the long emergency

On my way to Pittsburgh yesterday I began reading The Long Emergency. The book presents an alarming view of the future as diminishing fossil fuel resources will cause global economic catastrophes. The impact on the U.S. will be profound, largely because of the misguided infrastructure investment in suburbia, an unsustainable lifestyle in the absence of cheap oil.

And while some of the arguments are flawed, I found this passage salient (emphasis added):

...[C]onditions over the past two decades made possible the consolidation of retail trade by a handful of predatory, opportunistic corporations, of which Wal-Mart is arguable the epitome. That this development was uniformly greeted as a public good by the vast majority of Americans, at the same time that thier local economies were being destroyed -- and with them, myriad social and civic benefits -- is one of the greater enigmas of recent social history. In effect, Americans threw away their communities in order to save a few dollars on hair dryers and plastic food storage tubs, never stopping to reflect on what they were destroying.