Generally, I'm not a fan of unchecked large-scale capitalism.
It always ends up the same way- one Wal*Mart analog rolling downhill, growing exponentially like an avalanche, crushing everything in its market sector, leaving a smooth, white plain in its wake unbroken save for small bits of Wal*Mart broken off from the main body.
temperamentally, I'm more inclined to the European model which was still a lingering scent in the American air of my youth- many smaller businesses providing the same range of services at slightly higher prices and a loss of centralized convenience. I'm like a negative image of a typical Republican- where they despise the Government and ascribe all goodness to the corporate wing of the private sector, I despise big business and put my trust in the fallible but human hands of my fellow voters.
Given all that, it may come as a surprise that I'm a fan of Costco, the very definition of 'big box' retailer.
What!
How? Why?
Firstly, unlike others of their ilk they pay their employees well. They subvert the usual big box model where all profit siphons up to the corporate level and everyone else is paid slave wages.
Secondly, it is a store utterly without pretense.
You walk in and you're faced with an immense space piled high with palettes of....stuff. They're there to sell you shit, and their only weapon is price. No artfulness, no craft, no misdirection, just a vast field of crap swarming with humanity, like ants crawling over a mammoth picnic table.
It's capitalism stripped to its naked, throbbing core, but a strain of capitalism that doesn't begrudge its workers the basics of a sustainable living. It's refreshing, the kind of retail honesty I can appreciate.
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