Why do people hate Wal-Mart?

[SneakerPimp53]

I asked you to leave me out of this.

If you can't respect me and my words then you could at least have the decency to say nothing.

We're discussion your opinions, not objective facts. It's necessary to address those opinions and who they belong to, and I'm still waiting for an example of a product that was replaced by something inferior for "centuries" only to have the original be brought back.

They are not reacting to "progress". They don't even see it as progress. They see it as a step backwards.

Some people feel that way about the civil rights movement, can't please everyone after all. A person is always free to vote with his or her feet, but obviously they don't feel strongly enough to stop attending major league sporting events. So once again we arrive at the reality it's just nostalgia.

The "negatives" are either part of the atmosphere or irrelevant to the atmosphere. No "sanitizing" needed.

The original Yankee Stadium may have been falling apart and smelling like sewage, but it will only be remembered for the aura and lore of "The House That Ruth Built". Buildings falling apart and smelling like sewage is reality in the urban landscape, not a defining feature of particular structures. The only time that it is a defining feature is when a building was poorly designed and/or poorly built.

Until some critical part of the structure gives way and thousands of people are killed or injured. How many lives are worth the cost of preserving old buildings for the sake of it?
Everything under the sun ages, and there comes a point where it needs to be replaced. Doesn't matter how well built it was.

The wind at Candlestick Park was a "negative". But I think that most people will tell you that that was part of the atmosphere and they would not have changed it.

I know legions of people from the Bay area that didn't go to games at the Stick because of the wind, myself included. The original was a terrible venue for all sorts of reasons. Actually, I can't think of a single way the Stick was better than its replacement.

It had very little to do with the condition, size or amenities of "the stadiums being replaced". It was to accommodate football. If the NFL did not grow in popularity and seek expansion, and if cities did not want to keep or attain a piece of the NFL pie, the "stadiums being replaced" probably would not have been replaced. That's the defining feature of the cookie cutters: they were "multi-purpose" stadiums.

If you actually look the number of seats was increased by a fair amount during this period. Sure, they wanted to meet the new demand for football. In an efficient and capitalist way: multi-purpose stadiums.

Baseball purists got sick of stadiums that accommodated football at the expense of the traditional ballpark experience. And unlike, say, Lambeau Field, they were forgettable as football venues. Therefore, the third generation of stadiums has mostly been separate baseball-only and football-only stadiums with the design of the baseball stadiums trying to bring back the traditional ballpark.

Considering how quickly the NFL replaced MLB as the number one entertainment sports league in the US they were wise to want to accommodate football. I'm sure there were baseball minorities that were upset, but the reality there is it had nothing to do with stadiums and everything to do with baseball loosing it's prime position to football. The new multi-purpose stadiums just became a symbolic outgrowth that baseball's heyday was at an end. So once again, we arrive at the reality that the issue is nostalgia.
It's a combination of factors: some of it is the multi-purposes weren't great for football or baseball, and a good chunk of it is the cash rich NFL wants (and can demand) venues that are football specific.

The third generation of stadiums, with some exceptions, have not resulted in more seats for the average fan. When franchises like the Cincinnati Bengals threatened to move if they did not get a new stadium they weren't saying, "We need more seats". Seats for the general public is not where the money is to be made. What they were saying was, "We need luxury suites to lease to people and businesses".

There is a lot of money to be made in the boxes, and when a stadium doesn't have any boxes, or too few, it puts the team at a competitive disadvantage. Of course the general seating has also grown as well, Jerry Jones' new baby is the direction that new stadiums will head. But there's far more to it than that. The experience the fan expects is radically different. When I was a kid you could get hot dogs, those terrible nachos with the fake cheese, and maybe some kind of crappy microwave pizza. New stadiums are set up to offer fans numerous concessions choices of quality products. Older stadiums simply don't have the facilities to accommodate this demand.

Better seats? Here is what Wikipedia tells us: "Some have commented that the rise of the luxury box, along with club seating, has degraded the game-day experience for the average fan, because placement of the boxes has moved the upper decks higher and farther away from the playing surface."

Poor concessions choices? Well, traditionally a day at the ballpark means a hot dog and a beer. I was listening yesterday on ESPN radio to discussions about the poor attendance figures from the first week of Major League Baseball. One of those discussions went into detail about the stadium experience in the newer stadiums. What did people bring up? Hot dogs and beer. Same choices as before. The problem now is, if you listen to people analyze it, that hot dog and beer is now priced so high that a day at the ballpark is no longer affordable for families.

However, there are more seats in the nosebleed sections now. Even those it is wikipedia I don't doubt for a second that the cheap seats are a little further away from the field now to accommodate the luxury boxes. But if the teams can't make money from the luxury boxes those costs will be passed on to the general seating. So would you rather have the luxury boxes and cheap seats still available, or just have absolutely no affordable seating?

Traditionally it was a poor quality hot dog and a cheap beer. Fans today want more options than that, and it requires facilities set up to provide that. MLB attendance has been in decline for awhile now. The fact we're in the middle of a global recession that has left people a lot less entertainment money isn't helping. Stadium concessions are a huge profit center, and were always overpriced. Just the reality of what happens when you have a captive market. People just notice the high prices more now because of the recession. It's a little easier to splurge on overpriced hot dogs when you aren't paying for them with unemployment insurance.

I asked you to leave me out of this.

This is what happens when people don't listen.

You said that people are being "nostalgic". I made the case that they are not being nostalgic. And what is your response? Something about me getting "all bent out of shape".

I would love to have a productive conversation and learn from everybody, but you are not cooperating.

Then stop presenting your personal opinions as facts.

Again, this "big enough to meet seating demands" business is a myth.

And even if "modern amenities" are what people want it does not necessarily mean giving up a special place. Soldier Field was falling apart, unsafe and probably lacking a lot of "modern amenities". So the people of Chicago demolished it and built a new stadium out in the suburbs, right? No, they rebuilt it--for the second time in its history.

No it's not.

I hate to break it to you, but when you tear something down and rebuild it, it stops being whatever it used to be just the same. It's now just another new stadium because the new Solider Field isn't a recreation of the previous incarnations. It's just a new stadium that happens to be built on the site of a former stadium. Which if that works for the people of Chicago then great for them. That doesn't work for every city. Holding on to outmoded structures for the sake of nostalgia is pointless and counter-productive.

Believe it or not, people know the difference between a stadium that is unsafe and outdated and a stadium that does not serve the interests of people other than the average fan.

Therefore, when something special is hastily, carelessly destroyed and replaced with something with other than the average fan's interests in mind, people don't like having their intelligence insulted.

Building a stadium that costs hundreds of millions, or even a billion like Jerry Jones' new beast, is hardily a hastily made decision. Far more often than not stadiums are in need of replacement years, if not decades, before they are actually replaced. The interests of the average fan have to be balanced with the interests of everyone else, that's just the way the world works. The average fan has two choices: see the benefits of a new stadium for the team/city/region, or choose to be overly nostalgic and view the whole thing as a big middle finger.

I don't know if the same thing is going on when people talk about losing their neighborhood hardware store to Wal-Mart, but when people talk about "missing the old ones" they are talking about what we have lost. They are talking about how much we lost when something special was destroyed and the net loss we are left with after we get not-so-special replacements.

If you think that people are being "nostalgic" then you are not talking about the same people that I am talking about.

They didn't loose the neighborhood hardware store to Wal-Mart's three aisles of hardware. They lost it to the Home Depot and the Lowes' of the world that they chose to shop at freely (as a funny side note Lowes' started out as a neighborhood hardware store). They choose to shop there after the local hardware store didn't have what they needed, or was 20 percent more expensive on the same items. Then when it's gone, and only after it's gone, do people start waxing nostalgic and remembering going down there and getting supplies for their treehouses when they were 10. In doing so they automatically forget all the reasons they started shopping at the Home Depot instead of the neighborhood hardware store.
I fail to see what is lost when a business model is replaced by a model that meets the same needs in a better fashion. Viewed objectively that's all that is taking place: the better big box model is replacing small local independent stores that operate inefficiently. It's only an issue because people have nostalgic memories tied up in some of the stores that are closing. Change is just a part of life, one that we all must learn to embrace.

 

[Amber.ly]

I don't hate Wal-Mart. But neither is it my favorite place to shop.

I probably don't hate it because:
A.) I really don't care about small businesses going down over them. Wally's had cheaper prices, more variety and everything in one place. Family grocers could not compete with that.
B.) Unethical practices are found everywhere. From your home to your church to your job to your school to your government. Why single out one single unethical player to hate on? If you're gonna hate, hate and slam it all. Not pick and choose the one with the most media coverage
C.) The jobs lost to go to China? If Wal-Mart never existed, where would the hundreds of thousands of employees who work there be now?

I admit to being not as informed as I could be but Wal-Mart never seemed like a super evil to me.

 

[MacFall]

You're right; it's not super evil. It's par for the course, as you say. Which is why I think the course needs a major overhaul.