Apples and Oranges Mr. Browne. While industrialization of production is indeed beneficial and needed, industrialization of services is not. There is a good reason the US enacted anti-monopolization laws. Lawmakers at the time, and until recently, percieved a monopoly to be a threat to the welfare of the general public because it can leverage power in a more concentrated and organized way than the public. If Wal-Mart were Wal-Manufacture and were closing out smaller companies I would not be as worried since they are only producing materiel, And as you said, ultimately this was beneficial to society. However, having only one company be the sole provider of goods and services can be disastrous to a community, especially if they can use their reserves to starve out 'mom-and-pops'. Then we are left with only one choice and no recourse. This of course is where Wal-Mart starts to look very much like Microsoft. Isn't the reason many people move to Linux is to not be beholden to only one vendor that acts as the end-all be-all of programming? Otherwise we should just all wipe our hard-disks and install Windows eXtremely Prissy. Having options is always a good thing. -- Samir M. Nassar RedConcepts.NET - We Build Communities -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 232 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20020224/b9d50657/attachment.pgp