When you could buy a Monkey from the Sears mail-order catalog

[HaroldHill]

Remember: KING KONG Died for your Sins

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[Otherbrother]

@VeronicaConnor

Maybe this is fauxstalgia talking, but they seemed less evil than the Amazon we ended up with.

I’m not sure that they were any more or less evil than Amazon. For a long time they dominated catalog and retail sales in a way that made it very difficult for smaller, independent local stores to compete, much like Amazon does today. And they certainly weren’t a friend to the workers. Per Smithsonian Magazine:

There is a tendency to look at Sears’s decline, and the potential loss of a grand icon of American business, with fond nostalgia. But Sears embodied many of the uglier aspects of American capitalism, too. Many times, the firm’s management pushed back against forces that benefited workers. Sears tried to undermine organized labor, successfully resisting it even though several other traditional flagship department stores had unionized by the 1940s and 1950s. Company leaders resisted 20th-century progressive social movements that sought economic equality for African Americans and women. Like other department stores, Sears contributed both to structural and daily acts of racism, against customers and workers. African-American boycotts against Sears in the 1930s, for example, exposed racist hiring practices; in the late 1960s, welfare-rights activists revealed the firm’s discriminatory credit policies. Gender inequality was deeply entrenched in its work structure—and challenged, prominently and unsuccessfully, in the famous 1986 “Sears case,” which emerged from an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint concerning discrimination against women, who had been passed over for lucrative commissioned sales jobs in traditionally-male departments.

Maybe there’s some exception to the rule that I can’t think of at the moment, but I don’t think that any mega-corporation is worthy of our admiration and respect.

[Brainspore]

@VeronicaConnor

Maybe this is fauxstalgia talking, but they seemed less evil than the Amazon we ended up with.

Both put countless independent stores out of business. One was just more successful than the other.

“I like the Walrus best,” said Alice: “because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters.”

“He ate more than the Carpenter, though,” said Tweedledee. “You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn’t count how many he took: contrariwise.”

“That was mean!” Alice said indignantly. “Then I like the Carpenter best–if he didn’t eat so many as the Walrus.”

“But he ate as many as he could get,” said Tweedledum.

This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, “Well! They were both very unpleasant characters–