As Ecclesiastes 3:4 tells us, there is “a time to mourn and a time to dance.” This is as true of matters economic as it is of the lives of our loved ones. The difference being that with the life of a company that time to dance is the very same one as the mourning period — for that a company has died means that we’ve found a new and better way to get its task done for us.
As I write, I don’t know whether Sears is to be bought out of bankruptcy to live again or to be liquidated. There is only today for someone to buy. Without the purchase that’s it, liquidation looms. Either way, sure, we can mourn the passing of an American icon, but we should also celebrate the deeper meaning here. That deeper meaning being that we can celebrate that someone has discovered and implemented a better manner of providing us with the retail services we desire.
Sears, Roebuck & Co. did this itself when it started out. Its mail-order catalog and delivery to nearly anywhere wiped out tens of thousands of what we would now call mom and pop general stores across the land. The reason why being that people preferred to shop from a larger selection at known prices — plus the catalog itself was great reading matter for the smallest room as well as having more technical uses.
Sears thrived because it delivered retail services better than what came before. It did much the same with the transition to the shopping malls post-World War II, riding that wave with aplomb.
But we have to remember that a corporation is only a vehicle for achieving a task. There’s no reason why one should be immortal, and they’re most definitely not, either. If that task no longer needs doing or if someone else in a different company is doing it better, then great, off to the funeral service for our corporation.
Which is what has happened here. Sears isn’t any worse at retailing than it was 10 or 20 years ago, and it’s most certainly better than it was 40 years ago. It’s just that around it others have become even better, even faster. We no longer desire our retail services under this banner nor through this corporation because we can get what we desire elsewhere, in a more preferable fashion. So, off to the abattoir with the old corporation then, boil it down for glue.
Sure, as the Good Book says, we can mourn and perhaps we should for the passing of an era. But to dance is the more appropriate response overall. For the demise of this storied retailer of old is proof perfect that we now have better options. We’re richer, the world is better, because retail is now more efficient, more enjoyable, than the old ways of doing things. That is a reason to celebrate, to dance, isn’t it?
We might also note that we have an economic system that organizes this for us, which is in fact self-regulating. If other retail outlets had not become better than Sears, according to whatever measure of better would make us spend our money, then Sears would still be trading strongly. That she isn’t is all the proof we need that others are indeed better and that we no longer need this corpse. Bankruptcy is the system self-regulating; if we still wanted her, then the liquidation wouldn’t be imminent. That it is shows that we don’t want or need. No actual decision was needed other than that we, individually, change our shopping habits according to our own desires and evaluations of what is on offer. It’s exactly us doing as we wish that gets rid of what we no longer desire.
Sure, a little bit of history gets flushed down the pan here. But only because we’ve already invented the new thing that we all enjoy more, it being our greater enjoyment that is speeding Sears off the stage. It’s an excellent system overall, even if Eddie Lampert might not be so keen in detail right now.
Tim Worstall (@worstall) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. You can read all his pieces at the Continental Telegraph.
