Penn and Teller on Walmart

[neverforgetlol]

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You can't? I quit my job a few months ago. Now, granted, I wasn't working at WalMart, but the job police didn't come by and try to stop me from quitting.

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Would you quit your job if you didn't have another one lined up? Makes a difference, doesn't it? And I'm betting you have some skills that had other employers wanting you to work from there, decent education, etc.

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You're conflating coercion initiated by other people and economic and biological realities. WalMart doesn't cause your hunger, then use that to extort you into working for them.

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You're right, walmart doesn't force me to work for them. But they do know I need that job working for them to get money to be able to buy that food, so they can use that fact to exploit the relationship. If I work at walmart, until I have another job offer they determine whether I eat or not.

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So what?

WalMart needs its customers a hell of a lot more than than the customers need WalMart. Is it unjust for customers to use this leverage to get WalMart to offer lower prices?

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The difference being a consumer can easily go to another establishment to buy.. whatever they are buying at walmart. The employee cannot just go to another store and automatically get employment. The consumer relationship with walmart is much different than the employee.

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Gosh, that sounds scary. Reassigned to the Lawn and Garden siberia!

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You are really ignorant. This is coercive and threatening behavior by walmart. Why do you think people might want to unionize? It's almost like they are stuck with the job they have and want to make it better.

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What difference does this make? College educated white collar professionals don't need to eat? They don't have families?

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No, educated professionals have more specialized skills, which helps their power in the labor market. A experience surgeon (to take an extreme) has his choice of where to work, he'll get offers from all over and can choose whichever one he wants. On the other extreme the guy who dropped out of high school, got no other training and has no skills beyond operating a cash register is in the opposite situation. White-collar professionals fall closer to the surgeon.

[pvn]

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Most regulations are fought for by corporations to levy power against other corporations. Walmart also takes in billions in government subsidies each year. Where's the attacks against Walmart for doing that?

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In another thread. Don't try to use conflation to mask your goalpost-shifting.

[pvn]

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I have no idea. I don't really care what they think.

Why should I care about your opinion?

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Then why were they brought up? You don't have to care about what I say (you clearly don't), but I am at least aware of the horrid labor relations walmart has had, which P/T apparently are not.

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I didn't bring them up.

And I'm not seeing any "horrid" conditions here (oh noes, you might get REASSIGNED to ANOTHER PART OF THE STORE!!! (cue scary music)). If someone says "I'll pay you X to do Y" and both parties agree, I have no objection. I can think of a lot of jobs that are much, much less pleasant. Crab fishing, for example. Getting splashed with freezing salt water all day, working around the clock, being trapped on the boat, working around dangerous machinery that might drag me to the bottom of the ocean.


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Basically. Actions > words.

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This is why I'm not a libertarian. Just because someone isn't putting a gun to your head doesn't mean it's not coercive. The employer has a large amount of power over his/her employees, and there are plenty of people with the ability to do these kind of jobs. Do you think the boss needs worker X as much as worker X needs their boss? Please.

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How does this make it coercive? I just moved into a new house. There three private security firms, about 10 different lawn service firms and five or six different pest control firms all trying to work for me. Do I have "coercive" power over them? They came to me.

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Just to clarify, an example: A boss tells a female employee: "You must have sex with me or you're fired."

Is that coercive?

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Hookers get that ultimatum all the time. Are they being coerced?

Seriously, though, nobody owns "their" job, so having conditions placed upon the keeping of that job cannot be coercive. A boss tells a female (what difference does it make if the employee is male or female?) employee "you're fired".

Is that coercive?

[pvn]

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What if he's playing video poker professionally, so that he can avoid working at WalMart?

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Please tell me you are joking.

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I'm not. You've never heard of +EV video poker play? It exists.

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Sure you can. People do it all the time. The fact that you squandered your money and have no savings isn't your employer's fault.

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And here we go again. What people? People that have skills that are in high demand by other employers, sure. People that have little to no education and not any specialized skills are not exactly being wooed by other employers.

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What does this have to do with anything?

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You seem to think the employee-boss relationship is a completely equal economic transaction. They have a job, you need a job, either of you can opt out at any time. Well it's not that easy.

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Of course it is. You have labor, they need labor.

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Here's the implied fallacy.

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This thread is about walmart and people working there.

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So what? That doesn't change the fact that nobody has to work *at WalMart*.

[TomCollins]

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can you provide us with an example where walmart used physical violence against its employees?

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Walmart has repeatedly locked in employees over night.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4146540/

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Only because people like you believe that violence is the best way to solve your problems.

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Actually it's because it's never existed in history, what the hell kind of response is this?

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Intellectual dishonesty at its finest.

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Murray acknowledged that doors were kept locked, but insisted that a manager with a key was always present.

“This was simply an effort to keep the employees safe and keep the merchandize secure,” Murray said.

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I worked at a business that kept its doors locked when we didn't have a receptionist at the front. OH NOES!

[nietzreznor]

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Most regulations are fought for by corporations to levy power against other corporations. Walmart also takes in billions in government subsidies each year. Where's the attacks against Walmart for doing that?

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This is an excellent point and is a primary reason why I think libertarians in general should be far less gung-ho about defending wal-mart.
Wal-mart is not the product of free markets but rather something like corporate capitalism. So we shouldn't assume that Wal-mart is the way it is--or that the wal-mart business model is shown to be empirically successful--because of free choices and voluntary exchanges. Wal-mart has been able to attain its huge domination of the market in part because it has been so successful in using the government to get subsidies, squelch competition, etc.

This isn't to say that wal-mart should be 'banned' or that government action is needed (obviously), or even that wal-mart is totally bad (it's not), but just that we should remember that businesses as a whole would look and operate far differently in a truly free society than they do today. And thus we should defend the virtues of a free market without defending the things that succeed with government help in today's unfree market.

[pvn]

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You can't? I quit my job a few months ago. Now, granted, I wasn't working at WalMart, but the job police didn't come by and try to stop me from quitting.

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Would you quit your job if you didn't have another one lined up?

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Yes. I did. That's why I used that example.

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Makes a difference, doesn't it?

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Yes, it does. But whether one has enough savings to go unemployed for a while or not is independent of whether one works at WalMart or somewhere more to your liking. There are probably people who work at Costco, where the grass is greener and everyone has a pony, that have little in savings and also feel that quitting without having another job lined up would be too difficult.

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And I'm betting you have some skills that had other employers wanting you to work from there, decent education, etc.

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Again, a totally seperate issue.

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You're conflating coercion initiated by other people and economic and biological realities. WalMart doesn't cause your hunger, then use that to extort you into working for them.

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You're right, walmart doesn't force me to work for them. But they do know I need that job working for them to get money to be able to buy that food, so they can use that fact to exploit the relationship. If I work at walmart, until I have another job offer they determine whether I eat or not.

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Did WalMart prevent you from saving any money? Did you wake up one day and find yourself employed there, forced to report to work?

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So what?

WalMart needs its customers a hell of a lot more than than the customers need WalMart. Is it unjust for customers to use this leverage to get WalMart to offer lower prices?

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The difference being a consumer can easily go to another establishment to buy.. whatever they are buying at walmart. The employee cannot just go to another store and automatically get employment.

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You can't just go to another store and "automatically" get what you want that WalMart has, either. I went to Home Depot, and they didn't have bananas! But they did have a "now hiring" sign.

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Gosh, that sounds scary. Reassigned to the Lawn and Garden siberia!

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You are really ignorant. This is coercive and threatening behavior by walmart. Why do you think people might want to unionize? It's almost like they are stuck with the job they have and want to make it better.

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NOOOO don't threaten me with REASSIGNMENT!!! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

What difference does it make what the motivation is? Reassignment is part of employment. Big deal. Is this the "horrid" treatment you were talking about?

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What difference does this make? College educated white collar professionals don't need to eat? They don't have families?

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No, educated professionals have more specialized skills, which helps their power in the labor market. A experience surgeon (to take an extreme) has his choice of where to work, he'll get offers from all over and can choose whichever one he wants. On the other extreme the guy who dropped out of high school, got no other training and has no skills beyond operating a cash register is in the opposite situation. White-collar professionals fall closer to the surgeon.

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Lots of places have cash registers. Are you just upset that cash register operators don't get flown all over the country for interviews? Personally, I would prefer interviewing locally; travelling is a pain. The white collar worker is coerced into an unpleasant situation!

[nietzreznor]

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The employer has a large amount of power over his/her employees, and there are plenty of people with the ability to do these kind of jobs.

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Disagreements like these are very much responsible for divides in the anarchist movement, and honestly it's kind of silly.
As anarchists, if a stateless society led to situations where a very very small percentage of people (we will call them 'bosses') owned so much stuff and had so much power that the rest of the people had to work in quite unfavorable conditions, then, hell yes, we should be concerned with this, even if the 'bosses' don't have to hold a gun to anyone's head.
But stuff like this isn't happening in a stateless society--it's happening (more or less) now, in a very unlibertarian society.
It seems to me that the only way such a small percentage of people could own so much stuff (in this case, the ownership of capital that prevents others from employing themselves) would be via the coercive power of the State.

So, yeah, we can't combat this problem (clearly) by 'helping' the workers by getting rid of the jobs they clearly prefer over whatever else they might do right now (either by min wage laws or by 'banning' businesses, etc.). But this doesn't mean that we should defend the status quo, or turn a blind eye to the problem of labor's minute bargaining power. It seems to me that workers have such small bargaining power because of government intervention on behalf of the wealthy, and thus we should take quite seriously the task of finding nongovernmental solutions to these problems.

[awval999]

I'm going to have to stand up for my employer.

Now, I cannot say what goes on in every store in every city. All I can speak for is my store.

I am an intern at the Pharmacy at Wal-Mart. I get paid quite well for a 21 year old college student. I like my job and the people that I work with. Everyone that works in the pharmacy with me is happy and cheerful. From the techs that get paid less that I do with 5 years experience, to the pharmacists that pull down six figures, everyone is in a good mood.

So you say, well, the pharmacy is different, you all make good money there. During my lunch break (which everyone must take after 6 hours of work or you will be terminiated), I eat at the Subway inside Wal-Mart. I see middle aged people, older people, all employees and they are cheerful, jublient and enjoying life. The greeters that work there actually have real smiles. The starting wage for a cashier is more that the starting wage at Meijer (which is unionized). In fact, two weeks ago the store paid its yearly bonus to ALL workers, it is based on number of hours worked in the last year. Unfortunately I just started so I didn't get it. No matter how much you make, everyone got the same bonus, depending on how many hours a week you work. The bonus was $1200. A massive bonus for the cashiers and low paid employees.

Now, again, I cannot speak for every employee at every store, but it is tiring to read replies where people act like they work there, and act like it is hell on Earth, because it is far from it. I enjoy working there, and I believe a high majority of my coworkers do too.

[nietzreznor]

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Just to clarify, an example: A boss tells a female employee: "You must have sex with me or you're fired."

Is that coercive?

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Depends on what you mean by 'coercive', no?

I'm not sure that libertarians really use the term 'coercion' consistently (as a group, I mean). For some, it is interchangeable with aggression, while for others it might include situations like the one you describe.

Personally, I tend to think that it is *coercion*, but not *aggression*. As a libertarian, I believe that both coercion and aggression are bad and wrong, but that physical force is only justified (legally) for the purpose of stopping aggression.
Luckily, in the case you describe there are many nonviolent ways of preventing/reacting to this problem (deal with these cases beforehand in contract, unionization, boycott, private arbitration, etc.)