(I) The Race To The Bottom (continued)
When Walmart enters a rural market, businesses close, jobs disappear, and the town declines, according Godin. This is acceptable because Walmart has low prices for every possible item. Macroecomonic theory is irrelevant to people making a million tiny microeconomic decisions every day in a hypercompetitive world. Those decisions repeatedly favour fast/cheap over slow/expensive. Godin accepts that we cannot halt capitalism through the freezing of prices, and industries, so we need to think differently in order to produce a viable solution for the race to the bottom.
Critique of the Race To The Bottom: If you think, as Godin does, like a marketer, then yes, it might appear to be true that the service industry is collapsing but it is instead becoming more specialized, and developing in unanticipated ways. He should be arguing that increased departmentalization needs to be bridged through better on the job training. Human capital is falling for those who do not invest in teaching themselves how to be productive. Self-taught people generate more value. Godin believes that factories in the service industry have collapsed, he is not entirely correct, as new industries have been born.
(This is a series of posts on Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?)
