But this is Chico, too

I’m not a Wal-Mart hater. When I lived in Lompoc on the Central Coast, I shopped there just about every week. When Wal-Mart opened in Lompoc 10 years ago, it became the biggest store in the city of 35,000 people. Even then, the company had already developed a reputation for decimating small cities’ central business districts, but Lompoc’s downtown had shriveled up long ago, so Wal-Mart took nothing away. In fact, it gave us fewer reasons to have to drive 25 miles to Santa Maria to do some of our shopping.

For different reasons, Chico is like Lompoc. It has little to fear from Wal-Mart. Chico has a strong downtown that has withstood 15 years of big box store invasions as well as the coming of two shopping malls about 20 and 40 years ago. At this point, I doubt if any competition, even from the biggest retailer in the world, could do much damage to it. Just as the coming of Wal-Mart didn’t hurt Lompoc, I don’t think the morphing of the one regular-sized Wal-Mart into two supercenters would hurt Chico.

Those aren’t the problems I have with Wal-Mart. My objections are philosophical. I believe in the free-enterprise system, but that doesn’t mean I think every enterprise should have free rein to do whatever it wants. Our approach to how businesses operate shouldn’t be values-free. Note that I’m using the word “values,” not “value.” Wal-Mart prides itself on giving shoppers great value, but when it comes to ethical standards, it seems to be giving itself a black eye.

I’m reading a book called “The Flat Earth,” by New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. He discusses 10 trends that are accelerating the creation of a worldwide capitalistic economy. One of the trends is what he calls “supply chaining.” He singles out Wal-Mart as an outstanding example of a company that can quickly and efficiently move products from all over the world into its more than 4,000 stores.

“As consumers, we love supply chains, because they deliver us all sorts of goods — from tennis shoes to laptop computers — at lower and lower prices,” Friedman writes. “That is how Wal-Mart became the world’s biggest retailer.”

But Friedman says earning this distinction fostered the growth of a darker side. “Sam Walton bred not only a kind of ruthless quest for efficiency in improving Wal-Mart’s supply chain but also a degree of ruthlessness period. I am talking about everything from Wal-Mart’s recently exposed practice of locking overnight workers into its stores, to its allowing Wal-Mart’s maintenance contractors to use illegal immigrants as janitors, to its role as a defendant in the largest civil-right class-action lawsuit in history ... This is all aside from the fact that some of Wal-Mart’s biggest competitors complain that they have had to cut health-care benefits and create a lower wage tier to compete with Wal-Mart, which pays less and covers less than most big companies.

“One can only hope that all the bad publicity Wal-Mart has received in the last few years will force it to understand that there is a fine line between a hyperefficient global supply chain that is helping people save money and improve their lives and one that has pursued cost cutting and profit margins to such a degree that whatever social benefits it is offering with one hand, it is taking away with the other.”

I think Friedman’s comments are fair. He’s not part of the anti-Wal-Mart rant league. I feel the same way about Wal-Mart. The company needs to face up to the criticisms, take stock and change. I hesitate to even brand Wal-Mart as “the bad guy” of the corporate world. The company may simply be acting like the little guy it once was when it blazed its way through the extremely competitive retail sector. But now that it’s the big guy, it needs to act differently. The biggest retailer in the world needs to champion values as well as value.