> they killed off all other options

Is it that difficult to imagine the amount of value it created for those communities, too?

Walmart is known as a town killer, Amazon is an industry killer.

The "big town" (8000 residents) near my town (2500 residents) rejected Walmart on these grounds 25 years ago. The town that accepted Walmart has grown tremendously whereas my big town has 14 empty storefronts on the two main streets which is about 25 percent of the walkable storefronts. It's probably a confounding factor more related to my town's resistance to change and growth than the fact that Walmart isn't there but that's my anecdata.

Another anecdote: Walmart moved into our rural town around, IIRC, 1980. The population chart takes a large upturn around that year. It was about 1000 then, and it's over 3000 today. It certainly didn't kill that town. Walmart even moved locations closer to the highway into a bigger store, too.

> Is it that difficult to imagine the amount of value it created for those communities, too?

"Value creation" generally reveals itself through a rightward shift in the distribution of household incomes, increased standards of living, and resilient supply chains. At least that's what Adam Smith had in mind when he wrote "The Wealth of Nations".

If the only "value creation" KPI that ticks up is corporate earnings in offshore tax havens, the system starts to look like a non-governmental tax authority.