A few years back, Blockbuster bought Wherehouse Music, a chain of music and video retail stores. Using the Wherehouse's storefronts and supply network, a sizable chain of Blockbuster Music stores materialized almost overnight. The Blockbuster folks hoped to reign over the world of popular music just as they supposedly rule the realm of video and game rentals.

Funny thing happened, though. Blockbuster became so successful and the brand name so widespread that a backlash set in. People began consciously avoiding the Blockbuster brand. Recently, all Blockbuster Music stores began changing their names to Wherehouse Music. Yes, the name discarded (but still owned by) the Blockbuster folks has been taken out of retirement in hopes of enticing wayward customers back to the fold.

A brilliant strategy. Perhaps the next move would be to buy some obscure video chain and change the name of the video stores as well. Might work. Who knows?

I myself don't care. I almost always shop indie record stores (they're the only ones with a decent used selection, and they also carry the stuff I like), and I haven't been in a Blockbuster video store in at least a year. And even then, it was my store of last resort, as the chain stocks very few foreign and obscure videos.

Here in Durham we have a local chain called Visart Video. There are five or six stores in the area. The location I regularly patronize has an entire shelf (some 30 tapes) devoted to Estonian documentaries. There's an Eritrean movie section. I didn't even know there were Eritrean movies.

Blockbuster has planted a store near every Visart Video. But Visart always has many more people in the store and does a much better business, for one simple reason: they offer a vastly superior selection at much cheaper prices. The Blockbuster backlash doesn't hurt, either.

I keep hearing all these horror stories about the Wal-Martization of the world, about the Microsoft hegemony, etc. Many times friends of mine would go off on Blockbuster, generally complaining about the chain's policy of requesting special edits of movies. Some said that movie studios dumbed down theater releases just so they would be more palatable to Blockbuster. I listened to these sometimes valid complaints, but I didn't worry much.

Because if too many movies were altered, if Blockbuster kept trying to be all things to all people, eventually it would fail. As it apparently has, at least in the music business.

So many times in the past, I've heard the whining. IBM is gonna take over the world. McDonald's is going to take over the world. Recently, everyone from Greenpeace to the Southern Baptists claims that Disney is going to take over the world. That might be true if we lived in a static society. But things change. And behemoths always come tumbling down in the long run.

Take Pan Am. For a period of time (more years than I've been alive), Pan Am was the dominant airline in the world. Then a combination of bad business practices, deregulation and the Lockerbie bombing combined to put the company into bankruptcy.

Another example, perhaps. How about Kresge? Remember Kresge stores? TG&Y? Skaggs? Woolworth's? Alco? All those five-and-dimes and discount stores are either gone or barely hanging on. Wal-Mart (and to a lesser extent, the Kresge version--K-Mart) beat them out. Will Wal-Mart reign forever? No, because someone will build a better store, one that is able to adapt to future times better than the Wal-Mart model.

Same goes for Borders and Barnes and Noble. Amazon.com is already making a dent in their numbers (by losing money hand-over-fist, but predatory pricing is a time-honored capitalist tradition), and there are plenty of other booksellers out there as well. It does look bad for the indies, but it always has. I remember when my parents owned a bookstore. They complained about Crown Books back in the 1980s. Know where Crown Books is today? Bankruptcy, of course.

Someone is always out to kill the king. Will Microsoft rule the next century? Of course not. Some innovation in the computer industry will make PC operating systems (or the way they're used today) obsolete. And whoever masters that market first will be the next Microsoft.

We can't get rid of big business. We can just watch as one big company kicks over another. Since capitalism came of age in the 1500s (give or take a century), that's the way it's always been. In the 1700s, people thought the tea companies would rule the world. In the 1800s, railroads and textile factories were among the hot lines of business. Now, computers drive trade. There always will be something new. Current dynasties will fall. If there's anything that history tells us, it is that nothing is permanent. You can ask Blockbuster about that. Or, if you prefer a classical model, there are a few nice books on the Roman Empire which might be of interest.

Jon Worley buys allergy drugs at Wal-Mart, the occasional book at Barnes & Noble and a bottle of Seagram's gin every now and again.