A Free Market Defense of Walmart? Not so Fast.

[JamesShrugged]

In his November 27, 2013 Forbes article, Doug Altner asks the question, “Why do 1.4 million Americans work at walmart?” His answer, presumed to be along free market lines, is that walmart and its employees voluntarily trade value for value to mutual benefit and satisfaction. “So, let’s stop attacking Walmart for paying market wages,“ Altner urges readers. Since Walmart and its business model exist in the context of a mixed economy, and depends fundamentally on state interference into the economy on their behalf, or that, at the very least, give rise to a business model that could not exist unsubsidized (even nominally) it cannot be said that Walmart operates according to free market principles .

See the rest of the article here:

http://anarchobjectivist.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/a-free-market-defense-of-walmart-not-so-fast/

[studiodekadent]

To be entirely fair, in this economy almost EVERY business is touched in some way by corporatism. We don't necessarily know if any particular business CAN survive free of corporatism.

Of course, this doesn't justify continuing subsidies and I absolutely support removing subsidization of Walmart. Just saying that Walmart's villainy (in this context) is shared by a huge number of American businesses, so instead of trying to make out firms to be evil we should accept that firms did not CHOOSE to come into existence in a corporatist economy.

Blaming a firm for existing in a corporatist economy is akin to blaming a child for being born to wealthy parents (assuming the firm did not create the corporatism in the first place).

[JamesShrugged]

Yeah I agree, and I didn't really write this article to point the finger at walmart necessarily, so much as point out that Doug Altner and the ayn rand institute are very misguided when they defend these company's (I've written articles on objectivist defenses of Goldman Sachs, mcdonalds, and walmart now) actions and policy's on free market grounds, as if this is how a free market works.

[moralist]

Notice the source of the complaints in the about WalMart in the article:

"Walmart “can easily afford to pay $15 an hour,” says Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at U. C. Berkeley

(...a useless government academic parasite who produces NOTHING)

...who is also urging shoppers to “oycott Walmart on the most important sales day of the year, November 29.”

“Their net income was $17 billion,” says Vincent Orange, a D.C. city councilman

(a useless government bureaucratic parasite who produces NOTHING)

...who voted to force Walmart to pay a minimum wage of $12.50 per hour in the nation’s capital, adding, “You don’t want to share a little bit with the citizens? Come on.

” OUR Walmart—a union-backed activist group—

(useless government public union parasites who produce NOTHING)

...accuses the company of showing disrespect to its employees because it doesn’t pay so-called living wages."

Greg

[studiodekadent]

Yeah I agree, and I didn't really write this article to point the finger at walmart necessarily, so much as point out that Doug Altner and the ayn rand institute are very misguided when they defend these company's (I've written articles on objectivist defenses of Goldman Sachs, mcdonalds, and walmart now) actions and policy's on free market grounds, as if this is how a free market works.

Good point. Many O'ists are too reflexive to defend a big business, because they subconsciously seem to assume they must have gotten wealthy by market means alone.

This is obviously untrue and many libertarians have correctly taken them to task over the issue. From what I know, Walmart benefits quite substantially from Emminent Domain, which is an atrocious crime against property rights.

[moralist]

Blaming a firm for existing in a corporatist economy is akin to blaming a child for being born to wealthy parents (assuming the firm did not create the corporatism in the first place).

A successful business possess the ability to creatively adapt to the economic environment created by government taxation, regulation, and litigation.

Greg

[Mark]

When the SNAP system ( welfare-food stamp cards) broke down, unable to determine if a card’s limit had been reached, Walmart wanted EBT people’s "business" so badly they gave them carte blanche. Read about it here.

What’s losing a few thousand dollars, or whatever it was, compared to billions? In the state of Oklahoma alone Walmart sells about a quarter billion dollars per year through SNAP.

Today’s Walmart is not the same business founded by Sam Walton.

[moralist]

When the SNAP system ( welfare-food stamp cards) broke down, unable to determine if a card’s limit had been reached, Walmart wanted EBT people’s "business" so badly they gave them carte blanche.

I think that was a smart business risk managment decision. I believe management weighed the compensated damage from a greedy shopping spree against the uncompensated damage from refusing to sell to angry entitled ingrates.

Greg

[caroljane]

Any thoughts on why Walmart has been such a spectacular failure in Canada?

[caroljane]

I meant Target but the Editor won't let me change it.

[moralist]

You might consider trying another browser. With Internet Explorer I lost the ability to use the tool bar, then the edit function, then lost the quote function, then cut and paste, and used the HTML button for quotes, and then even lost the HTML button.

So I now use Google Chrome just for this forum and it works great.

Greg