I’m confused, I just finished watching ‘Wal-Mart, Sell High, Buy Low’, and don’t approve of the practices used by the company. I haven’t seen Wal-Mart discussed here at all, but isn’t Wal-Mart something that breeds from free-market capitalism? correct me If I’m wrong, but I don’t see how the state is at all involved in Wal-Mart’s malpractice and malinvestment suites.
How the heck did Wal-Mart become so corrupt without Capitalism? I just don’t get it, its the company’s free decisions.
Did Wal-Mart emerge on the free market? Or was it under a statist system?
Maybe it isn’t actually corrupted but the film give off an emotional aura that suggests that it is corrupted.
On the other hand, Wal-Mart did engage in unacceptable behaviors such as seeking economic subsidies from the state.
However, running inferior competitors out of town and selling high, buying low aren’t evil actions.
Could you give me an example of this “corruption”?
Also, the errors caused by the state go far deeper than that which is directly effected, with its huge spending and regulations it has a massive effect for malinvestment throughout the entire economy
Wal-Mart underpays its workers and uses malinvestment for mass profit. These Business practices are then followed by other companies to make insane profit since Wal-Mart is the biggest company in the world.
Underpays by what standard?
I don’t understand: “malinvestment for mass profit”. What does that mean?
I haven’t seen the movie. Can you briefly summarize the arguments it makes? (Fun suggestion: As you are compiling this list, try to think of how many of these are pathos-based arguments and which are based on actual economic insight).
They pay min-to below min wage, because they can, and since they are the biggest competitors in whatever area they station in, therefore driving out all the other companies. When someone needs to find work, they end up having to work at Wal-Mart, and get paid below minimum.
What has stopped Wal-Mart from taking over the world? I hate to say it, but regulation. If Wal-Mart was the world’s single dominant producer, we would be chattel-slaves to the burgeousie’s.
While the film begins with footage of Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott praising the corporation at a large employee convention, the film spends a majority of its running time on personal interviews. A variety of criticisms of the corporation emerge from these interviews, demonstrating Wal-Mart’s anti-union practices, detrimental impacts on small businesses, insufficient environmental protection policies, and poor record on workers’ rights in the United States and internationally. The film ends with interviews of community leaders that have prevented Wal-Mart stores from being built in their communities and an exhortation for others to do the same.
People choose to voluntary work there. So what?
If wal-mart become the single dominant retailers…so what?
Wal-mart close down store with unions. So what? It’s their fricking property.
We get to buy cheaper goods and below-minimum wage people don’t have to pay so much in order to live.
So the gov’t doesn’t stop Wal-Mart from paying below min. wage?
and this question.
Here, its on Youtube if anyone is interested.
Did you emerge on a free market or under a statist system?
Excuse me; however:
Since when are minimum wages i.e. price controls useful? They are counter-productive, since price controls on wage redistribute employment: gain employment for some and remove employment from people willing to work for less.
Since when are unions i.e. attempted price controls useful? They are counter-productive, in the same way.
What did Walmart do wrong? It appears to me Walmart fulfilled its Kirznerian entrepreneurial function, given the existence of low marginal revenue product workers and higher prices from other sellers for similar goods: no more no less. So what?
I recommend reading Kirzner’s Competition and Entrepreneurship. He gives a situation exactly like this:
Unless a company used government issued monopoly to become the monopolist, then it must have become a monopolist due to better reaction on its part to market information. This is a good thing, since otherwise resource allocations are not corrected, and less mutually beneficial exchange occurs.
RED FLAG: I could find someone who had been harmed by butterflies but they wouldn’t be evil because the vast majority of people are coo with them. Statistics >> one or two emotional cases.
So i guess the problem is not that walmart offers things so cheap or pays its workers so cheap but that it has huge profits that it should be sharing with everyone else. One thing to look at is that states will often give tax breaks to big chain stores in order to attract them, while leaving the taxes on the smaller mom and pop stores.
I actually would have thought that mom and pop stores might have an advantage since they are self employed and can work for below min wage…
China’s factory workers get paid really low wages, and work in terrible conditions.
Minimum wage is arbitrary and stupid. I have a super walmart in my town which has about 10,000 people living here and I think that the only thing that’s been put out of buisness since they got here is that crappy little general store on main street run by that poor indian guy and I suspect that is because there is a gas station that sold all the same things (but with the insentive to shop there because it was thereforever and SOLD GAS) up the street from him.
And I’m quite sorry DFB, but you seem to continually be told the same things and presented with the same arguments and keep regressing back to that “scared man” state of mind that we were all raised to accept by the state in order to ensure that we would shut up and pay our extortion money… I hope this might clear up your problem
Wages almost inevitably end up matching productivity, if walmart is employing people at below minimum wage this quite probably means that it is because that better matches thier productivity
The state cracks down upon others who don’t follow minimum wage, or at least give the impression of being ready to do so, and often either enforce/ promote unions. This gives walmart a huge advantage over everyone else because the state fails to make due with their promises.
Up in the nearest cities near me there are a ton of stores both big and small, not just walmart the superwalmart therin… Do you really mean to tell me that this is only because of the fact that walmart is regulated?
Walmart is an ok store, they get me cheap crap, they’re convenient, I like them for the most part although I go to mainstreet for good restraunts, cool random stuff (there’s a store that has all these really neat Indian stuff called touch of Grayce), another local chain for better food which I can have later, the cafe for a cool scene and music, radioshack for the more advanced electronics, and up to the city for clothing, furniture, books, fancy food, and a great variety of other things that I rarley need, walmart does not and cannot supply all of my needs but I thank it for the ones that it can and does
It provides products more cheaply so everyone else goes out of buisness, this is all voluntary and the way you propose fixing it is with guns
How would walmart control so many places if suddenly, without taxation and in the presence of a stable monetary system which is more or less ensured in a totally free market, handle hundreds of smaller buisnesses who are better connected in smaller areas, are more familiar with local demand, have the most reward to be gained for thrift and ingenuity, and supported by all of those people who don’t want walmart (when suddenly they can’ higher guns to force walmart to do that which they want) trying to compete it out of existance?
If you have further questions on the subject, pose them to me, I hope I can clear this up for you.
That seems to be the new slogan of socialists. ‘Don’t become a chattel-slave!’
Have you ever stopped to consider what their conditions might be like if they were tax free and WHAT THE ALTERNATIVE TO THE LOW WAGES ARE???
This is what pisses me off when people talk about the indstrial revolution and how bad everything was then, living standards were slowly going up and the alternatives to crappy factory work was far worse.
Furthermore things have been getting better for the common man in China, greatly so from his past of famine and abject poverty which had not changed for nearly 5,000 years before the last 40 years.