Anti-WalMart Campaign?

[Propertarian]

See my post right above yours, and my first post in this thread.

[WordWhiz]

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Men with guns will put me in jail if I don't pay my taxes. Does Walmart do the same to people who don't work for them?

[/ QUOTE ] IF walmart is there best option or only option they end up with a worse fate if they don't work for them...and I don't see what your point is.


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Walmart does not practice any coercion in getting its employees; the state does in getting taxes. The two are not comparible at all.
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The libertarian ethic is opposed to state coercion...it allows for economic coercion caused by say, for example...a regime of inequality in resources, property and wealth that is held together via the protection of that distribution by the "men with guns who will throw me in jail (or worse)" who you complain about.


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I don't consider inequality in resources, property and wealth to be coercion. Please elucidate how it is.


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How did this man get into this jam?

[/ QUOTE ] A couple of ways are possible: bad luck in terms of inborn of nurtured ability, relative or absolute poor education, lack of enough living wage non-slave jobs, poor parenting, discrimination, lack of inheritance etc. That is how people working mind-numbing, hierarchial jobs like Wal-Mart got into their situation.


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You've not explained how any of those things could lead a man into a situation in which he had a choice between slavery and death. Are you positing a situation in the modern world in which an individual's only job choice is lifetime slavery? Even centuries ago, that didn't occur. Some people, however, did choose temporarily slavery in exchange for certain benefits. It was called "indentured servitude" and is how many of our ancestors afforded their journey to this continent. But if the world were really in such dire economic straits that it's either slavery or death, would you deny an individual that choice?

[pvn]

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What "we need" to do is to provide all people with decent options.

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So when does the Moorobot-Mart open?

[TuNeCedeMalis]

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It's a good thing the money doesn't stay here. Buying cheap goods overseas allows us to export a significant fraction of our inflation.

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This is a very important point and one that is widely ignored by the critics of things like Wal-Mart and China.

Because of all the inflation we produce in this country, prices would already have gone out of control and the dollar would be in serious trouble if it were not for deflationary forces like Wal-Mart and cheap labor in China.

[Borodog]

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What "we need" to do is to provide all people with decent options.

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And ponies! Don't forget the ponies!

[ShakeZula06]

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The people working at WalMart must still like their job else they wouldn't be doing it.

[/ QUOTE ] OH really? Have you ever heard of food and shelter before?

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How many people do you know work at wal-mart, as opposed to those that do?

[JackWhite]

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If walmart treat and pay their employees like crap, why does anyone work there?



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Because they hate working other jobs with better pay and more benefits. Same reason people worked 12 hours a day in coal mines and died of black lung when they were 50. They were simply tired of the grind that comes with being a brain surgeon.

[NutsInAVise]

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WalMart has done some despicable things, like using local governments to seize private property to build stores on.

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If you put a gun to my head and asked me to pick between local government taking private property for a new minor league sports park* or a new Wal*Mart, I'd have no trouble choosing the big box. I'm certain the community would see much bigger benefits overall.

* My county has one. It's empty. PM me if you have a minor league team in need of a home in SW Florida.

[natedogg]

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I'm not pro or anti wal-mart. I don't think it should be broken up; I think it's anti-union and other anti-worker actions should be stopped.

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Does an employer have an obligation to accept unionization of its employees? If not, why should WalMart be forced to accept unionization of THEIR employees?

natedogg

[hmkpoker]

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See my post right above yours, and my first post in this thread.

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Your post was a total non-sequitur to the question. You compare WalMart to slavery, which it isn't, since slaves aren't free to quit their jobs. You equate the force of government coercion with the force of poverty, even though they are fundamentally different.

The initial question was: Are Americans who work at Wal-Mart are more well off than they would be if Wal-Mart did not exist? I don't care whether you consider it "unjust" by comparing it to slavery, or whether you disregard the economic benefit of cheap goods. Yes or no.

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Also, Wal-mart maintains a highly segregated and discriminatory workforce (mostly to keep workers from cooperating-discrimination is often profitable because of its abilty to divide workers) e.g. about 2/3 of its hourly workforce is female, but only about 1/3 of salaried management is female.

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Is this automatically indicative of discrimination? Couldn't this just as well mean that women tend to move on to better, non WalMart jobs?