What does Wal-Mart have to do with the price of honey vs. the price of corn syrup? Wal-Mart is a distributor, not a manufacturer. Presumably, if your favorite brand of cream soda can be sold in the mom-and-pop store, it can be sold in Wal-Mart. The costs of production remain the same either way. And can you please support your assertion that “Wal-Mart only sells the products that move the fastest”?
Dan, as I said in the first reply of this thread, in a free society “we” don’t draw any lines beyond (1) private property and (2) voluntary exchanges of same. Draw any more lines beyond these (Go on, propose a “solution” more beneficial to “society” in any one of your examples.) and I’ll show you how you automatically create: (1) a seen group A of beneficiaries of some right/entitlement, and (2) an unseen group B of slaves with the obligation to provide such right/entitlement to group A.
Freedom doesn’t mean that you get as much honey cream soda as you want, at the price that you want, and at the convenience that you want. If private property and voluntary exchanges (free markets) bring about a world in which honey cream soda is not available to you under the terms that you prefer, then the only way for you to change that is to enter the realm of coercion (government) where “we” (a seen, group A with a very strong sense of entitlement to honey cream soda) enslaves an unseen group B and coerces them into providing it to them. There is no other way.
“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” – Bastiat. Please read the whole essay in the link.
“You see, ultimately we have inflation because the people want it. They make it politically profitable for those in government to keep on printing. All people would have to do to get it to stop is the same thing they would do to make any change take place in government.”
but is inflation beneficial?
“What does Wal-Mart have to do with the price of honey vs. the price of corn syrup?”
Noting, nor did I say it did. If there are two roughly equivalent items Wal-Mart will put on their shelves the cheaper of the two.
“And can you please support your assertion that “Wal-Mart only sells the products that move the fastest”?”
Where ARE all these brands?
My question still hasn’t been answered. It has more to do with how far do we push the “it’s beneficial to society” notion before it becomes unbeneficial, Wal-Mart is more of a convenient scapegoat.
To rephrase my question into a more extreme and unrealistic manner, which I understand will become beyond irrational:
Assume this is the future. Assume there was a long term widespread need for the people to be frugal, say a 40 year long depression. Assume every single store in the United States, including gas stations and corner marts are now Wal-Mart. Assume that just as with the honey brand cream soda the people of earlier generations “selected” only oatmeal as their good.
Other industries around the United States close their doors all together but the oatmeal industry alone (somehow) provides full employment for the whole country.
Have we benefited?
You don’t seem to be benefiting from this discussion. Good luck to you.
That’s like asking “is dying beneficial”? Beneficial to whom…?
You’re getting too wrapped up in this notion of “benefit”. The real point is, “benefit” is largely subjective, and is determined by the individual in question, and his values and his needs. Your question implies the same flawed assumption that central planners hold: people can (and do) know better for others than they themselves. In other words, “I know what’s best for you.” This is actually currently under discussion in another thread.
Thomas Sowell wrote an entire treatise on this.
Yes you did. You said that your favorite brand of cream soda wouldn’t be sold at Wal-Mart because honey is more expensive than corn syrup.
Regarding your second point, not all brands of cereal are sold for the same price at Wal-Mart. Some are more expensive than others. But by your reasoning, since different brands of cereal are “roughly equivalent items”, Wal-Mart would only sell the cheapest cereal. The other brands of cereal wouldn’t be sold at Wal-Mart at all. But this is not what we see.
I’m sorry but I don’t quite understand this question.
“Wal-Mart would only sell the cheapest cereal.”
I said the products that move the fastest. So are you saying that walmart has a wide range of cereal?
“You don’t seem to be benefiting from this discussion. Good luck to you.”
Rather quick tempered statement. I’m here to learn folks and have been fairly receptive in the past, not quite sure this was necessary.
Yes, and I asked you to support that assertion. So far, you haven’t done so.
You also said, “If there are two roughly equivalent items Wal-Mart will put on their shelves the cheaper of the two.” That’s what I provided a counter-argument to.
In my opinion, it does.
I suppose your right James, I am dwelling.
As a note of clarification I do understand how Wal-Mart benefits society. I also understand that Wal-Mart has never “forced” anyone to buy anything. I was trying to arrive at an answer for my own study; I was not trying making a point specifically.
My question is derived from earlier thoughts I had while reading Henry Hazlitt. The question came to mind several times while reading Economics in One Lesson and has come back to me over and over.
I’ll make sure to read everyone’s links.
Haha, yesterday I watched Milton Friedman’s famous interview with Phil Donahue from 1979…
Paraphrase…
Phil: Oh God, Dr Friedman, K-Mart! K-Mart is taking over the world! And K-Mart really sucks compared to Sears! The free market is broken!
Friedman: Facepalms
To think if you mentioned Wal-Mart or Target to either of them, they’d be like “Eh? Isn’t that a local chain in Portland or something?”
“Yes, and I asked you to support that assertion. So far, you haven’t done so..”
I didn’t bother answering because it’s straying from my central question. Which is hypothetical.
danbeaulieu:
So are you saying that walmart has a wide range of cereal?
In my opinion, it does."
I suppose you’ve never been in a woodmans then. Also if you were to choose a product such as coffee or vegetable oil, in Woodmans I could find 40 different brands of vegetable oil from all over the world at Wal-Mart they offer maybe 5 or 6 brands in different sizes.
like I said:
"As a note of clarification I do understand how Wal-Mart benefits society. I also understand that Wal-Mart has never “forced” anyone to buy anything. I was trying to arrive at an answer for my own study; I was not trying making a point specifically.
My question is derived from earlier thoughts I had while reading Henry Hazlitt. The question came to mind several times while reading Economics in One Lesson and has come back to me over and over.
I’ll make sure to read everyone’s links."
Thanks for showing me Thomas Sowell, had never heard of him before.
Reading about him now.
If that’s the case, then why did you even bother making the assertion that “Wal-Mart sells only the fastest-moving products”?
Apparently you’ve conceded that Wal-Mart doesn’t always sell only the cheaper/cheapest of two or more products. I accept your concession.
No, I’ve never been in a Woodmans. I didn’t even know such a chain existed before reading this thread. But you asked me about variety of cereal, not coffee or vegetable oil.
Regardless, there’s a store that’s similar to Woodmans near where I live. It sells many items that aren’t (typically) available in a Wal-Mart. It does this even though there are plenty of Wal-Marts in the local area. In fact, it seems to concentrate on selling items that one can’t normally find in a Wal-Mart. So it’s more of a complement than a substitute.
you brought up ceral at an earlier point, I was talking about cream soda which woodmans has about 10 different brands of.
“I accept your concession.”
If that would make you feel more gratified sure, I conceed.
If there are two roughly equivalent items Wal-Mart will put on their shelves the cheaper of the two.
I don’t think that’s how supply and demand works…
Assume this is the future. Assume there was a long term widespread need for the people to be frugal, say a 40 year long depression. Assume every single store in the United States, including gas stations and corner marts are now Wal-Mart. Assume that just as with the honey brand cream soda the people of earlier generations “selected” only oatmeal as their good.
Other industries around the United States close their doors all together but the oatmeal industry alone (somehow) provides full employment for the whole country.
Have we benefited?
Interestingly enough, this was addressed in one of the threads JJ has already linked:
If all stores become Walmart, then it is not through some magical process whereby Walmart waves its wand and its will is done. It’s by a market process where literally all stores are better off closing down than competing with Walmart. This is probably impossible as then Walmart would be facing diseconomies of scale due to coordination problems. Plus, if Walmart owns all, then all people work for Walmart, too. This boils down to Walmart essentially being a government, which makes it run into the calculation problem. Since we know any entity with the calculation problem is inefficient, then by default you’d have other firms competing with Walmart.
To conclude, your scenario is impossible. No point discussing.
Not only this, but for the whole world to suddenly and simultaneously bow down to Walmart assumes that people are no longer rational actors and that all lefties of the world have disappeared. You can’t just wish this into existence.
Yes, libertarianism allows doomsday scenarios in its ethics. The question is: would it happen? The answer is no.
If we examine all possibilities of all systems, literally no system can fix all of its problems.
Rather quick tempered statement. I’m here to learn folks and have been fairly receptive in the past, not quite sure this was necessary.
Because you’re being the opposite of clear-headed, my friend.
You have not answered the question: if some aggregate of customers have led to Walmart beating out the mom and pop stores, is this not “better for society?”
And no, predatory pricing is not a proper response.
You should also remember that if Walmart were to carry all these specialty brands in spite of the low demand (relative to the more “general” brands), it would be pulling away the recources used to produce other, more generally demanded goods. The high costs Walmart would have to incur only reflect that.
If we lived in the Garden of Eden, I’m sure you’d have all the cream soda you’d like, but unfortunately, other things are important to other people, and we can’t all have everything. This is called “scarcity”.