Amid reports of increasingly violent and disturbing behavior by shoppers at traditional brick and mortar stores over the holiday weekend, sales statistics indicate more and more consumers eschewing what used to be a joyous and fun-filled tradition of post-turkey shopping for the comfort and simplicity of shopping online. Little wonder. Ominous, long lines of hyped up latte fueled customers desperate for a deal on just about anything make heading for the mall an unsettling prospect to many.
Online retailers, on the other hand, offer an almost infinite selection of goods available at the push of a button, rain or shine. You don’t have to play musical parking place in the mall parking lot and risk a fist fight before you even go inside. Many online retailers offer free shipping so you don’t even have to take off your jammies. These sales are reported to have increased over 25% on Friday and now represent nearly 20% of total sales with the numbers increasing every year. It makes you wonder what will happen if this trend does indeed continue. What would it look like if online sales represented 50% of total sales? Think about how fundamentally that would change life in this consumer based society.
Many small towns have experienced something similar to this already in the “Walmart-ization” that has reduced many small community downtowns to a series of empty store fronts and dusty small businesses struggling desperately to survive. It’s happened in my home town and only after a few years have the residents come to realize that they have paid an extremely steep price for minimum wage jobs with no benefits – downtown is two banks and two bars surrounded by dead and dying businesses and empty lots. But what about bigger towns and cities?
Downtown areas of cities like San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago and New York are unlikely to be impacted – there is too much going on and you can’t get a good meal online – at least not yet. But I think of a city like San Jose, where I lived for 25 years. A typically sprawling California city, San Jose has struggled for many years to try to revitalize its downtown with middling success. Now as it sits nervously in the midst of Silicon Valley, it risks being destroyed by that which it cultivated and is most proud. As much as a doubling of online sales will benefit Pay-Pal and EBay and Apple – local icons and powerhouse employers, it could devastate a downtown populated by old line furniture and shoe stores, boutiques and other small and vulnerable retailers. It already has essentially closed down book and record stores all across the country.
What would it mean to a city to have a hollow core, devoid of any activity, abandoned much like Detroit is today? How would it affect housing and development, taxes, city government, schools and public transit? It could affect cities in profound and fundamental ways not seen since the development of electricity and the steam engine. Is there any reason to think that this won’t happen, at least to some extent? I wonder if anyone in government is thinking about this as they watch the stunningly stupid behavior of the hordes of bargain hunting shoppers.
Would the decline of brick and mortar shopping serve to further isolate us from each other and exacerbate the already fraying fabric of unity that has always served this country well? Now, with politicians seeming eager to emphasize and amplify our divisions and use them to partisan advantage, what will take the place of civilized interactions on bustling streets alive with commerce? Are we going to devolve into a people who go from home to work and back again with time out to go to a mega-church on Sunday, who subsist by texting each other and updating our social media? Will we eventually lose the power of speech? Develop ultra-sensitive and specialized and versatile fingertips, enlarged ear openings to accommodate ever more sophisticated ear buds?
And most importantly, will Al Gore still take the credit?
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