The_Gallant_Gallstone

But Enron broke the law. Walmart has been justifiably called down when they broke the law (discriminating against females, etc.).

What I'm talking about are the posters that want to expand the law to punish Walmart.

ALL HAIL THE INVISIBLE HAND!

xX hhallahh Xx: Geotpf: Say I get asmtha or lung cancer or whatever from all the cars and factories that, in a Libertarian world, wouldn't be forced by the government to install pollution controls. My choice would be (after I get sick, instead of preventing it in the first place by having less pollution due to government mandated pollution controls) to sue each and every factory and car owner for the .^A% of the amount they caused my illness. It's ridiculous, and so is pure Libertarianism.

Yea, well, thankfully, that's why I'm not a pure libertarian.

If we were discussing pollution regulations, I wouldn't go down this line of argument. But if we're discussing price controls and whatnot? It's different. If you want to knock down dogmatic libertarianism, great.

Yup, that's what I want to do. I said "pure Libertarianism" for a reason. I actually have some libertarian leanings, and am absolutely against price controls and the like. But I believe that government can do good sometimes, and this is one of those times.

whidbey: jsteiner78: whidbey seems like a real knuckle dragger. Did you finish high school? You don't seem to have any basic knowledge about the world you live in, just some irrational fears about evil business people knocking you out of your comfort zone.

Your comment is completely uncalled for.

some people don't know how to debate in a mature manner.

Having worked at a grocery store ($7 an hour starting pay for a 16 year old), looked into Wal-Mart for a college job (offering around $8 starting to anyone), and then into a Mom & Pop store ($6-7 an hour to a twenty year old, refused to hire someone who was 16) I think a lot of people have romantic and inaccurate ideas about the labor market.

Geotpf: Here's what Ron Paul thinks about pollution:

Wait a second. You think Ron Paul is a libertarian? A staunch pro-lifer is a Libertarian?

He's closer than Bush, but a Libertarian he ain't.

Perhaps government regulation could favor small businesses instead?

Geotpf: I said "pure Libertarianism" for a reason.

yup, pure libertarianism would work about as well as pure liberalism or pure conservatism. Like Ron Paul's idea about using tort law instead of product safety or pollution legislation. It would be a nightmare, either companies with deep pockets and good lawyers would get away with murder, or if you made it too easy to sue and win, then no business could exist long because of bullshiat judgments.

Say what you will, Wal-Mart has dirty, crowded stores filled with cheap, shoddy, Chinese-made crap. The people shopping there usually seem to be the dregs of society. The icing on the cake is the consistently incompetent customer "service."

This alone is more than enough to make me shop at Target or Costco instead.

Katzenjammer: Say what you will, Wal-Mart has dirty, crowded stores filled with cheap, shoddy, Chinese-made crap. The people shopping there usually seem to be the dregs of society. The icing on the cake is the consistently incompetent customer "service."

Wow, you must buy your Oreos at Neiman's.

This alone is more than enough to make me shop at Target or Costco instead.

Guess not. You're uppity white trash. Gots youself a job paying more than minimum, and you ain't goin back to no Wal Marts.

mmm... pancake: whidbey: Regulation only happens because corporations can't control their piggish, greedy behavior.

Regulations helps big business. It raises the cost of doing business which big business can absorb while small businesses suffer.

And without said regulation, small business doesn't stand a chance.

See above.

Umm, Cuyahoga river? Most regulatory agencies with 3-4 letters got their start because corporations couldn't police themselves. They got laws and regulations out of repeated bad behaviour. I never cease to be amazed how amazingly stupid people are. What? Americans can't people read history anymore? Yeesh.

I personally don't like Socialist-Mart or Commie Club, and will not shop there. Not because of some imagined evil, but due to corporate decisions. Two quick examples... They obtain large tax breaks, using my (sic) tax monies, teach their workers to use social services rather than provide benefits themselves, using my tax monies again. Socialist-Mart & Commie Club should be charged an extra tax just for those two alone. They'd have the choice of: 1) Discontinuing the practices, therein discontinuing the need for extra tax, 2) Suck it up as the cost of doing business and let it eat into their bottom line, or 3) Passing it on in their prices, which would make them less able to compete on price alone.

/defend them comrade
//Socialist-Mart and Commie Club are accurate names...

inglixthemad: Most regulatory agencies with 3-4 letters got their start because corporations couldn't police themselves. They got laws and regulations out of repeated bad behaviour. I never cease to be amazed how amazingly stupid people are. What? Americans can't people read history anymore? Yeesh.

Thank you. I feel somewhat vindicated...:)

While I don't shop at WalMart for my own reasons, everyone should marvel at their integrated shipping / inventory system - that's a solid part of why they can have the low prices they do (in addition to some crappy stuff). It was really ingenious when first put into place.

Secondly, I always find it funny that there's a huge overlap between the people who decry the loss of 1950s America prudishness and social norms, and those who espouse the "mom and pops are dead, Main St USA is dead, WalMart's the future, get with it" mentality.

When Wal-Mart fires Montgomery Burns and lets their workers have a union and proper healthcare, then I'll shop there. Until then, my boycott continues.

/Six years since they came to my hometown. Never shopped there.
//Target is prettier, anyway.

Thats Right Youre Not From Texas: Geotpf: Here's what Ron Paul thinks about pollution:

Wait a second. You think Ron Paul is a libertarian? A staunch pro-lifer is a Libertarian?

He's closer than Bush, but a Libertarian he ain't.

The Libertarian Party takes no stance on abortion, either way. You could make a libertarian argument either way-it depends on whether or not a fetus is a human being or not. If you think it is, a libertarian would say abortion is murder and should be against the law. If you think it isn't, a libertarian would think a woman should have the right to do with her body whatever she wants to.

What DOES bug me about Wally World is how they're always switching the store layout.

I know what you're up to, and it won't work!!!! I'm not going to buy a big bucket of pickles just because it's next the the Ketchup I'm buying.

And I'd also like to say that I agree on the Costco props. They kick some major monkey arse. Maybe becaused they're based in the Pacific Northwest. Stinking commie hippies and their idiotic ideas about fair wages and all that malarky.

Oh, and Ron Paul was the Libertarian Party's 1988 presidential nominee.

Geotpf: Oh, and Ron Paul was the Libertarian Party's 1988 presidential nominee.

And has been an Independent or Republican ever since. He ran on that ticket because it was the only chance he had.

He's like Phil Gramm and half the southern Republicans out there. They all used to be something else.

YMMV when working at a "mom and pop" store. My family has owned a hardware store since 1932, and the business traces its roots back to 1800. We pay our staff decent wages (full time gets $15 to $20 per hours) plus we pay 80% of health care premiums, provide two weeks vacation, and have a pension and bonus plan in place. Government regulation can be a pain...when I started working at age 14 I used to cut keys, operate a conveyor belt, thread pipe, and other tasks that were and are illegal for anyone under 18 to do according to the state. We got fined a few years ago so now we don't hire teens for anything other than cashier.

Anyway, rambling a bit, but I partially agree with the author. I think Wal*Mart and the government are both destroying the independent retailers.

when i was in college, the only reason i would ever go into walmart was to steal batteries.

/those things are expensive when you're broke

Wanted For Questioning

Thats Right Youre Not From Texas: Geotpf: Oh, and Ron Paul was the Libertarian Party's 1988 presidential nominee.

And has been an Independent or Republican ever since. He ran on that ticket because it was the only chance he had.

He's like Phil Gramm and half the southern Republicans out there. They all used to be something else.

Name one issue where Paul's views differ significantly from the Libertarian Party's. I double dare you. Then list the 10,572 (approx.) issues where they are the same.

Katzenjammer: Say what you will, Wal-Mart has dirty, crowded stores filled with cheap, shoddy, Chinese-made crap. The people shopping there usually seem to be the dregs of society. The icing on the cake is the consistently incompetent customer "service."

This alone is more than enough to make me shop at Target or Costco instead.

Costco is a Wal-mart owned company.

inglixthemad: Umm, Cuyahoga river? Most regulatory agencies with 3-4 letters got their start because corporations couldn't police themselves. They got laws and regulations out of repeated bad behaviour. I never cease to be amazed how amazingly stupid people are. What? Americans can't people read history anymore? Yeesh.

What? An American river is polluted? Say it ain't so!

Pollution is what is called an "externality." I think a sensible libertarian should be able to see the need for government intervention there.

And I'm always amazed by people who call others ignorant because they aren't informed about a particular event/place/person. There's another term in economics: rational ignorance. In this case, it's not worth my time to care about the Cuyahoga River. Did you know the James River is polluted? As is every other river that I've personally lived near? No? Well then, you must be an ignorant sheep. Allow me to chortle at your expense. Saying that Americans "don't read history" (how much history should they read? which books?) because an event you care about is not common knowledge is not logical.

It's funny reading these responses, I live in Cuyahoga Falls, yup home of the major airport in Tommy Boy, and Jack Lemmon's presidental library. At anyrate, The over running of concrete in the city has ruined most of the homes. The problem is, when it rains, 3/4 of the cities houses flood. They blame it on what is knows as a "100 year storm" bull, it is too much concrete, I live near the top of a hill (10th street for those of you taking count) and every heavy rain our basement becomes a swimming pool.

nstoppiello: Katzenjammer: Say what you will, Wal-Mart has dirty, crowded stores filled with cheap, shoddy, Chinese-made crap. The people shopping there usually seem to be the dregs of society. The icing on the cake is the consistently incompetent customer "service."

This alone is more than enough to make me shop at Target or Costco instead.

Costco is a Wal-mart owned company.

No, that's Sam's Club. Costco is an independent company.

I like my Chinese Torture Socks and will continue to by them at Wal-Mart.

84Charlie: I like my Chinese Torture Socks and will continue to by them at Wal-Mart.

Chinese Torture Socks. That was a great thread. (Or did it become a meme? I was hoping it would, but it didn't seem to catch on.)

mmm... pancake: At the expense of smaller businesses who can't afford a minimum wage increase.

whidbey: If a small business can't even pay its employees anything above minimum wage in the first place, they've got more problems that just the Wal Marts of the world.

I'm going to agree with Whidbey there. I work for a small 30-employee security company, and I get about $11 an hour (just to start, I'm due for a raise within a month or two). The minimum wage in my state is up to about $7.50 or so. The company has grown so much, in fact, that over the weekend they just moved into a new office.

They seem to keep up with paying their employees over the minimum wage just fine. All depends on how you run the business, I suppose.

xX hhallahh Xx: Claiming that libertarians want to overturn fraud laws is pretty much as absurd as saying they want to overturn murder laws.

Those are pretty clear examples of corporate regulation. I have a thousand more that were fought for with blood, like the 40 hour workweek, safe working conditions, minimum wage, outlawing of corporate script, monopoly laws, anti-union-busting laws, product safety standards, environmental regulations, the list goes on and on.

These laws were created after industrial-age labor disasters, some of which occurred less than 100 years ago.

I was not making a strawman for the Libertarian party, I could not care less what they do or don't want to overturn. I didn't mention Libertarianism, you did.

Framing this as a big business/mom-and-pop debate is beside the point.

This article and the resulting discussion is why I feel every American ought to take a course in basic financial business principles, including basic accounting, basic corporate finance, and basic microeconomics.

I'm saying this not to be chiding, but because I didn't understand any of this stuff once upon a time either and was taken to knee-jerk "Wal Mart is bad and they took r jarbs!" statements too. But most people don't get economics, and consequently, they make stupid decisions, which is evident here.

whidbey: inglixthemad: Most regulatory agencies with 3-4 letters got their start because corporations couldn't police themselves. They got laws and regulations out of repeated bad behaviour. I never cease to be amazed how amazingly stupid people are. What? Americans can't people read history anymore? Yeesh.

Thank you. I feel somewhat vindicated...:)

You shouldn't. Large corporations have the resources to fight rulings that don't go their way. They can avoid paying the cost of environmental messes they make for decades by hurling enough lawyers in the way. Small businesses can't. So, what these regulatory agencies get you is a false sense of security.

To me, the byzantine legal system and regulatory structure we have is a violation of the 14th amendment. When nobody can tell you for sure if you're paying the right amount in income taxes, we have a problem. I can't afford an army of lawyers to help me exploit the system. If I was a member of the Walton clan, I'm sure I could.

What I'm saying is, I favor a simpler, more transparent system. One that we can actually follow. What we have is a Kafkaesque nightmare.

"People who decry the Wal-Mart-ification of America need to realize that regulation often does more harm to local businesses than predatory pricing, loss-leader business models, or some other imagined corporate evil."

Oh really? Beacuse people who DON"T decry the walmartification of America are farking idiots who will live to regret it. Unfortunately.

nstoppiello: Costco is a Wal-mart owned company.

A a shareholder and frequent Costco shopper I would like to inform you that they are most certainly NOT owned by Wal-Mart, who, not coincidentally, has not seen a dollar of mine in over 15 years.

Wal Mart sucks GOP dick and now, finally, they're the ones taking it in the ass

That's funny. It's Hillary (Hilda) Clinton that used to sit on the Wal-Mart Board of Directors. Oh yeah, she forgot to tell everyone about that, right?

whidbey: mmm... pancake: People like yourself are the economic equivalent of anti-evolutionists. All the evidence is staring them in the face, but they choose to bury their heads in the sand because it doesn't jive with their personal beliefs.

I'm not the one who buys into the crap the article is peddling. It's you.

Regulation ONLY HAPPENS because companies don't play fair. THE ONLY reason. And they still whine when they don't make the money they wanted because of fines, extra taxes and lawsuits.

Small business thrives because of the smackdowns to big business: they depend on it.

Whidbey, seriously. What kind of an economics background do you have? You are arguing against things that are commonly accepted in the economics world.

JohnBigBootay: "People who decry the Wal-Mart-ification of America need to realize that regulation often does more harm to local businesses than predatory pricing, loss-leader business models, or some other imagined corporate evil."

Oh really? Beacuse people who DON"T decry the walmartification of America are farking idiots who will live to regret it. Unfortunately.

Uh huh. Call me in 10 years when someone has co-opted Wal*Mart's business model or found a better one. Booga booga.

Good job capitalizing your apostrophe, btw.

Ain't capitalistic, liberal democracy a biatch?

I just came in here to check if someone pulled a "for a magazine that calls itself Reason..."

I'm very disappointed.

Vacaboi: Good job capitalizing your apostrophe, btw.

The only people dumber than those who want to over-regulate business are the ones who oppose all regulation. You do not have to be a genius to understand that there is some comfortable balance between allowing "free enterprise" and allowing a company to abuse its workers, create monopolies, and pay off elected officials.

"Socialism" vs. "free market" is a false dichotomy.

A bigger threat to consumers is collusion and price-fixing (a la OPEC).

In the UK, the unofficial motto for business to business is "I won't drop my prices if You don't drop your prices. Together we'll SCREW the consumer as much as we can because he has nowhere to go!"

This is a cultural thing in the UK...it's just not "cricket" to screw your competitors, old chap!

In N. America, the businesses all try to screw each other by predatory pricing.

That is why stuff costs so much more in the UK than the US or Canada.

am i the only one here thinking that what is written in this article is not what is being discussed in this thread?
local Businesses fail in "old town" for the same reason they fail in any popular mid scale commercial area. Rent.
Small businesses do not have access to the highly efficient business models,advertising, and resources that chain stores have. When an area becomes popular rents increase, and as a result small business owners find themselves with little room for error inside there profit margins. Problem is, small businesses make lots of errors and often find it difficult to attract new customers as their cost to operate increases. eventually it makes more sense for them to take a chance and move to a cheaper side of town where the economics are more forgiving. In comes star bucks with name recognition, a decent product, and a rock solid business model and away we go

Mr. Coffee Nerves
"eat steaming bowls of monkey ass"

Is this quick-cooking monkey ass, microwaveable monkey ass in it's own bowl, or regular monkey ass from scratch?

gotta write that down... classic... still laughing 3 hours later...

El_Dan:
The only people dumber than those who want to over-regulate business are the ones who oppose all regulation. You do not have to be a genius to understand that there is some comfortable balance between allowing "free enterprise" and allowing a company to abuse its workers, create monopolies, and pay off elected officials raise a mercenary army and blow up its competitors' headquarters.

That's what no regulation gets you. Regulation = laws, it's that simple. Why should people's behaviour be governed by laws, but corporations' should not? If it's an "unfair restriction" to tell a company what the least it can pay is, how it it a fair restriction to tell them they can't murder and steal for profit?

We buy lots of stuff from Walmart. The service isn't the most impressive in the world, but we don't go there for witty reparte, we go there to buy inexpensive goods. Yes, the employees aren't paid much, and yes, the government covers their health insurance (which it shouldn't, blame the liberals), but who are these employees? People who aren't qualified for better jobs. Better to have them working minimum wage or whatever, than not working at all.

Why don't all of you statists just move to North Korea?