> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Nick Arnett > Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 11:19 AM > To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion > Subject: Re: Wal-Mart and more L4 > > I'm interpreting everything your wrote about ethics as agreement that it > isn't simply a cost-benefit analysis. Right?
I agree it isn't simply a cost benefit analysis. But, I also argue that costs and benefits must both be considered. The ends do not always justify the means. But, the ends sometimes justifies the means. > > > > Now, back to Wal-Mart. Looking at the last 20 years of Wal-Mart.....the > > company philosophy seems evident to me. I've read a wide range of > > analysis > > of their techniques and the corporate culture of Wal-Mart was > consistently > > named as cutting prices by cutting costs. Corporations are all there to > > make > > money, certainly. But, they have different ways of doing it. Some are > > the > > tech leaders: high prices for the latest and the best. Wal-Mart chose > the > > low price route to profit. It's a low margin means, but can be very > > successful. > > >You're not speaking to the point. If I had postulated that cost-cutting >is bad, then your arguments would be appropriate. Cost-cutting is not >bad. Economic efficiency is not bad. But bad methods can be used to cut >costs and improve efficiency. My objection is their aggressiveness in >achieving their efficiency -- pushing wages too low too fast, paying women >less than men, hiring illegals, cutting benefits, busting unions, >abandoning vendors the moment somebody makes a cheaper version, etc. OK, reduced pay is a bad thing, reduced prices are a good thing. Increased pay is a good thing, increased prices are a bad thing. Inflation gives us a good way of seeing that. If the CPI goes up 6% and my wages go up 3% that's bad. If the CPI goes down 6% and my wages go down 3%, that's a good thing. To, me the question with WalMart is which predominates. Quoting http://www.americanprogress.org/kf/walmart_progressive.pdf <quote> There is little dispute that Wal-Mart's price reductions have benefited the 120 million American workers employed outside of the retail sector. Plausible estimates of the magnitude of the savings from Wal-Mart are enormous - a total of $263 billion in 2004, or $2,329 per household.2 Even if you grant that Wal-Mart hurts workers in the retail sector - and the evidence for this is far from clear - the magnitude of any potential harm is small in comparison. One study, for example, found that the "Wal-Mart effect" lowered retail wages by $4.7 billion in 2000.3 <end quote> We are talking about factors of 100 differences in benefits/harm. This analysis is similar to what I've seen elsewhere. Now, given the unfortunate politicization of economic analysis, it is fair to wonder how biased is the study one is quoting. I will argue that there are failures on both the left and the right on this. But, the author of the long analysis I am quoting is not a dittohead, he has worked for Democrats. So, he analysis of Wal-Mart should not be put in the same category as Heritage Foundation position papers (many of which I can find the flaws within 30 seconds....they're that bad). Further, if you look at the main page of the website, http://www.americanprogress.org/ I think it's fair to say that the American Progressive is at the very least a centrealist website. > Perhaps all of this will add up to a better economy in the end, but > where's the end and what about the effects of the transition? The argument is not that, if it were it would be suspect. It's that the net effects of Wal-Mart have been measured for the last 20 years (I remember reading my first economic analysis of this in the NYT while I still lived in CT, so that was at least 16 years ago. In one analysis, Wal-Mart was credited with half of the productivity improvement (productivity is not increased BTW by lowering workers salaries) during the 1990s. The transformation of retail America during the '90s is considered by a number of mainstream economists as a significant part of the productivity improvement that Wal-Mart led. You argued before that you are a stats guy too. I didn't realize it because I didn't see number crunching in your posts...so I didn't understand that. But, I'd be very happy with >Rapidly abandoning a > vendor because there's a cheaper version available is certainly good > economics, but it is not good for people. In stating that, you are stating something that directly flies in the face of mainstream economics. First, I'm not sure what rapidly means, but contracts for a million of this or that don't turn on a dime.....the new vender _has_ to have time to gear up for WalMart like demand. Competition on price is one of the foundations of a market economy. Alternatives that have been tried have almost always turned out to be costly for all but a lucky few. >May I simply call it heartless >or is having a heart not acceptable in a discussion of business? Where >does the idea of treating people decently fit into this discussion? Well, I really differ with you on that. My main customer (consulting 140 hours/month with them) decided to terminate my contract six months early because I completed a task ahead of the original schedule and they made decisions about turning to another project far before I thought they would. There were no questions about the quality of my work, the just decided to go in a different direction and used the convenience clause in our contract to cut it short by 6 months. I had planned on those 6 months of work to set up a transition to the life my wife and I would have when she had a call and I would move with her and consult by long distance. It is a scary challenge for me, I'll be confessional in admitting it. Yet, when I turn in my badge, key, and flash drives containing all the files I've created working for them in today, I will shake the hands of the folks involved and still consider them good Christians....even though the early termination leaves my finances shaky (having kids and a wife in expensive schools and expensive cities really contributes to that. I wouldn't think of calling the Christian ethics of the person who made the decision to cut my contract short into question. I still have the same high personal opinion of him that I had when I first discussed our mutual faith with him over a year ago. > > This clearly is debatable. OK, debate it, then....give me the numbers and a way to assign a probability to their verisimilitude and I'd be happy to reconsider my understanding. You've seen my biggest source, feel free to find others. But, I would suggest that I consider the anti-Wal-mart websites as having the same bias problems as places like the Heritage Foundation. >And it ignores Wal-Mart's objection to > expansion of Medicaid, which is the only health care available to many of its > workers. Research clearly shows that when Wal-Mart enters a market, more > people end up on Medicaid, especially children. That bit of economic > efficiency is costing everybody money. It certainly isn't free market > economics when the state subsidizes a corporation. My big source counters this....and says that the data are in the noise. Further, even if this were true, if the economic benefits of Wal-Mart were only a tithe of that given in his report, then Wal-Mart would still see a net benefit. I googled for other discussions that were not clearly biased and found a few: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200606/wal-mart (I dismissed a WSJ article...it seemed slanted tome). http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/01/the-wal-mart-ef.htm l There are plenty of analysis....I like the questions and the table in the article I quoted at length....but I don't see the articles from sources that aren't obviously biased as inconsistent with what I saw. > I didn't respond to your Buckley reference about getting down in the mud > with the little people, but now I will. It is obvious that I didn't convey my meaning properly there. The getting down in the mud with the regular folks was not an economic argument....it was more a willingness to engage the other persons arguments....Personally, I have pulled my hair out when you answer what I considered well crafted ethical arguments with a story of your experience as a EMT (if I got the acronym right) and the pronouncement that you had to experience something like this to understand. That pretty well eliminated anything that I could write in response. So, the conversation ended. My kvetch was that it was as if you issued these statements from on high...and I had nothing to grapple with. > I started to write about my > upbringing and everything I have done to stay connected with and respond > to > the least-served here and abroad... but it sounded too much like a brag > sheet. I'll just say this -- please stop painting yourself as down in the > dirt with ordinary people and me as a rich snob. It's way off base and > has no place in this discussion. The down-in-the-dirt idea is not a pronouncement of my far superior understanding of what it's like to be poor. I'm upper middle class, (well, at least until today. :-) ), I have a very sellable skill set, and have faith I can make probably make an income in the future that keeps me from needing to shop at Wal-Mart to make ends meet. Let me give this example....you know Gautam has elite credentials up the Wazoo...Soros Fellow, Harvard Graduate with high recs from some of the greatest lights in the field of international relations (one who held a diametrically opposite political view from Gautam), youngest project manager at the JFK school of government, McKenzie analysist, and grad student in international affairs at MIT with great prospects of publishing significant papers in major journals. Quite a brag sheet, huh? The point of giving it is that I have always considered him willing to get down in the mud and wrestle with me. We remain friends, even though we are lucky to see each other once a year, at least partially because we enjoy the process of learning by wrestling with a worthy opponent. So, my main kvetch is not that you don't know the poverty I know. Personally, I haven't know poverty...my dad had a good working class job when I was growing up and we were by no means poor. I am just blessed in that I get/got to live intimately with folks who are among the working poor, who's homeland is desperately poor, and with folks who couldn't afford a car to have ready for a baby's delivery. If you have been similarly blessed, that's wonderful....and I'd be more than happy to listen to the lessons you have learned in the process...and to have you relay what your views are. The criticism that remains is my view that the Bay Area is a rich person's area where I think it is easy to lose perspective there. When I visit there, the attitude blew me away. My daughter has picked up on it....and I know she feels that there is a smugness in SF that she has not seen up in Wisconsin where she went to school. I think that is fair game for discussion....just as I would think that criticism of Houston and Texas viewpoints would be fair game. Finally, I can see how you could read me as having accused you of being a rich snob who wouldn't lower himself to hang with poor folks. While that's not and has not been my point, I can see how that could be an interpretation....and I apologize for any hurt I may have caused by writing in a manner that could be seen as insulting. FWIW, I have often felt the same way with your posts, that you are the real non-self righteous Christian who's transcended all that nonsense and really loves other people. I saw that leaving me as, at best, supporting those who love money first and worshiping efficiency ahead of God. What I would want as a next step is for us to argue out the facts that would inform moral decisions concerning the role of Wal-Mart in society and to realize that in such a moral discussion, we will both bring up points that will sound to the other as statements of moral superiority. It's clear we differ....so it goes without saying that I think you are blind to some things and you think I am blind to others. My metaphor of wrestling in the mud was an attempt to indicate a mutual acceptance of this limitation and a proposed way of handling it. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
