The closest Wal-Mart from our little shack is about 30 minutes from here, tucked away on an obscure road but not so hidden that the parking lot is empty. Whatever it is that Wal-Mart sells, a lot of people seem to want it.

When last I looked, store owners were in business to serve the public. If they do a lousy job, they close. If they do a great job, owners make money, more stores are created and more folks are hired. Free markets are like that.

Judging from the numbers, Wal-Mart is plainly offering something in demand, otherwise it would not have thousands of stores nationwide.

No one seemed to find Wal-Mart either threatening or objectionable when it was largely located in rural areas and small communities. But now Wal-Mart is moving closer to big metro areas -- or metro areas are growing out to the once-rural areas long served by Wal-Mart. One result is an effort to hobble Wal-Mart through zoning.

In my county the idea is to pass a zoning ordinance which would effectively make it impossible for a Wal-Mart supercenter -- a Wal-Mart with a supermarket built in -- to exist. Any store with 120,000 square feet of which at least 10 percent was used to sell food would be effectively banned. In practice, this is a law aimed at one company: Wal-Mart.

The public reason for this zoning effort is "traffic," as if other "big box" stores, local shopping centers, high schools, industrial parks or major religious congregations are only accessed by hordes of people on foot.

The real reason concerns worries by local supermarkets and their unions that they cannot compete with Wal-Mart, that price-competition with non-union shops is a loser.

Zoning rules and "smart growth" are supposed to help communities establish practical growth patterns that would reduce traffic and other worries. But what's really happened is that zoning has evolved into a form of political charity, a way for local politicians to gain support by distorting the marketplace.

It may be that the public will not find Wal-Mart too enticing around here. Or it may happen that folks will flock to a supercenter Wal-Mart, were one to open. But we'll never know the answer because the public is not being given a choice. Instead, zoning is being used to stifle competition.

Unions and rival supermarkets argue that Wal-Mart pays too little to employees. Alternatively, to preserve profits, supermarkets want to cut employee benefits and pay lower wage rates for new workers. In effect, we have one generation of workers battling another and two pay scales for the same jobs.

The case against Wal-Mart would be a lot more impressive if the owners of one local supermarket chain had not overstated profits by $1.1 billion. That money could have gone to new and better stores, more worker benefits, higher wages -- and even lower prices. Instead, the company laid off local workers.

Moreover, we seem to have a lot of high-cost "fresh" and "natural" food stores popping up. Money, to those who shop in such stores, is less of an issue than quality -- and I understand that jobs in such stores pay fairly well.

But for those to whom money is an issue, a supersized Wal-Mart might be a great benefit. When last I looked, these shoppers vote and one hopes they will look at local zoning trends when elections are next scheduled.

Whether to have or not have a Wal-Mart should be a business decision for Wal-Mart. If you or I don't like Wal-Mart, its products or its policies, we don't have to shop there. The problem is, local lawmakers believe it's just dandy to limit our choices and think for us, at least to the extent of their abilities.

It would be very useful if the local anti-Wal-Mart zoning rule passes -- and local politicians pay the legal bills for defending it directly from their salaries. If such legislation is so much in the public interest I'm sure no politician would mind....

For more articles by Peter G. Miller, please press here.

Published: June 22, 2004

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