[Levin]

The story is that a place like Wal-Mart encourages our unsupportable consumption by making everything so cheap and cheaply. Their toasters last one year, their lamps two. They're also a product of the suburbs, absolutely car-dependent, gobbler of land, terrible for town planning centered on quality of life. They're impersonal and soul crushing; physically depressing atmospheres. Wal-Mart has single-handedly bankrolled the rise of China, whose citizens are paying the environmental price.

If we consider the following values worth supporting, Wal-Mart does not: sustainability; quality; community; personableness; human connection; sensitive built environment . . . But, in return for the sacrifice of those values, we do receive cheap diapers, laundry detergent, and bath towels. For many, the trade is surely worth it.