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Originally Posted by roachboy
1. your argument about abusive labor practices appears to be "so what?"
your demonstration is effectively "everybody does this so who cares about it?"
this is a bizarre claim.
you could say the same thing about---o i dont know--murder. there are lots of murders, so who cares whether a particular outfit kills more people than others--people die all the time--so who cares?
this hardly seems like a rational response to criticisms of walmart's labor practices.
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I do care about violations of the law. I agree that Walmart has violated the law. I agree that Walmart should pay a price for violating the law. I think major corporations who have a blatant disregard for the law should be put out of business. Walmart has 1.8 million employees. Walmart does not have a blatant disregard for the law.
I agree if I get a speeding ticket when eveyone else is speeding, the fact I got the ticket means I broke the law and saying everyone else was doing it is not a defense. But that doesn't mean I am a bad citezen simply because I got a speeding ticket, or does it?
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2. you say that unions are conducting a campaign against poor beleagured walmart because they have the audacity to demand something like fair treatment of workers--but you do not care about fair treatment of workers (derived from the above) and so see in unions nothing but an obstacle to the race to the bottom in terms of working conditions. please do not respond with the usual far right litany of "arguments" about why unions in general are evil--the fact is that conservatives dislike unions primarily because unions oppose them politically--nothing else the right has to say abot unions is of the slightest interest to me.
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Walmart is using tactics against the Unions. And the Unions are using tactics against Walmart. Walmart is winning. It is a war. I just want people to understand that Walmart will try to manipulate public opinion, but so will Unions.
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3. walmart's supply chain is the core of their competitive advantage over other retailers. that supply chain is INCREDIBLY capital intensive. what it effectively does is give walmart an economy of scale advantage over other retail chains. it is what we call an uneven playing field, to use a tedious econ 101 metaphor. you cannot pretend that away, even though doing so makes walmart fit better into your mythological view of captialist markets.
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If "mom and pop" try to compete against Walmart based on price or their supply chain, they are idiots. All they need to do is pick a weakness and exploit that, like knowledgable sales staffs who can actually help cusomers or perhaps higher quality merchandise, etc.
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3. walmarts buying strategies, fit into the context of their supply chain organization, is one of the major sources of worker abuse. walmart's practices with employees are right on the edge of unethical as well. walmart operates within a transnational context that is rapdily moving away from the friedmanite position that you appear to think legitimate. this approach has been abandoned because, quite simply, it is catastrophic for business. have a look at the global reporting initiative database of csr audits to get an idea of just how far from the friedmanite shareholder profit uber alles posture most rational tncs have now moved.
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You call it worker abuse. The facts support Walmart does want is common practice in the industry.
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i would think that walmart would pose problems for your freemarketeer logic in that they act like a monopoly--and hayek had nothing good to say about monopolies.
that is all for now
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i don't shop at Walmart. They are not a monopoly. I respect the history of the company and how Sam Walton turned grew the company