Some guy on facebook gave me a study about Wal-mart showing that Wood’s law does not hold true for this particular case. This sociology case somehow concluded that these counties that had wal-mart stores and had increasing wal-mart stores experienced higher rates of poverty in the 90’s. What do you guys think of these studies? And does it disprove Wood’s law?
Where’s the proof of this causality holding? Any number of other factors could be responsible…
I see that the authors have included a couple of pretty much incomprehensible equations to give it a “scientific” air.
This is exactly the kind of report you would expect from academia.
Actually it confirms Wood’s Law (I am always wary when people name laws after themselves!):
Whenever the private sector introduces an innovation that makes the poor better off than they would have been without it, or that offers benefits or terms that no one else is prepared to offer them, someone—in the name of helping the poor—will call for curbing or abolishing it.
They are trying to form a case against Wal-Mart by saying that it actually doesn’t benefit the poor.
Counties with increasing rates of poverty are exactly those who would most need Wal-Mart.
The market is responding to that need.
This is reasoning like:
Those who get chemotherapy usually have more serious cancer than those who not. Most of the chemotherapy recipients dies in a few years, therefore chemotherapy kills people.