return to top page THIS AWFUL PLACE John Seymour The author has written more than 30 books. He farms a smallholding in Ireland and is a regular contributor to these columns.
There was media uproar some time ago when a certain clerk in holy orders of the Anglican communion claimed that it was not a sin to steal from supermarkets. It could be looked on as 'a fair redistribution of wealth', he said. Well, I cannot take advantage of the implied plenary indulgence of the statement because I took a vow some years ago never to enter a supermarket again.
But the controversy brought me into a long but friendly argument with a friend who is a prime exemplar of the 'more is marvellous' and 'big is best' philosophy. I will try, as fairly as I can, to tabulate his side of the argument below.
More is marvellous My replies 1. Supermarkets are more efficient. For what? 2. They create 'jobs'. They destroy them. 3. They have improved the quality of life. They have worsened it. 4. They have improved the quality of our food. They have worsened it. 5. They save labour. See reply to No. 2 6. They have reduced prices. For how long? 7. They improve our towns. They destroy communities. 8. They improve food hygiene. They worsen it. 9. They encourage trade How sad. 10. They are a boon to the poor. They corrupt the poor.
Now I wish to put forward my own arguments on the subject.
Supermarkets can out-compete traditional shops because they employ less labour, and also because they can buy produce more cheaply in bulk and drive much harder bargains with the producers. As they very soon effectively knock out most of the competition they can also drive much harder bargains with their employees. Therefore they can sell produce at a cheaper price than can conventional shops. But consider the hidden costs - the costs that the supermarket doesn't have to pay but the rest of us do. Here are a few:
The dole, or other government financial assistance to people thrown out of work by the supermarkets. They are more labour efficient than shops, therefore they do put people out of work in the long run. They don't have to pay the cost of supporting the people thrown out of work - we do.
The environmental costs of the vast amount of long-distance road transport that they create. Anyone who has driven on Europe's motorways knows that a large proportion of those enormous articulated lorries thundering along either actually belong to supermarket chains or are carrying goods to supermarkets. One thing supermarkets are very bad at is buying locally produced goods; they are really only good at buying in the greatest bulk and that normally means carrying goods long distances.
The cost of treating the increasing number of cases of respiratory diseases caused by the increased road traffic density.
The cost of keeping the network of motorways and highways in repair from the damage caused by traffic generated by supermarkets.
A cost that our orthodox straw-man economist is not even allowed by his discipline to consider: the awful environmental damage to our villages, town centres and cities by the progressive dying-off of their former commercial centres. Another thing that our potential economist could not even dream of considering is the aesthetics of the thing. Have you ever seen a supermarket that is not ugly? If you are a water-colourist or an oil painter, have you ever felt an urge to paint a supermarket? Do you find anything pleasing about a town main street in which many of the shops are empty and boarded up - or else turned into things such as amusement arcades? Come on - be honest!
The vastly increased motor traffic made necessary by the demise of the local shop to which you could easily walk and the faraway super or 'hyper' market to which you have to go by car. This process has only gone so far in Europe: I spent some weeks in a house that somebody kindly leant me near a suburb of San Francisco. The nearest retail outlet of any sort was seven miles away and there was no public transport. You would have actually starved there if you did not have a car. The awful congestion of the traffic in most major cities nowadays is caused more by people travelling to and fro to supermarkets than any other factor.
The evil effects the supermarkets have on producers. Having knocked out all the small-shop competition, the supermarkets quickly get a monopoly and can impose what terms they like on their suppliers. These terms are onerous, and lead to the worst sort of sweated labour and shoddy workmanship.
The quality of goods in supermarkets is not better, it is worse. This may be a matter of personal opinion but it is certainly my opinion. Where do people who value real excellence buy their goods? Supermarkets? Where do very good restaurants buy their raw materials?
Until the supermarkets knock out all effective retail competition their prices will be lower than those of the shops. But when they have knocked it out then they have a monopoly and can (and do) charge what they like. The supermarkets compete against each other? You've got to be joking!
And now we come to what is, for me, the worst thing of all about supermarkets. They syphon wealth out of an area into the big financial centres. if you spend a pound in a local shop the pound stays local, and if you are in business you will probably get it back again, if you spend it in a supermarket it goes into the pocket of some billionaire in some distant city and it will never come back. A supermarket set up in some local community is like a giant pump, sucking wealth out of that community and delivering it far away. It is the most efficient method ever devised for impoverishing local communities. Yes, supermarkets are efficient all right - efficient for that! The giant English supermarket combines are at this very moment engaged in trying to buy up all the Irish supermarkets. If they do this most of the wealth of Ireland will be pumped across the Irish Sea and it will not come back again. What, the English companies will send the money back to buy Irish goods with it? They damned well won't. They will buy their goods from the sweatshops in the Far East, like they do now.
So what can we few - we happy few - who think these supermarkets are evil do to fight them? Well, don't go to them, that is all. This would still be possible in Europe - it is possible, I do it and I am still alive. In the United States, it would not be possible in most places. The process has gone too far. Unless you were self-sufficient in most items (as indeed I am) you would not be able to survive without the supermarkets. There is just no alternative: all the real shops have been destroyed. But in Europe we still have the chance to bring this horrible process to a halt. Let us for God's sake take it. Let us swear an oath and keep it with an equal mind...
There is a sort of slightly less undesirable alternative to the supermarket in some places: the 'shopping precinct' or 'shopping arcade'. Here a lot of shops, nearly all of them branches of chain store companies, are gathered under a huge roof, or several huge roofs. To see one of these at its peak of development you have to go to Milton Keynes. I went there once, to buy a book. I parked in an enormous car park - which must have taken up at least 100 acres of excellent farmland - and entered a huge complex of vast arcades, all hideous in the extreme. I set out to find a bookshop. Nobody working in the place seemed to know anything at all. Eventually, weary and footsore and with my morale in rags, I found a bookshop. It sold only remaindered books, and rubbishy ones at that. So I soldiered on. At length, nearly dropping with anguish and fatigue, I tracked down the only other bookshop in the 'precinct'. It was closed and boarded up.
For some reason those despairing words that the immortal Captain Scott wrote in his diary just before he died in a blizzard in the howling wilderness of the Antarctic welled up in my conscience. 'Great God!' I cried aloud. 'Great God, this is an awful place.' Unlike Captain Scott I got out to tell the tale.First Published in Fourth World Review Nos. 90 & 91(1999)
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