For
over 10 years I labored as an account executive, mostly in Ionia but also for
brief periods for radio stations in St. Ignace, Ludington, and Hastings,
Michigan. It was during these years that
I became intimately acquainted with the business conditions and practices on
what is colloquially called “Main Street”.
By Main Street one generally means the old business district in downtown
rural or semi-rural America. Like the
passing “family farm” images of which are used to portray a golden era in this
country with a square-shooting business and no-nonsense work ethic. It is to these traditions that political appeals
are made to convey a sense of well-being as well as a standard of honesty and
integrity.
But,
like so much of what has happened to America in the last half-century, all is
not well in the heartland. Visit any
Main Street today and you are likely as not to be confronted with a declining
and dilapidated old business environment, with boarded up windows. As in the financial sector in which 6 banks
control two thirds of the national economy, so too retail business today has
been swallowed up by a relative handful of regional and national chains. These operations, all too familiar around the
globe, have moved out into the suburbs and exurbs into malls and strip malls
drawing the life-blood out of the old business districts. In fact, they draw the lifeblood out of the
whole town as daily deposits are quickly siphoned off to their national and
international headquarters. Wal-Mart is
an example. Importing most of its goods
from overseas it quickly draws out the money from towns like Ionia leaving
behind only the starvation wages that they pay to their employees.
I’ve
seen the impact of these operations in the old business districts. So devastating have they been that storefront
rental rates, having quickly fallen, attract business start-ups that are all
too often undercapitalized. I’ve seen
people invest their meager savings into small shops and not have a “Grand
Opening” promotion because they couldn’t afford it. If ever there is a time to advertise and
promote your business it is when you are opening the doors for the first time. But funds for this important function were
not foreseen and, therefore, were not budgeted, the merchant instead relying on
“word of mouth” and his sign hanging outside the shop to draw in
customers. All too often by the time
word gets out about this splendid little establishment it is too late. In the meantime the merchant had to drain
whatever his residual resources by way of savings and operating funds to get
through. All too predictably, the
business would shortly fail. After a few
years plying the main streets of Mid-Michigan, I could predict with unnerving
accuracy which of these start-ups would soon go under. The stench of death became all too common.
The
price of real-estate and commercial rentals declines to such a degree as to
entice the would-be entrepreneur to risk his savings, his credit, and his
reputation. He invests all in an
erstwhile effort to establish his own independence and take his place among the
“somebody’s” that have traditionally occupied these places.
But,
alas, it is a cruel hoax.
I’ve seen it
first-hand.
As far back as the mid 1980’s
I began to witness it.
A
new technology emerges, in this case the VHS tape player. Taking advantage of the readily available
vacant storefronts on Main Street, Mom’s and Pop’s across the country opened up
video rental stores, investing thousands of dollars in inventory and staffing
the operation themselves or employing immediate family for these were not large
operations. Soon they were realizing a
modest profit.
There
were 3 such stores in downtown Ionia, but these operations soon got the
attention of the large chain operations.
In this case it was Meijer, Inc., a regional big-box outfit. Meijer introduced its 99 cent video and
quickly ran these operations out of business. Today, some 30 years later,
Meijer is out of this business and no longer handles video rentals having
themselves relinquished the field to Blockbuster and Mammoth, who are
themselves now under siege from the computer-based Netflix. The same thing happened with the dawn of the
internet. Small operators pioneered the
installation and marketing of dial-up internet service only to be elbowed out
of the way by EarthLink, cable and now satellite service companies. And so it goes. Today these shops are once again boarded up
or being leased to a new generation of start-ups who are themselves doomed in
the long run to the avarice of the capitalist pigs. Like the stock market, the small investor is
lured into the market only to be picked clean by the vultures looming overhead
as soon as they demonstrate that the industry is viable.
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