Mr. Walton’s Greater Wal*Mart Town
The new local Wal*Mart Superstore is the size of a medium-small town. Really, I’m used to the whole big-box store thing, but this is ridiculous; I’ve taken to referring to it as Wal*Mart Town. Makes me think about Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong from Neal Stephenson’s (excellent) Snow Crash — the huge chain of convenience stores that form their own distributed but sovereign nation, with each franchise defended by a cyborg dog. Wal*Marts can become their own city-states, with their own laws (No labor unions! No minimum wage laws! No using Mastercard as a credit card! No gender equality!), linked together into the massive sovereign Wal*Mart Nation.
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