Wal-Mart is making headlines again in the ever-present struggle between the "small, mom & pop retailer" and the "monopolistic, price-slashing juggernaut." Only this time, Wal-Mart is playing the part of "Mom" (or Pop.)
This has got to be a square on my "Apocalypse Bingo" card.
Thrust back into the popular conversation thanks to recent Tweets by our Twitterer-In-Chief, Wal-Mart is showing they, too, can adapt to a changing culture wherein the prevailing strategy is to find a way to claim a grievance of some kind and ride it all the way to the victim Olympics.
I can't argue with his main point, to be honest. If the Post Office loses money serving Amazon, they should charge more. They should probably be charging more across the board, anyway.
However, never one to let a crisis go to waste, former CEO of Wal-Mart US Bill Simon took the opportunity to pile on when he appeared on CNBC recently, with objections to Amazon's business plan including "They're not making money in retail, and they're putting retailers out of business..." Oddly enough, one's competitors operating at a loss (in a fundamentally unsustainable business strategy) is not one of the corporate world's more frequent complaints.
Bill went on to lament the practice of undercutting competitors as "anti-competitive, predatory, and destroying value." He may be right on that final item, but it's the shareholder's (of Amazon) value to destroy, I suppose.
Bill better be careful what he wishes for, because if profit is suddenly a requirement for corporate value, Tesla is going to have some 'splaining to do. After all, profit is the only reason we let the Leviathan he once helmed operate at all.
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Sources: Google, CNBC, ZH, Twitter
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