I have cross-posted this from the Mises group on Facebook, please feel free to respond on Facebook although I understand that some of you wish to preserve your online privacy:
I am having a discussion with someone who both works at and shops at Wal-Mart, who is trying to tell me how horrible corporations are, Wal-Mart in particular. Exactly how does one even begin to address this? He’s basically preaching not to shop at Wal-Mart as he is literally doing exactly that. I was discussing this with him while he was working there one day.
He says Wal-Mart is bad, but either way, these feelings are irrelevant given his personal choices. What is relevant is that he has revealed his preference for Wal-Mart by actually working and shopping there. In other words, actions speak louder than words, as the old saying goes. His actions given the constraints of scarcity and the limited options he faces, reveals that he prefers Wal-Mart over and above the alternatives.
But is there any need to even attempt to convey logic to this person or is it just not worth it? I suspect he knows I am right and he is just being intellectually dishonest to himself as well as me. Can anyone be oblivious to such a clear contradiction?
And minimum wage. I remember I did a speech on it in my Public Speaking class. Over half of my material came from him, and I didn’t even mean for that to happen (I just searched mises.org for minimum wage stuff).
Wal-Mart is not necessary for my question as I see hypocrisy for many reasons as it relates to economic freedom. How do you debate such people or are they simply not worth your time?
I’d say give it to him point-blank. Tell him he’s being hypocritical. If he refuses to see the (presumably) clear and concise reason(s) as to why, then tell him he’s in denial.
Maybe if you ask him what he thinks is wrong with Wal-Mart, and try to work on that.
The reason people do things even when they don’t like it is because they don’t think they have options in the world, and that means they are scared. If you can give him a better understanding of the world he may not be so scared anymore. Pressing him on hypocrisy will just drive him away.
Nielsio is right. It’s not so much about someone being a hypocrite for using something they don’t like.
Lots of people don’t really have a choice. I was watching a video series where some people were asking people why they still used McDonalds even though it’s really unhealthy for them and they mostly said that they used it because it was cheap for them. So someone may feel like they don’t have another choice to use it.
I may not like google because I think it’s an evil company and I have been making an effort to stay away from it as much as possible. But for a while my firefox web browser was crashing on me frequently, so I decided to switch. That, and I didn’t really trust other search engines (now I use an anonymous search engine).
So it’s mostly about choices than about hypocrisy. If you accuse someone about hypocrisy they might not like it.
Wal-mart is pretty evil in some ways.They’re corporatist.Receiving subsidies,eminent domain etc.To deny or downplay this is just Vulgar libertarianism.To go further Wal-mart should not exist in it’s current former.There’s nothing wrong with shopping there though.I’m embarrassed about the knee jerk love of Wal-mart.
Nothing is black and white, it’s all shades of gray.
You’ve got to have a sense of proportion, though, and Wallmart is far from being a company that operates mainly because of government privileges.
Compaire it to banks, or defence contractors, or companies reliant on their patent portfolio, or car companies, or agro-business with their protective tariffs, or the AMA restricting the supply of doctors, etc..
Walmart attracts a lot of hate by the left, simply because 1) its a big business (hence automatically evil in their eyes), 2) its employees are not unionised, and 3) they employ - and sell to - the poor and lower middle class - something the hip, upper middle class intellectual has only contempt for.
Apple, for instance, doesn’t get as near as much (or any) criticism, because they sell hip and expensive gadgets that those intellectual like.
So when you talk about eminent domain or subsidies (which are mostly tax-breaks, i.e. reduced rate of expropriations - something no libertarian should complain about, or complaints about their employees receiving medicaid (why accuse Wallmart instead of the state?) or their petition for lower property tax payments (why the hell not???)) - you really look for the 2% bad in the 98% good - the massive expansion of the division of labor and trade that Wallmart brings to the world.