Bigger Is Not Better: down with efficiency.

Banks too big to fail. Corporations too big to fail. People too big to be healthy.

We have the idea is this country that bigger is better; if some is good a lot is better; we giant sized food, drink and ourselves. Being a rather small person myself, perhaps it helps me have a different perspective. Such as perhaps smaller is better and inefficiency might be beneficial to society.

Take Wal-Mart for example. They’re big, very big. They are efficient in that they can buy in big quantities and demand lower prices so they can undercut the prices of other stores. The big doesn’t not carry over to employee salaries, which are small, but the Walton’s have big, really big bucks.

Suppose you didn’t have a big Wal-Mart in your town or even didn’t allow them to have a store there. Then smaller stores would have to sell the things they sell probably at higher prices. But there would be more small businesses and likely more employees, which would spread more money around so folk would buy more and the middle class would gain ground again as it did before big big stores became the norm.

Now I’m an old dude on a fixed income, so the low prices work to my benefit in making my limited dollars go further. And while I’m not a purist, I try not to buy at Wal-Mart and other such big stores, which I think make our economy worse rather than better.

Then these big stores go to the local government and demand tax breaks so they will condescend to put up a store in their town. And local governments go for it despite the fact it hurts their local stores.

Take a look at the supposedly upturn in jobs. Sounds like good news, but most of these are lower paying jobs at places like Wal-Mart and the middle class is a paycheck away from disaster. Bad economics. Efficiency too often lack basic morality.

Gee, ever think if Jesus had recruited more than a dozen apostles? Would it have changed his message any or made them more efficient?