For approximately 150 years Sears, Roebuck & Company was a retail giant. It made a fortune by selling quality products at low prices to middle- and lower-class Americans. Its innovative business strategies effectively drove its chief competitor, Montgomery Ward, from the market.

The famous Sears catalog, for the first time, provided rural Americans access to a wide range of new products. (You could even buy houses in kit form.) They were delivered by the newly constructed web of transcontinental and branch rail lines. This revolution effectively broke the monopoly control exerted by local retailers. Sears became one of the most trusted institutions in U.S. history, and at one time was the seventh largest corporation in the world.

The debate over large retail stores like Wal-Mart will be much more productive if we understand that the same forces that made Sears so successful (and that later led to its decline) exist today. Here are some points to consider.

First. Economic and ecologic systems are related. Critics claim that Wal-Mart ruthlessly exterminates the competition, especially local “mom-and-pop” retailers. But email and access to the World Wide Web means local retailers face consumers armed with ever better information about products (e.g., price and quality).

Witness the revolution in car buying. Dealer cost (i.e., the invoice price) used to be difficult or impossible to obtain. Now dealers list the invoice price and compete by offering low-stress, “no-haggle” shopping.

HEB is a 100-year-old supermarket chain with stores in Texas and Mexico. To compete with Wal-Mart, HEB is exploring new consumer niches. One is a concept called the “Central Market.” This offers customers a variety of fresh and daily prepared foods, including an on-site chef who gives tips on preparing meals. By avoiding direct competition with Wal-Mart, HEB has thrived.

Just as predators play a key role in improving the fitness of an ecosystem (e.g., wolves in Yellowstone National Park), Wal-Mart does the same in retail markets. We should be leery about meddling in this evolutionary process.

Second. Free and open markets allow individuals to satisfy their wants without imposing their preferences on others. This process promotes diversity, freedom of choice, and innovation.

Last year Wal-Mart sold nearly $259 billion in goods and became the largest private employer in the U.S. It didn’t do this by selling people things they didn’t want or by forcing workers to accept employment they didn’t desire.

Here’s an important point. By making decisions they thought best, millions of individuals made Wal-Mart successful. The will of the community is better expressed by individuals than by a few elected officials beholden to local special interests.

Third. While businessmen often parade under the banner of the free market, they in fact are frequently its greatest enemy. From automobile import quotas to steel tariffs and condemnations of private land for industrial and commercial parks, business interests use the power of government to circumvent the market process.

Some local coffee shops lobby for protection from Starbucks. They argue for saving the character of their community. But they know that it’s often easier to mobilize a political constituency that will ban their competitors than to face new challenges. The costs are borne by coffee drinkers.

At a recent party, a man told me that government had every right to block Wal-Mart in order to save his definition of the community’s character. It’s fashionable in some circles to believe that the uncultured masses make the wrong decisions and purchase goods they really don’t need. The bumper sticker of this movement proclaims: “Mall-Wart: Your Source for Cheap Plastic Crap.” Must our citizens be protected from their shortsighted fixation on such trivial matters as lower prices, convenience, and selection?

Imagine if the City of Bozeman decided to allow only “fair” competition. What would be the decision rules? Would the city council prohibit the Wilson Street Bookstore because it competes with the Country Bookshelf? Would it levy a tax on Internet purchases?

Beware our “betters” who pretend to know how others should live and work. Their attempts to impose their preferences over the choices of other individuals is neither fair nor democratic.

Ultimately, every community’s future prosperity depends on its ability to adapt to market changes, not oppose them.