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Tim must be out of town.
I'm going to drag this back to St. Paul.
I'm not crazy about WalMart - but I think since we have a big building there already, there'll be no harm done if WalMart thinks they can make a go of it. I suspect they'll do just fine.
What worries me is not so much the specious distinction between Democracy and Capitalism - neither can exist without the other, and they're both toast without *the rule of law* and *respect for private property*.
No, what bothers me most is this notion that "democracy" is "a bunch of people who do nothing but agitate about whatever issues are fashionable making signs and picketing a store" - or to get at what Paul said, "deciding what's best for the rest of us".
Saint Paul - and this list - are awash in this line of thought; "the great unwashed masses are too knotted up about the Vikings and Rush Limbaugh to have the kinds of consciences we do - so we'll have to do it FOR them."
Does Walmart - or any big box retailer - extinguish local business? I talked with my local hardware store owner. He says he can't wait for Menards; having a big hardware store nearby (but not TOO nearby) is usually good for the small hardware store.
When I first moved to the Midway (1987, and STILL the best neighborhood in StPaul), there was Rainbow, and a ratty little supermarket (which sat idle and empty for years), and a rattier corner store, and the various convenience stores. Now, we have Rainbow AND Cub, and the corner store has made a big comeback in the neighborhood itself, with several independants springing up in the past few years (even as the dreaded chain convenience stores have also multiplied), catering to people who may have fought the lines to buy their staples at Cub, but are willing to pay extra to avoid doing it again for the things they forgot...
So will WalMart drive the local corner clothing or kitchenware store out of business? Dunno - we don't have one.
As to the other concerns about WalMart; do they promote "sweatshops"? Perhaps - and it's likely as not that the "sweatshops" are no worse, and quite possibly better (as a result of foreign scrutiny) than the jobs people do on the local economy. That leaves aside, of course, the paternalistic notion that "we" (and by "we" I mean a bunch of Volvo-driving perpetual indignants and government employees from St. Paul) should decide that all those foreigners would be better off working their rice paddies than making shoes for Nike. For that matter, it's interesting that the people who are most indignant about "sweatshops" are even MORE indignant about the notion of exporting American democracy and the concomitant GENUINE rule of law and free market to the countries whose laws and (usually) dictatorships thrive on the wretched status quo.
Pollution? That's the thing that eludes most Greens; worrying about the environment is ONLY possible in societies that have enough economic growth to generate enough wealth that enough people have enough leisure time to think about things like environments. Ugandan coffee farmers and Chiapan goatherds and Bangladeshi maggot ranchers don't tend to join groups like the Green Party, because they are busy working from 5AM to 9PM for survival. And what is the *only* system in history that has generated enough wealth to allow a generation of Volvo-driving perpetual indignants and coffee-swilling [*] poli-sci majors to natter on about things like the environment and social justice? I don't wanna keep seeing the same hands, here.
Does WalMart offer sub"standard" wages? Compared to what? Tell you what - if you want to fix that, join me in going to WalMart and taking the workers aside and asking if they'd mind us teaching them how to fix cars or build houses or process mortgage loans or program .NET applications. What sort of responses do you think we'll get? Seriously - why are these people there, if it's so bad?
Back to St. Paul; I've had my fill of my neighbors deciding what business are or are not "good" for "society". Ten years ago, a bunch of self-appointed, self-righteous, self-aggrandizing, self-glorifying "activists" launched a two pronged campaign of back-room influence-mongering and personal smears to drive an honest man and good, local businessman - Greg Perkins of St. Paul Firearms - out of business. "Democracy" in action in Saint Paul - a pack of moral brownshirts smearing and attacking a guy who'd put his life's savings into an honest, rigorously code-compliant business based on their superstitions and petty (and groundless) fears.
So thank you very much, I've had enough of the way my neighbors apply "democracy" to the market in St. Paul. Given a choice between Walmart and the usual opposition, I'll take Walmart.
Mitch Berg Da Midway!
Shot In The Dark Real Democracy in Action http://www.mitchberg.com/shotindark/
[*] ...and why IS it that coffee-shop coffee from the likes of Dunn Brothers and Ginkgo et al - the fuel of the perpetually indignant and the dispossessed college kid with the $75,000 degree who so despise capitalism - is always grown in countries with the most noxious, repressive governments? Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Indonesia and East African banana republics with human rights records that'd make Human Rights Watch pine for the good old days of Batista all supply the caffeine that warms the organic-alpaca-clad hordes on their way to the vigil protesting our "barbaric conquest" of Iraq. Whither reason?
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