|
so now we get the standard neo-liberal line about walmart of all things.
(a) cheap shit is good for poor folk. therefore walmart is a democratizing institution.
(b) externalizing costs by reducing the number of full-time employees as far as possible, assuming that folk can work and remain on welfare because the wages are so great and so get access to insurance--that's all good because in neo-liberal land all that matters is profits gathered by shareholders. following uncle milty, to even think about anything else is unethical. so this helps profits. so it is necessarily a social good.
(c) that wage levels are not social, that wages simply reflect the relation of abstract workin feller x to employer given in the way a rock is 1---this is too absurd to even bother attacking, once you leave the la-la land of econ 101 and its simple-minded hydraulic relations between supply and demand blah blah blah.
(d) predatory location practices, which have been heavily documented with respect to walmart, are all about profit generation and so are, like the above and everything else, a social good. no matter the consequences. profit uber alles.
(e) the actual practices used by walmart in enabling the cheap goods never seem to come up in neo-liberal land...the objects magically appear on shelves, aren't produced anywhere, aren't procured using cost-control measures that effectively force suppliers into breaking laws to do with labor & environment..no matter: those people are far away. that walmart uses an incredibly capital intensive inventory tracking system to outsource to the maximum possible extent, which represents a basic economy of scale advantage relative to the smaller business with walmart puts outta business--no matter in neo-liberal land. walmart is given, like a table or a rock.
on and on the same nonsense.
you can't even start with a social analysis using these ridiculous premises.
you can wave your hands around, but that's it.
this kind of "thinking" went a long way to pre-ordaining the implosion of neo-liberalism.
you'd think even conservatives would be by this nonsense.
apparently not.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|