Wal-Mart

• "Wal-Mart today is the biggest retail company in the world, and it does not make a single thing. All it makes is a hyperefficient supply chain." Whoa.
• The author makes the analogy of a cheap AND reliable trucking company - cheap and reliable?
• "It is more profitable to incure shortages than overstock." - That's how I would run a business. I don't want to waste money!
• "Products are turned from innovations into commodities faster than ever, competition is coming from all over the globe and is more intense than ever, and consumer demand is more volatile and informed than ever, with fads moving in and out around the globe like lightning bolts." Amazingly true.
• When the author talks about how Wal-Mart tracks everything we buy and knows exactly how to respond to our wants and needs, I'm reminded of "Big Brother" from 1984. Nowhere is safe.
• "I wish that I could say we were brilliant and visionary, [but] it was all born out of necessity." I'm glad he said something, because when I discovered that Wal-Mart was founded in Arkansas, I was like, "Really?" I'm only joking (on some level), but they truly were/are innovators.
• I wish I could have been an investor in Wal-Mart... They're rich now, right?
• Headphones for pallet drivers that play music and give them instructions in whatever voice they so please? So high tech! But these pallet drivers are likely the first versions of cyborgs/subjects of robot overlords.
• I believe that efficient business always sacrifices something else, and since Wal-Mart maximizes its efficiency, what does that mean? Lawsuits.
• Wal-Mart alone is China's 8th biggest trading partner, ahead of other big countries? Mind-boggling.
• To me, offshoring doesn't make sense. Doesn't it cost more money to ship the products from so far away? (I modify this in a later comment.)
• It's weird to think Japan used to be so far behind us technologically. Now when I think of a tech hub, Japan is the only country that comes to mind.
• "quality products at low prices" vs "cheap products at cheap prices" - I can understand how tech products are surprisingly good quality for the money, but they're actually tech products - they involve more work than a couple hours on a sewing machine and can do more neat things than clothe your body. Wal-Mart clothes are definitely cheap products at cheap prices.
  
  
• After having just watched The Walking Dead, the beginning paragraph sounds like a scene from a scary movie.
• Wal-Mart fight scene = The Hunger Games cornucopia scene (in my head)
• Frankly, Black Friday doesn't make sense to me. Why on Earth would someone willingly sacrifice hours of sleep to sit outside a store in the cold, dark hours of the night, only to fight someone tooth and nail to buy yet another gift to throw onto the pile under the tree? Sorry, future child(ren), you are getting one, full-priced item for Christmas.
• I feel so sorry for poor Damour... He was recruited in the very same fashion that Michael Moore pointed out that soldiers are, just to do the job that nobody else wants.
• "For better and for worse, ours is the age of the bargaineer." - EXTREME COUPONING, ANYONE?? - I've heard of several women (mostly from Extreme Couponing) that either quit their jobs or don't pursue a job, simply to cut out coupons and make their shopping cart(s) = $0. They say that couponing itself is a full-time job, and it's their way of helping the family.
• "The glorious thing about the 1990s was that we rarely had to think too hard about where our stuff came from. It just seemed to be there." - I wasn't even old enough to make money in the 90s, but I can still see the difference! Life is different now with money not being so easy, but we don't want to get rid of that precious lifestyle, which then equals debt. I'm close with a family that is practically going bankrupt, but doesn't seem to change any habits in lifestyle, so it's a steady decline to the seemingly-inevitable living-in-a-cardboard-box.
• "That we will experience complete economic recovery and a return to growth in the wake of this latest world recession may be wishful thinking since the decades of easy growth are well behind us." Darn...
  
  
• Chinese people working in factories and sending money to distant homes - I see it in documentaries and read it in books, but it still seems fictional. My mind just can't grasp that so many people in one country can live so meagerly.
• "There is a thin margin of error: too little development, and poverty and hunger dangerously afflict 300 million of china's poorest." - It makes me feel like I need to go and shop at Wal-Mart RIGHT NOW so that these people don't starve, like I am personally responsible for their survival. But then I'm just feeding the cycle...
• THEN I'm just putting more money into China as a country, and they will get closer to being the world's superpower! They wouldn't need our business anymore, and our way of living is compromised.
• Pollution in China - I just read something about a large number of Chinese people dying from cancer, likely caused by all of the pollution.
• After so much protesting about the environment (and so many health issues), shouldn't the authorities wise up and cap emissions?
• "In Hunan's most famous village, authorities did what many other governments have done in a crisis - they built a theme park." LOL
• Domestic production (not offshoring) = higher wages, greenhouse gas credits, and worker safety (Then I guess it sort of makes sense to offshore.)