Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/01/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]This is a good point, though there are two ways to look at it. The superficial rationalization is that economies of scale and low wages allow goods to be sold at prices significantly lower than what "mom-and-pop", or non-chain, non-discount stores have to charge. If the function of a retail store is to enable consumers to purchase goods, then so what if one-off retailers are pushed out of business by big-box stores? The point is to buy goods at the most economical price. Why should I pay more for a head of lettuce just to help keep a neighborhood grocery in business when I can save 20% by shopping at Sam's Club? I don't work 50 hours a week in order to have enough money to pay inefficient operations more than efficient ones for the same goods! The same applies to factory farms vs. family farms: What is my interest in paying hard-earned money to help to "preserve a uniquely American way of life, reminiscent of a more innocent era, embodying rural and earthy family values", yada yada yada. Times change! Societies evolve! They said the same thing about the demise of buggy makers and blacksmiths. Just get a grip on the facts of history and deal with it! I have to agree that all of the above is true, and I sympathize with it, but there's more to it. The more nuanced (and at the same time, perhaps paradoxically na??ve) realization is that some big-box discounters are not merely a passive conduit for goods and that bloodthirsty, take-no-prisoners personnel policies ignore the obligations of the successful and powerful in a complex symbiotic economy. Centralized chains that move huge amounts of goods can contract with the cheapest suppliers (e.g., China Inc., Nike, and all the others that make products that sell for huge multiples of the cost of materials and labor) for goods that largely replace domestically-produced equivalents. They are market-makers for goods, swinging a weight that can alter corporate policies (provoking offshore moves, for example) in the relentless quest for "shareholder value" (translation: corporate profit), as if that entity trumps all other considerations. This is Greg's "vicious circle of cheap imports and low-paying jobs". As for symbiosis and the obligation of the powerful: In a natural society, there is an inevitable stratification of talent and ability among individuals. If the vigor of an economy and the profitability of business result from a broad demand that is an emergent property of an extensively differentiated and specialized society in general, and depend on the existence of a mutually dependent system of economic and living interactions--and they do--then the existence and needs of lower strata must be accepted along with the opportunities for consumption and economic transaction afforded by the existence of relatively affluent consumers. In other words, a natural society that produces the opportunity to profit from selling to those who are able also produces those who are less able, and in some case unable. You can't have a natural population that consists of nothing but highly productive individuals. (This is not only natural and inevitable, but good. Society needs everything from ditchdiggers to garbage collectors to roofers to electricians to teachers to nurses to doctors to scientists--with seekers after public office in there somewhere. Few who are innately capable of becoming solid-state physicists end up pushing brooms for lack of the right opportunities--though that lack CAN make the difference between self-sufficiency and dependency.) Part of the obligation of the productive is public support for people of good intention who just can't make it. Support should take, ultimately, the affording of the means for advancement, but for some people, at some times, welfare support is just necessary. The problem with the idea that everyone should be held solely responsible for his own course in life, sink or swim, it's up to you and too bad if you can't float, is that no one is required to do everything for himself. This is not the raw frontier where each person accomplishes every task, meets every need, for himself. We are differentiated and specialized. This happens only in a diversified population, a society, and an inevitable part of any society is the presence of the less able. It is immoral to expect to benefit from the spending of the able without acknowledging the needs of the less able. In the same sense, the corporate entities that reap huge profits from massive sales of cheap goods in low-overhead stores, taking advantage, legitimately, of the spending power of society, have an obligation to acknowledge the needs of that society beyond consumers' need for cheap lettuce. When they contract for foreign goods, pay starvation wages, and do the other things that Wal-Mart does to maximize "shareholder value", they are failing this obligation. Shareholder value comes about only in a differentiated society, in which the needs of society for decent pay for everyone are a corporate obligation. All economic power comes from the public, and decency is owed back to the public that makes profits possible--a decency beyond selling lettuce as cheaply as possible. It may well be that in a purely laissez-faire capitalism, the interests of the owners of the company do trump all other considerations, but my position is that we left that kind of society behind after Dickensian times. This admittedly socialist-left stance sits in cognitive dissonance with my libertarian feelings, and I am still trying to understand what I really think. It is an emblem of my naivete that I think there is a solution out there somewhere, an acceptable balance of legislation with laissez-faire. --howard -----Original Message----- From: lug-bounces+hlritter=mindspring.com@leica-users.org [mailto:lug-bounces+hlritter=mindspring.com@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of GREG LORENZO Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2005 1:03 PM To: Leica Users Group Subject: Re: [Leica] OT ! a naked exposure Jeffery Smith wrote: > I think the problem is that, in order to keep rolling back them > prices, they have to buy everything from China and hire people who > cannot get a job that pays more than minimum wage. Any job that pays > minimum wage is likely to have some people who don't exercise good > judgement. ;-) > > Jeffery > What is even more horrifying to me is that they steamroll over their competition in small cities and towns and are well on thier way to creating a national economy that is dependent on a vicious circle of cheap imports and low paying jobs. This in turn damns some of their current employees' children to diminished opportunities as Wal-mart clerks, McDonalds fry guys or strangling chickens for the Colonel. Regards, Greg _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information