At least as a shopper my feelings about Walmart are pretty mixed.

That time I needed a game camera immediately and AMZN said 5 days I got it at 7am the next day at Walmart. Most of the bread at the bakery is that awful stuff people accuse of being “ultra-processed food” but they have something like the Vollkornbrot you see in German Bäckerei that is 100% honest and delicious to my taste. The pharmacist there is a real eager beaver who never fails to tell me something I didn’t know about a medicine I take and that’s not easy. On the other hand I ride the bus with someone who used to work there who says it was a shit place to work.

Walmart didn’t have a representative sitting behind Trump at his inauguration and even if it’s evil it’s better to have two evil competitors than one evil monopoly.

I have my own grievances with Amazon, not least that 2 day shipping became 5 day shipping without warning during the pandemic although I know they had infrastructure in my area because for years I saw their delivery van going around on Sunday. I felt it was really unfair because if I have to wait 5 days for something to arrive I am inclined to go get it at Target or another store in town if I can.

Since then I’ve taken them up on offers of a free month of Prime or a week for $2 which is attractive if it gets me free shipping on a purchase. Now I get the same service as everyone else but if they wanted to be a loyal customer hey should have treated me as if they wanted to impress me as an earlier.

Notably Walmart has a + service which is a little cheaper than Prime but doesn’t have the video and other benefits that I’m indifferent too. I agree with the direction of that guy’s critiques of Amazon but not the magnitude but I’m a strange case in that I’m an amateur political scientist who works as a software dev with real political scientists that I have to be deferential to.