Sounds like you would prefer that the local bike shops should all just shrivel up and die....

Pardon me if I don’t have an MBA and lack the vocabulary to capture the magic of gargantuan retailers and how wonderful they are. Often times LBS’S (local bike shops that is) really have a love of cycling and helping others enjoy this super healthy, dynamic fun hobby is their mission statement. If making large amounts of profit were their singular motivation then they should all just go out of business now. Why delay the inevitable?

You certainly deserve credit “I-Like-To-Bike” for defending the mass merchants and our capitalist way of life here in America. I fear that you are sorely missing the point though. Inferior products sold to a majority of people who are content with them sounds very Orwellian to me...