They use their power as a large customer to get the best deals, which they then provide to their own customers.

I've been working with a significant WalMart supplier for the past 5 years or so, on and off. WM is relentless in pursuing lower costs. And have been quite innovative in achieving those savings, including pushing their suppliers to improve.

lol I'm not a small business owner (yet). As you know, I work for Wal-Mart. :)

They also use the Japanese tactic of taking a loss at one location to drive competition away, which they can survive because of the income from their thousands of other locations.

"I assumed you would have issues with Walmart."

I certainly do... ahem. :)

My father used to tell me about something his grade school teacher said in the 30s. This is from ancient memory, so bear with me...

He said his teacher got up in front of the class to address the issue of standard-of-living differences between whites and blacks. Why, I have no idea.

The movie "Knight and Day" reminded me of what she did next. In that movie, Tom Cruise holds his hand at head level to Cameron Diaz and says, "your odds of survival with me", then lowers it to knee level and says, "without me".

The teacher held her hand up high and said, "we're up here". Then she held her other hand down low and said, "And they're down here". Then she said, "you can't (or "you can't easily") bring them up to here (she raised the lower hand level with the upper hand), but you can lower us down to there (she then dropped both hands).

It's always been easier to destroy a high level of prosperity among a subset of people, than to "redistribute" prosperity to the whole set.

The high level of prosperity among the subset acts as incentive for free people to join that subset; government can only create artificial barriers that affect some and not others. If, on the other hand, you let the free market decide, the level of prosperity of most will increase, more will join the higher and higher subsets, and justice will prevail (in that you can earn your way to the maximum level of prosperity your physical, mental, and emotional makeup allow). Think of it as evolution in action.

"
"Now," he went on. drawing on his cigar, "out here,
you've got problems from the bottom up, instead. Y'all
understand, you've got an unusual rulin' class here. A
full third of the population, and visible. Then the CD
sends you Earth's barbarians. And what do you do? You
give them a chance. You give them no excuses. None.
You make it plain, their failures are their own fault, and
you rub it in by making the rewards of success visible
and believable.

"That worked fine so long as you didn't get over-
whelmed. Lots of them made good, you've achieved a
remarkable and admirable social mobility. But a lot
just don't make good. Too many generations of failure,
too long away from even suspecting what citizenship
is. They see you as rich slavemasters, and they get told
all they got to do is take what's coming to them. Okay,
you can handle that if you don't lose your nerve, but
nobody ever said it was going to be easy."
"
- Pournelle, Stirling, "Prince of Sparta"

I have never understood the victim mentality. I may be a failure, but at least I admit my failure; I don't pretend I'm a victim of some innocent bystanders' nonexistent malice, thus inflating my importance and denigrating their characters.