Wal-Mart Rules, Mom and Pop Stores Hate America

[pvn]

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Protectionism is an attempt to stave off the need to adapt.

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Protectionism is a form of adaptation. Your "free market" is not the magical reference according to which everything must be justified.

And anyway, that is not necessarily what I am suggesting here. Why mischaracterize my argument?

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First off, I didn't say that's what you're suggesting. Again, in the part you selectively deleted from the quote, you see I'm asking you for WHAT you ARE suggesting.

I guess you can call "trying to freeze the status quo" an "adaptation" but it's stretching it.

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It doesn't work.

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It sure built up China in a hurry.

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Protectionism does not allow Chinese industries to outperform US industries.

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Who is the "American Consumer"? I am American, and a consumer, and I'm not in debt.

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What? The term as it is usually used implies the statistically typical American consumer, not you or anyone else in particular.

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Of course, such a person does not actually exist.

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What difference does it make if this person, whoever it is, is consuming "foreign" production or domestic? Debt is the problem, right?

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I keep clarifying that the major underlying reason for the budget shortfall is the issue: the unaffordable outsourcing of production.

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You keep repeating the same thing over and over, but you can't explain why. How does making widget X in location Z instead of Location Y make any difference?

Keep in mind that your typical, statistically average (mythical) wal-mart shopper doesn't make ANY of the items in the store, they are ALL "outsourced".

And note, you're acting like the "consumer" is the one doing the outsourcing, shooting himself in the foot. While outsourcing may certainly be bad for some individuals (even though it's clearly beneficial for the "average" person), those people are not choosing to outsource. I mean, I haven't seen any factory workers who themselves decided to send their jobs to China.

If Joe loses his job, and joe continues to spend money, the reason joe is heading for trouble is not that his job was outsourced - he would be in the *exact* same spot if he got canned for any other reason but continued to spend at his previous rate. The reason for his budget shortfall is quite simply that his consumption is outstripping his production. Period.

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if you can't afford something, producing it for yourself is not always the best solution to the problem.

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You're sending forth a veritable army of strawmen. Who cares if it's not always the solution? In this case it is a POSSIBLE solution to a very serious problem.

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In reality, this action only solves this particular problem in a statistically tiny number of cases. Most people have no idea how to make a pencil, much less the resources, machinery, etc to make them for less than a pencil company can - regardless of whether that pencil company has its factory in chicago or china.

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Since I'm bad at, e.g. building houses, I would probably spend more money building a house myself than buying one from someone who knows what he's doing (accounting for the value of my time, not to mention all the materials I would waste re-doing various parts of the construction).

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An absurd example. America has one of the world's most technologically advanced and fully specialized economies.

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Yes. I thought you said that was bad. Produce what you can, right?

And outsourcing stuff increases the available resources here for even more specialization.

That's the idea. Outsource so you can increase your net production by specializing.

[Nielsio]

Are people still hatin' the market?

[bills217]

Personally, I am against Mom-and-Pop Stores.

"Mom-and-Pop" is a hateful and discriminatory term that does not acknowledge equally valid lifestyles.

I think such stores should be referred to as "Person-and-Person" Stores, or perhaps "Organism-and-Organism" Stores.

[Nielsio]

Did anyone see the Penn & Teller - [censored] episode on Wal-Mart?

It was pretty good. They covered many aspects. It wasn't exactly Mises Institute-esque economic laser acurateness, but still pretty rounded thought.

It's good that this economic awakening is getting out to the public more and more.

It was pretty funny at one point. One bought and sold politician was claiming all these things that Wal-mart jobs were supposedly attributing to:
- harm the community
- lead to higher crime
- family disintigration
- social ills that the politicians are trying to face

And in the beginning Penn & Teller show you all these people who absolutely hate Wal-mart.

Wouldn't you think that this hatred could be better directed at the politicians who, through their laws and mercantalism, are actually attributing to those things?

Wal-mart is just a bunch of people cooperating voluntarily. Government is something that uses physical force to get their ways. One of those creates wealth, harmony and prosperity, and the other means destruction, violence, and hostility where none was ever present.

[Skidoo]

I would have gotten back sooner, but I was banned again.

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What difference does it make if this person, whoever it is, is consuming "foreign" production or domestic? Debt is the problem, right?

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I keep clarifying that the major underlying reason for the budget shortfall is the issue: the unaffordable outsourcing of production.

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You keep repeating the same thing over and over, but you can't explain why. How does making widget X in location Z instead of Location Y make any difference?

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If either producer is more a part of your local economy (meaning the proceeds of their production are more likely to be spent with your business or businesses which in turn spend with your business, etc.), that's the critical difference.

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I mean, I haven't seen any factory workers who themselves decided to send their jobs to China.

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They just finance the move by purchasing the resulting production at Wal-Mart.

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Produce what you can, right?

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When it pays to outsource, do it. However, definitely produce for yourself when outsourcing production carries an opportunity cost that puts you in debt.

[Skidoo]

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GoodCallYouWin,

This discussion isn't about forcing people to do anything. It's about the smartest course of action given all the variables.

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Which you can do for yourself. Once you start making these subjective judgements for other people, you're not very far from telling them what to do.

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"Gasoline is a better deal in suburb x." /= "I order you to buy gas in suburb x."

[pvn]

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GoodCallYouWin,

This discussion isn't about forcing people to do anything. It's about the smartest course of action given all the variables.

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Which you can do for yourself. Once you start making these subjective judgements for other people, you're not very far from telling them what to do.

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"Gasoline is a better deal in suburb x." /= "I order you to buy gas in suburb x."

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You can't even decide if it's a better deal for someone else, unless you can read his mind.

[pvn]

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If either producer is more a part of your local economy (meaning the proceeds of their production are more likely to be spent with your business or businesses which in turn spend with your business, etc.), that's the critical difference.

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More likely than what?

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I mean, I haven't seen any factory workers who themselves decided to send their jobs to China.

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They just finance the move by purchasing the resulting production at Wal-Mart.

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Moving the goal posts.

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Produce what you can, right?

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When it pays to outsource, do it. However, definitely produce for yourself when outsourcing production carries an opportunity cost that puts you in debt.

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Well for the people who are not producing widget XYZ, buying widgets from Joe down the street for $2X carries an opportunity cost over buying them from Joe in China for $X. And for every widget I can think of, the number of people producing that widget (AND consuming it) is orders of magnitude smaller than the number of people not producing it (AND consuming it).

[ianlippert]

25 pages and not even one example of a city where walmart had a negative effect on the local economy. I'll check back in 25 pages.

[Skidoo]

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If either producer is more a part of your local economy (meaning the proceeds of their production are more likely to be spent with your business or businesses which in turn spend with your business, etc.), that's the critical difference.

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More likely than what?

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More likely than the other producer doing the same thing. You asked how there is any difference between making a widget in one "location" versus another, implying there is none. My answer is it does matter.

I'll try to clarify the phraseology. All else constant, your economic advantage is closest to that of the producer most likely to spend the proceeds of his production with your business or the businesses who spend with your business, etc.

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I mean, I haven't seen any factory workers who themselves decided to send their jobs to China.

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They just finance the move by purchasing the resulting production at Wal-Mart.

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Moving the goal posts.

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Financing the competition at the expense of less costly (in terms of opportunity cost, as shown by the consumer debt situation) domestic production is just where the goalposts should be.

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Produce what you can, right?

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When it pays to outsource, do it. However, definitely produce for yourself when outsourcing production carries an opportunity cost that puts you in debt.

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Well for the people who are not producing widget XYZ, buying widgets from Joe down the street for $2X carries an opportunity cost over buying them from Joe in China for $X. And for every widget I can think of, the number of people producing that widget (AND consuming it) is orders of magnitude smaller than the number of people not producing it (AND consuming it).

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Sure, and that illustrates the failure of the Invisible Hand. If the people don't plan toward their mutual advantage and instead act as if the self-interest of every individual can magically sustain the emergent order on which they all depend, the result is the bankrupting situation of too many consumers and not enough producers, and their aggregate purchasing power assumes a downward slope. If only the production that carries a net opportunity cost is outsourced, everyone can be both a producer (of one widget) and a consumer (of everyone else's widgets) in a self-sustaining system with a stable currency, and everyone benefits.