morning I would have agreed with that statement, but not now. You
see, when I got there, and unloaded the tire and carried it to the guy who
would fix it, another fellow came out to me and began asking questions. He asked
for my telephone number, and I gave it to him, understanding that this is how
they track their customers. Then he asked my name, since I was not in their
database. Then he wanted my address, and although I sighed in frustration, I
gave it to him.
Then he asked for the color of my van, and its tag number, and alarm bells
went off in my head. I can think of no reason for Wal-Mart to need that
information, and I said so. The clerk replied that he needed it “for the warranty”,
and that if I did not provide it, then Wal-Mart could not work on my vehicle.
“You’re not working on my vehicle,” I replied, “my vehicle is at home!
You’re plugging a hole in a tire I carried in, why do you need all that
information in order to plug a tire?”
He reiterated that if I did not provide the information then they could not
proceed with repairing the tire, and I agreed. “Then tell the guy to just stop,
and I’ll take it somewhere else! I am NOT going to give you my license number
just to get a tire repaired!” The mechanic stopped what he was doing, and
handed me my tire… now off the rim… and when told why I was refusing to let them
complete the repair, he said, “Well, man, I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“No,” I answered him, “I’m the one who’s sorry that you DON’T feel that
way!”
This was a minor incident, but it brought to a head something that’s been
bothering me for some time now, namely Wal-Mart’s increasing control over the
lives and freedom of its customers. In many ways, the encroachment is even more
insidious than that of our government, since their goal is merely the
restriction of our liberties; Wal-Mart has a much loftier goal, as evidenced by such
things as the scene described above.
Did you know, for instance, that Wal-Mart now averages nearly a billion
dollars a day in sales? That it has put more than a hundred thousand
long-established local stores out of business by undercutting prices until they control the
market?
Did you know that in various cities, Wal-mart is experimenting with new forms
of marketing, and new products never sold in retail stores before?
Let me give you some examples.
In Dallas, Texas, starting soon if not already in progress, Wal-Mart will be
selling new cars of various brands. That’s right, rather than go to the
nearest Ford dealer, you need only drop by your friendly neighborhood Wally World
and pick your new Taurus “off the shelf”. No test drives needed… after all,
they’re all alike and Wal-Mart has that wonderful exchange policy, so if you
don’t like the one you get, no big deal, just come back and exchange it for
another one.
In another large city, each item in the store carries an electronic tag, and
if you’re one of many customers who have registered their Visa or MasterCard
with Wal-Mart and received the little electronic keychain tag or wallet card,
you can simply load up your cart and breeze right on out of the store between
two special upright scanners. Your purchases are automatically totaled, charged
to your card, and stored in their database where government employees of some
alphabet agency can see exactly what you bought and what you paid for it. I’m
told there’s even going to be a self-service bagging station, so you can bag
up your goodies if you like.
And how about those Wal-Mart Gift Cards, the ones you load money onto at the
register and use as gifts? You’ll soon be able to use them just about anywhere
in the world, and even take some of your cash back off of them at most ATM
machines. Since Wal-Mart will cash your paycheck, why not just go completely
cashless and let them credit your pay to your Wal-Mart card? If you need some of
that old fashioned green stuff, you can always drop by the 24 Hour Teller, but
since everything you need can be bought at Wal-mart… what’s the point?
Wal-mart has long been known for coming into a community and ruthlessly
cutting out the local merchants that were already established there, the local
merchants who can’t make billion dollar purchases and get $20 blue jeans for less
than five bucks each! Sam Walton’s dream of having a store that everyone could
shop at has turned into America’s nightmare, as Wal-Mart comes closer to its
goal of being the only place to get what you want or need… because there
won’t be anywhere else to buy it. The company is now so large, and so powerful,
that congress rolls over to its demands as fast as your local chamber of
commerce, and recently passed legislation that would allow Wal-Mart to offer services
that were formerly reserved only for banks!
Now, with the advent of “customer-tracking policies” that require you to be
identified every time you make a purchase, this behemoth of commerce has
become the eyes and ears of Big Brother, in a country where it is nearly impossible
to do your regular weekly shopping without making at least one stop at a
Wal-mart store!
And, as a Wal-mart employee asked me this morning: “What are you gonna do
about it?” If Wal-mart is necessary to your daily life, as it is for most
Americans today, then there is little you can do. The lower prices will keep you
shopping there even though you know it is hastening the day when you can no longer
move from your own home without being watched by some arm of the government
every moment, because the other stores in town can’t supply your needs as
cheaply.
On the other hand, have you paid attention to Wal-mart’s quality lately? Of
the things that my family has bought from Wal-mart in the past two years, fully
a third of them have been defective or imperfect when purchased. The e
lectronics department has become a standard joke; “The stereo doesn’t work, it musta
come from Wal-mart.”
Where is the Wal-mart that sought out American manufacturers, and made sure
that their products were available in the stores? Where is the Wal-mart that
put its neighbors first? All I can find is the one that caters to illegal aliens
and disregards the will of its customers unless those views are in line with
what Wal-mart envisions for the future, with products made in countries where
what we call a day’s wage buys a week or more of labor from those desperate to
eek out a bare living.
Not surprisingly, several of the corporation’s directors are also connected
to the Council on Foreign Relations. I say not surprisingly since Wal-mart is
now poised to be the “state store” of a socialist state, the very goal of the
CFR, and with its now international marketplace, it is difficult to see how
any such goal can be attained worldwide without Wal-mart’s full and complete
cooperation.
As for the clerk’s question, “What are you gonna do about it?”… I have a
suggestion.
Boycott. Every dollar, in fact every red penny we spend at Wal-mart is now
considered a vote FOR the policies they implement, since spending at Wal-mart
can be easily interpreted as supporting them in their business decisions! Let’s
take our votes elsewhere, and even if it means we pay a bit more, let’s let
Wal-mart and the elected leaders who bow to them know that we are sick of it!
Let’s let them know that we will not be herded like sheep, we will not be
tracked, and we will not have our privacy so invaded that any Wal-mart employee can
look up any detail he wishes to know about you and your private life! Do you
read the Christian books that Wal-mart sells? Or do you go for the cult-films
in the video section? And whose damn business is it if you do?
I don’t have anything against computers, and I know firsthand what a boon
they can be to business… but there is a limit to their usefulness, and when they
become a tool of tyranny, even in the hands of a private business, then that
limit has been reached and passed!
I call now upon every American to let your local Wal-mart know that this has
gone far enough, that when we are subjected to such tracking and privacy
invasions then we are more than willing to forego a few dollars in savings in order
to protect our liberty and privacy
Kathleen
Wal-Mart: a.k.a. Big Brother Walley
By Wayne Hicks
A friend observed today that some of my better articles may well have come
from my temper, as in when I’ve lost it over some example of tyranny. After the
events that inspired this particular rant, I guess she was right. And, while
I've been hearing for years the quiet rumblings about the mega-corp known as
Wal-Mart, I've got to say that. this time, they've just gone too far.
Picture this: Having noticed that the family mini-van has a flat tire, I
calmly jack it up and remove the tire so that I can take it to be repaired, toss
it in the back of DOT (Dad’s Old Truck), and head for the Wal-Mart Tire and
Lube Center to get it plugged. This scenario is reenacted probably five hundred
times a day across the nation, so there’s certainly nothing sinister about it,
right?
Well, this morning I would have agreed with that statement, but not now. You
see, when I got there, and unloaded the tire and carried it to the guy who
would fix it, another fellow came out to me and began asking questions. He asked
for my telephone number, and I gave it to him, understanding that this is how
they track their customers. Then he asked my name, since I was not in their
database. Then he wanted my address, and although I sighed in frustration, I
gave it to him.
Then he asked for the color of my van, and its tag number, and alarm bells
went off in my head. I can think of no reason for Wal-Mart to need that
information, and I said so. The clerk replied that he needed it “for the warranty”,
and that if I did not provide it, then Wal-Mart could not work on my vehicle.
“You’re not working on my vehicle,” I replied, “my vehicle is at home!
You’re plugging a hole in a tire I carried in, why do you need all that
information in order to plug a tire?”
He reiterated that if I did not provide the information then they could not
proceed with repairing the tire, and I agreed. “Then tell the guy to just stop,
and I’ll take it somewhere else! I am NOT going to give you my license number
just to get a tire repaired!” The mechanic stopped what he was doing, and
handed me my tire… now off the rim… and when told why I was refusing to let them
complete the repair, he said, “Well, man, I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“No,” I answered him, “I’m the one who’s sorry that you DON’T feel that
way!”
This was a minor incident, but it brought to a head something that’s been
bothering me for some time now, namely Wal-Mart’s increasing control over the
lives and freedom of its customers. In many ways, the encroachment is even more
insidious than that of our government, since their goal is merely the
restriction of our liberties; Wal-Mart has a much loftier goal, as evidenced by such
things as the scene described above.
Did you know, for instance, that Wal-Mart now averages nearly a billion
dollars a day in sales? That it has put more than a hundred thousand
long-established local stores out of business by undercutting prices until they control the
market?
Did you know that in various cities, Wal-mart is experimenting with new forms
of marketing, and new products never sold in retail stores before?
Let me give you some examples.
In Dallas, Texas, starting soon if not already in progress, Wal-Mart will be
selling new cars of various brands. That’s right, rather than go to the
nearest Ford dealer, you need only drop by your friendly neighborhood Wally World
and pick your new Taurus “off the shelf”. No test drives needed… after all,
they’re all alike and Wal-Mart has that wonderful exchange policy, so if you
don’t like the one you get, no big deal, just come back and exchange it for
another one.
In another large city, each item in the store carries an electronic tag, and
if you’re one of many customers who have registered their Visa or MasterCard
with Wal-Mart and received the little electronic keychain tag or wallet card,
you can simply load up your cart and breeze right on out of the store between
two special upright scanners. Your purchases are automatically totaled, charged
to your card, and stored in their database where government employees of some
alphabet agency can see exactly what you bought and what you paid for it. I’m
told there’s even going to be a self-service bagging station, so you can bag
up your goodies if you like.
And how about those Wal-Mart Gift Cards, the ones you load money onto at the
register and use as gifts? You’ll soon be able to use them just about anywhere
in the world, and even take some of your cash back off of them at most ATM
machines. Since Wal-Mart will cash your paycheck, why not just go completely
cashless and let them credit your pay to your Wal-Mart card? If you need some of
that old fashioned green stuff, you can always drop by the 24 Hour Teller, but
since everything you need can be bought at Wal-mart… what’s the point?
Wal-mart has long been known for coming into a community and ruthlessly
cutting out the local merchants that were already established there, the local
merchants who can’t make billion dollar purchases and get $20 blue jeans for less
than five bucks each! Sam Walton’s dream of having a store that everyone could
shop at has turned into America’s nightmare, as Wal-Mart comes closer to its
goal of being the only place to get what you want or need… because there
won’t be anywhere else to buy it. The company is now so large, and so powerful,
that congress rolls over to its demands as fast as your local chamber of
commerce, and recently passed legislation that would allow Wal-Mart to offer services
that were formerly reserved only for banks!
Now, with the advent of “customer-tracking policies” that require you to be
identified every time you make a purchase, this behemoth of commerce has
become the eyes and ears of Big Brother, in a country where it is nearly impossible
to do your regular weekly shopping without making at least one stop at a
Wal-mart store!
And, as a Wal-mart employee asked me this morning: “What are you gonna do
about it?” If Wal-mart is necessary to your daily life, as it is for most
Americans today, then there is little you can do. The lower prices will keep you
shopping there even though you know it is hastening the day when you can no longer
move from your own home without being watched by some arm of the government
every moment, because the other stores in town can’t supply your needs as
cheaply.
On the other hand, have you paid attention to Wal-mart’s quality lately? Of
the things that my family has bought from Wal-mart in the past two years, fully
a third of them have been defective or imperfect when purchased. The e
lectronics department has become a standard joke; “The stereo doesn’t work, it musta
come from Wal-mart.”
Where is the Wal-mart that sought out American manufacturers, and made sure
that their products were available in the stores? Where is the Wal-mart that
put its neighbors first? All I can find is the one that caters to illegal aliens
and disregards the will of its customers unless those views are in line with
what Wal-mart envisions for the future, with products made in countries where
what we call a day’s wage buys a week or more of labor from those desperate to
eek out a bare living.
Not surprisingly, several of the corporation’s directors are also connected
to the Council on Foreign Relations. I say not surprisingly since Wal-mart is
now poised to be the “state store” of a socialist state, the very goal of the
CFR, and with its now international marketplace, it is difficult to see how
any such goal can be attained worldwide without Wal-mart’s full and complete
cooperation.
As for the clerk’s question, “What are you gonna do about it?”… I have a
suggestion.
Boycott. Every dollar, in fact every red penny we spend at Wal-mart is now
considered a vote FOR the policies they implement, since spending at Wal-mart
can be easily interpreted as supporting them in their business decisions! Let’s
take our votes elsewhere, and even if it means we pay a bit more, let’s let
Wal-mart and the elected leaders who bow to them know that we are sick of it!
Let’s let them know that we will not be herded like sheep, we will not be
tracked, and we will not have our privacy so invaded that any Wal-mart employee can
look up any detail he wishes to know about you and your private life! Do you
read the Christian books that Wal-mart sells? Or do you go for the cult-films
in the video section? And whose damn business is it if you do?
I don’t have anything against computers, and I know firsthand what a boon
they can be to business… but there is a limit to their usefulness, and when they
become a tool of tyranny, even in the hands of a private business, then that
limit has been reached and passed!
I call now upon every American to let your local Wal-mart know that this has
gone far enough, that when we are subjected to such tracking and privacy
invasions then we are more than willing to forego a few dollars in savings in order
to protect our liberty and privacy
:
) roll their eyes when i say anything about walmart but they are evil - 'nuff said.
