Big Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses
By Stacy Mitchell
Beacon, 620 pages, $25.95

What delights can be found in this recent anti-Wal-Mart & Co. book? Lots of statistics and boring number-crunching? Check! Insomnia-curing detail about the rise and fall of the Greater Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, the (formerly) monopolistic behemoth behind A&P? Check! A blurb by faux-hick lefty Jim Hightower? Check again!

Stacy Mitchell’s Big-Box Swindle could have been much worse. She wisely steers clear of some of the more strident, hysterical rantings of many of her similarly minded compatriots. Of course, simply being better than it could have been does not actually make the book particularly good.

Most of her complaints are old hat by now. We’ve all heard that big-box retailers don’t necessarily pay really high wages, which is probably true since big-box employees don’t necessarily have really high skill levels. We all know that big American stores are opening around the globe, which is supposedly a bad thing, though it is unclear as to why anyone would want to deprive the average European consumer of the bewildering experience of shopping at a Best Buy if he so chooses. And we all know that mega-retailers are only concerned with the bottom line.

Wait, you didn’t know that last one? You thought corporations are big charitable organizations dedicated only to the enrichment of the common man? Stacy Mitchell will set you straight. Writing of Wal-Mart, she notes “the chains’ allegiance is not to shoppers, but to stockholders.” Their “primary enterprise” is “hitting growth and profit projections.” Shocking! Seriously, why is she so indignant about this? Perhaps she has never read Milton Friedman.

Some of Mitchell’s criticisms are a rather offbeat. She takes big retailers to task for prosecuting shoplifters, as opposed to just letting them off with a warning like some mythic shopkeeper running a Five-and-Dime in Mayberry might do. Heaven forbid someone may want to actually prosecute criminals! Even stranger, she uses data and arguments too dull to review here to find a way to blame the big-boxes for the death of daily newspapers. Others would probably more logically blame the Web or cable news, as well as the general mediocrity of most papers.

Though Wal-Mart is the big villain of her book, it seems for Mitchell that any large, successful company providing goods and services to the public is fair game. Some of her targets, such as Home Depot or Costco, are fairly obvious. Others, including Starbucks and McDonald's, really stretch the definition of “big-box.” They are probably only attacked because they are, well, large and successful and supposedly pose a threat to local businesses. (Of course, a restaurant that can’t make a better hamburger than McDonald’s deserves no sympathy.) Other curious targets of Mitchell’s ire include Swedish furniture store IKEA, which, with only 28 American stores, doesn’t really appear to be much of an unstoppable juggernaught. And how exactly are Internet-only firms Amazon and Netflix considered big-boxes? After all, the idea of a big-box would implies the existence of an actual, physical entity of some sort.

One area in which Mitchell may actually be on to something is when she discusses the huge subsidies large retailers often receive from local governments. Just as fantastically rich sports teams often receive gobs of public money to build stadiums and arenas, even richer corporations are given all sorts of incentives and subsidies to built stores in various locales. For instance, city officials in Brookings, South Dakota gave Lowe’s nearly $3 million in public subsidies to build a store in their town. Eighty-four of Wal-Mart’s 91 distribution centers received government subsidies, many of which were over $10 million. Usually these handouts are given in the hopes of increasing tax revenue or in the name of “urban renewal.” Yet as long as these companies are in any way on the public dole, it is very hard for a believer in free markets to wholeheartedly defend them as exemplars of capitalist success.

It’s also easy to be a bit sympathetic to Mitchell’s arguments regarding small, local businesses, especially when considering that these independent operators receive nowhere near the government support of the big boys. A community without its own unique shops and restaurants is indeed a drearier place. However, not all independent businesses are doomed when a mega-retailer moves in. Some carve out their own niche and thrive. Think of the video store specializing in classic or foreign films (as opposed to Blockbuster dreck) or the bookstore stocked with out-of-print obscurities. These little operations often do just fine for themselves, and would probably fare even better in a truly level playing field in which the local government wasn’t playing economic patron to big corporations with public money.

Mitchell concludes her book with recommendations on how to fight the big-boxes and help independent businesses. The latter is commendable, the former less so. The government actions she recommends against large retailers--size limits, antitrust actions, special taxes, outright bans--are just as bad and anti-free market as the government actions taken to assist these same companies in the past. It is not the state’s job to help or hobble businesses. When considering Mitchell’s thoughts on how small businesses can form co-ops, launch “Buy Local” ad campaigns, and otherwise band together to fight for the consumers dollar, there is little to argue with. Local businesses can and have held their own against the Wal-Marts and Best Buys of the world, and if the nation’s mayors, city councilmen, and other meddlers can learn to stop playing Daddy Warbucks to their favorite companies, they will continue to hold their own in the future.

Brandon Bosworth is Director of Publications at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. A condensed version of this review appeared on www.American.com.