{"id":24618,"date":"2017-08-11T16:11:57","date_gmt":"2017-08-11T21:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24618"},"modified":"2017-08-11T16:11:57","modified_gmt":"2017-08-11T21:11:57","slug":"battle-of-the-behemoths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24618","title":{"rendered":"Battle of the Behemoths"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Battle of the Behemoths<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As the empire deliquesces into a fetid slurry of economic failure, we stand ankle deep in the rising swamp waters witnessing the futile battle of the giants, Walmart and Amazon.<\/p>\n

Neil Howe, co-author of The Fourth Turning<\/a><\/em>, wrote this week that \u201c[t]he Amazon-Walmart rivalry will determine the future of retail.\u201d Well, it seems that way, perhaps, and I understand why a lot of people would imagine it, but I would draw some different conclusions. What we\u2019re seeing is more like the battle between Godzilla and King Kong, two freaks of nature produced by a toxic culture, fixing to finish each other off.<\/p>\n

The condition that will flavor events going forward is scale. Everything organized at the giant scale is going to fail. We have made all the systems of daily life too large and they will not function in the long emergency (and<\/em> the fourth turning), an age characterized by universal contraction. This is true of corporations, institutions, schools, hospitals, farms, governments, virtually all organized enterprise. Retail is currently just the most visible example at the moment, since it is a commercial battleground that doesn\u2019t enjoy public subsidies. The organisms on that field are exquisitely sensitive to economic reality, and the salient reality these days is the impoverishment of their customers, the former middle class.<\/p>\n

This has been a sensational year for retail failure so far with a record number of brick-and-mortar store closings. But it is hardly due solely to Internet shopping. The nation was vastly over-stored by big chain operations. Their replication was based on a suicidal business model that demanded constant expansion, and was nourished by a regime of ultra-low interest rates promulgated by the Federal Reserve (and its cheerleaders in the academic econ departments).<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Battle of the Behemoths As the empire deliquesces into a fetid slurry of economic failure, we stand ankle deep in the rising swamp waters witnessing the futile battle of the giants, Walmart and Amazon. Neil Howe, co-author of The Fourth Turning, wrote this week that \u201c[t]he Amazon-Walmart rivalry will determine the future of retail.\u201d Well, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[977,14964,259,449,7681,5350],"class_list":["post-24618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-survival-2","tag-amazon","tag-clusterfuck-nation","tag-empire","tag-james-howard-kunstler","tag-suburbia","tag-walmart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24619,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24618\/revisions\/24619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}