Well, I’m sorry to have to be the parent who tells his 15 year-old son there is no easter bunny, but the fact is the world is not so simple. Free-market capitalism may sound great in theory, but so did Communism. Both systems have resulted in extreme abuse of power and exploitation of the masses. You can stick your fingers in your ears and scream that it isn’t true, but that won’t make it so.

I can only pray that my future google searches will never bring me back to this place of close-mindedness. good day to you all.

There’s a lot of signal, and a lot of noise here.

At this stage of the game it is difficult to separate the “good” businesses who only accept government favors because they have to stay competitive, and the “bad” ones who actively seek more favors in order to improve their competitive position.

The road socialism thing is a good point here. But one is still left asking, if road socialism helps, why don’t all the businesses do it? (It’s not that I don’t have some idea, I’m just saying this is the relevant question to go further in this line of questioning.)

At some point, the corruption of aggression infects all areas of society. There are no clean hands at the top. This is precisely what makes libertarianism supposedly unique is that we can say “a pox on all your houses”.
Ceteris is no longer paribus. There really isn’t much of a market left here or anywhere else. Perhaps between states.

So it’s hard to say that Wal-mart is good, or heroic or even a nice peaceful organization. Yet, we’re all buying goods made in sweatshops. And those factories are only sweatshops because of intervention.

The root. The root is what must be assaulted. To do otherwise is to miss the point, and we could argue forever about the rest.
These things exist because of the need for Government to expand their power and influence, and the desire of Fractional Reserve Bankers to do the same.

Why is Wal-mart price competitive?
Because it is too expensive to make things in America, and other businesses can’t get funding to start a Wal-mart, version 2.0.
Why does Wal-mart squeeze the hell out of their workers?
Because those workers don’t have other businesses to work for, because regulations have killed them off.
Because the marginal productivity of those workers, once you take out the theft by Taxation and Fed and workplace regulations, is not very high. Without this theft, they wouldn’t be getting squeezed at the same rate of pay and benefits.

Does Wal-mart lobby for favorable treatment by the State (in all its forms)?
To the extent that they do, they are villains.
To the extent that they don’t, they’re just a business, like any other.

Now the fact that Wal-mart is doing so well is IMO, given the society we live in, prima facie evidence that they are using the state to prosper.

Not that it is wrong to do well. But it is wrong to actively use the state to get there.
Or to make a more blunt analogy – I would suspect that any prosperous man in the USSR in the 70s or prior was a Leninist bastard.

Good day.

I love it. A blog is here to discuss an article. We discuss an article, and the elite begin critiquing why we do it.

Do they want comment or not? If so, I’m not interested anymore. It turns out this is just another group of pack animals who follow a line the world must tow or they are trolls.

As Paul Harvey says: “Good day.”

I think the majority of criticism toward Wal-Mart is silly and far worse in the long run than anything Wal-Mart has done. Wal-Mart has gamed the system, well so have most other companies. This does not excuse it, but it prompts one to wonder why there aren’t frontline specials about rent-seeking in general. The reason is simple, the overwhelming majority of those who criticize Wal-Mart can’t do so for good reason without being hypocrites. Wal-Mart’s actual misdeeds are the instances where they team up with a government to get what they want without respecting the laws of voluntary exchange. Since every non-libertarian by definition upholds the right of the jackboot class to ignore voluntary exchange and property, their complaints about Wal-Mart doing so would ring quite hollow. They target Wal-Mart because they feel they can portray it as an example of the market run amock. It is freedom and capitalism that they hate.

I also must take umbrage with the idea that “this government” is somehow unique in its iniquity. If Gore or Kerry had been elected things would not be much different, they are every bit as power-hungry as the current bandit leader. Sure they might heap largesse on different groups but these are only differences of nuance. The government is like a play with a really bad script, it doesn’t matter who directs or performs, it still sucks.

When Wal-Mart accepts government favors, I will criticize them, and they will deserve it. But in a contest between this company and the ideals of the majority of its critics, Wal-Mart is deserving of vociferous support. Whatever their sins they don’t pose one one-thousandth of the threat to the public that rabid anti-market ideology does.

What do you people want? I am beginning to suspect it is to only have your own voice heard.

Walmart people leave the anti-Walmart people alone and anti-Walmart people leave the Walmart people to their own devices.

We can all get alone all you have to do is just realize what it is you want out of a super market and go get it and the two paths shall never meet.

I am thinking that the ‘then they came for me’ scenario will be the final nail in the coffin for Wal-Mart cheerleaders. No one is secure, either from this government nor from the ripple effect of corporations like Wal-Mart.

The ones who see it are the ones who are trying to prepare. We will all be selling eachother lattes, insurance and financial services, or taking eachother’s temps and administering meds.
An economy without manufacturing is a sick economy.

Digital prints from there are just ok.

As to this notion of “corpocracy”, if you are implying that a cabal of big businesses is running the show, I think you are off the mark. Big corporations have indeed become part of the power structure in the modern state, and deserve a great deal of blame for allowing themselves to be corrupted by the state, but they are not the ones pulling the strings. They get special priveleges in exchange for providing the state with revenue or aiding it in its regimentation of society, but when push comes to shove the men in jackboots still answer to the political class. I think that the idea of a group of evil businesses runnin the show is popular with those on the Left because it allows them to think, “well if we just removed the economic royalists from the government it could effectively solve all of our problems. It’s greedy businessmen who cause the world’s problems, not the good people at (name your government department)” Sorry, but aside from receiving stolen goods (eminent domain, subsidies), and advocating an increase in the minimum wage, Wal-Mart has done nothing to deserve the rancor thrown at it. While these abuses are bad in and of themselves, anti-market socialistic criticisms of the company are exponentially worse.

Wal Mart does not hold Mars hostage. Mars and Wal Mart have a voluntary agreement. The Mars family keeps the NJ plant open for mainly brand image and sentimental reasons (it’s the flagship original M&M plant located next to the HQ)…it has been the least profitable candy plant in their stable for better than 2 decades. Wal Mart basically allows them to indulge their romance and save face by not closing the plant across the lawn from the family offices. This is the majority employee view BTW, not my lay Austrian analysis or libertarian cheerleading.
But of course no one actually fears that Wal Mart will stop selling M&Ms.

Employee turnover is high in the retail industry in general. I don’t know if Wal Mart is better or worse than average in this regard, but it is very easy to see why retail employee retention is poor …the pay is low and the work is arduous. Who wouldn’t jump at a better opportunity?

& I don’t think anyone here has said that employees don’t matter, or that only what’s good for Walmart matters.

And, again the attitude that the employees don’t matter, only what’s good with Wal-Mart.

It’s amazing what people in this country think is valuable these days. It truly has become a corpocracy. We’ve seen that in the Iraq ‘war’ where the only ones who have benefitted are large corporations such as defense contractors and Halliburton and those who own their stock or get paid residuals from past employment, such as our Vice President.

You keep bringing up the turnover in WalMart’s employees. So what? People are free to come and go as they please. If the turnover is really, really bad for WalMart, then they are just being shortsighted, but, again, so what? It is not my problem, it is not your problem, and even if it bothered me in the least, what right do I have to force WalMart to adopt policies that would reduce turnover?