X-Message-Number: 28049
From: "egg plant" <>
Subject: Things are better now
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 16:30:18 +0000

Anthony ." <>

>Wal-Mart has driven smaller retailers out of business;

True of course, but the way you phrase it you almost make that sound like a 
bad thing.

>forced manufacturers to move manufacturing jobs overseas

Make up your mind! First you complain that rich countries are too greedy 
then you want to move jobs from poor countries to rich countries.

>in a typical United States county, when a Wal-Mart
>opens, three other retailers close within two years and four > close within 
>five years.

Good. It means consumers have voted with their dollars and have decided they 
like Wal-Mart better than mom and pop stores.

>at the cost of exploiting the workers.

And if competent employees were really being mistreated they would vote with 
their feet.

>They get $3.33 a day under contract to the Walt Disney Company to make 
>those cute, cheap Pocahantas pajamas > that make your daughter feel like a 
>princess.

It's obvious you think this is dreadful, but sweat shops like this are a 
poor country's only hope. Cheap labor is the only asset Hate has and you 
want corporations to take that away.  Unless they are running a charity 
nobody will pay a pay a worker more than $3.33 a day unless they make more 
than that for their employer, you can cry and scream and blubber about that 
fact all you like but it won't change, it's like complaining about gravity.  
Righteous indignation, the natural state of most socialist minded liberals, 
will not feed one belly.

>Don't you think WM could afford to pay its worker's just a > little more?

Suppose I run such a place making pajamas and pay my 1000 workers 40 cents 
an hour. Am I a villain? I don't think so. My workers are delighted and 
envied by their friends because the alternative to 40 cents an hour is zero 
cents an hour. I am delighted because I am making a very nice profit. And 
Wal-Mart customers are delighted because they get a some nice pajamas at a 
reasonable price. It's not a zero sum game, it's a win win game.

Or would it be more moral of me to fire 9 workers out of 10 and pay the 
remaining ones 4$ an hour ? Yes I know, I should pay all 1000 workers 4$ an 
hour, but I simply wouldn't have the money to do that because nobody would 
buy my pajamas,  nobody could afford them. My expenses would be the same as 
before but my output would only be 10% of what is was, so I'd have to charge 
10 times more than what I did before for my product, but at that price 
nobody at Wal-Mart will buy it. Thus whatever my intentions I no longer have 
the money to pay my remaining employees 4 dollars an hour, or even 40 cents 
an hour, they now make zero cents an hour and I'm dead broke too.  And this 
is the way to cure world poverty?

And yes, I do think it's a tragedy that somebody must live on 40 cents a 
hour, but the root of that tragedy is not some evil Wal-Mart conspiracy, the 
root cause is that the world does not have enough wealth, and the way to 
generate that wealth is the free market not grandiose government schemes or 
charity.

>When-ever I leave London I blow my nose to see how black the contents are. 
>It is always mostly black. [ .] This > average is meaningless.

Interesting. I give solid statistics showing that the air is getting cleaner 
but you say that is meaningless because the color of your snot proves it's 
getting worse. And by the way, please stop referring me to web pages with 
the breaking news that air pollution is a bad thing, I sort of figured that 
out for myself.

John K Clark

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=28049