Thank you Alyson for bringing this article to my attention: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html. I would like to take the opportunity to express some of the ideas that this article brought to my attention. The article had some very concrete arguments which I feel are flawed inherently, and because the article are based mostly on belief—it should have been prefaced “Speculation, this article may be completely free of fact.” I am going to try to be systematic about my criticism of the article. Problems I had:
1. The article uses, almost exclusively, heavily biased sources of people who once worked with Wal-Mart, and who now work somewhere else.
2. The article twists the language of the sources in an insulting way. Perhaps editorializing the sources statements with emotion-laden words like squeeze, devastating, bearing the brunt, etc. will change the mood of the reader. The use of quotations was interesting as well and reminded me of Lynne Truss who asked in her book Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, why do newspapers put quotation marks in headlines when the first line of the story states definitively that there is no actual ambiguity (see the use of “penalty box” which is used for people who speak to the press in this totalitarian society—oh, disclaimer, the “penalty box” really isn’t used for people who talk with the press, nudge nudge wink wink).
3. The article is filled with innuendo: Wal-Mart was not a critical factor in Vlasic’s bankruptcy—you be the judge. Oh, did I say “there is very little academic and statistical study of Wal-Mart's impact on the health of its suppliers and virtually nothing in the last decade!?! Well, you know why that is, it is because this totalitarian regime is sooooooo closed that nobody can crack it. (nudge nudge wink wink)
Anybody who has read the book The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman and who has a modicum of rational thought can tell that the facts bear out the truth of the relationship. Needless to say, the relationship is very healthy. He does criticize Wal-Mart for other practices, but that is beyond the scope of my response to this article.
The bulk of the rest of my response will deal with two other comments made in this article:
1. But Wal-Mart also clearly does not hesitate to use its power, magnifying the Darwinian forces already at work in modern global capitalism.
I think that this comment is especially appropriate because, curiously, the authors ostensible use of this old vestige of politicized science is so transparent—like the ostensible honesty of Wal-Mart. That old vestige is Social Darwinism, Eugenics, or whatever you would like to call that theory that put jews in gas chambers and that kept blacks out of the tidy little American Suburban. I find it curious because this illustrates perfectly the kind of venomous prejudice that lurks behind the curtain.
Here is the comparison: Social Darwinism or Eugenics was a study that was supported by grants from the NIH and Carnegie Foundation, and people like Theodore Roosevelt, the Justices of the Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, dozens and dozers of eminent people. The belief in eugenics was accepted by most scientist in America and Germany. The methodology of eugenics involved ambiguous terminology like feeble minded, incorrigibility, and was completely absent precise scientific language. Social action was called for in newspapers, laws were passed, and people were stripped their inalienable rights. And the entire structure was based entirely on belief—not fact, not science, not even experimentation. The prejudice was that people simply didn’t want immigrants coming into their country (nationalism of the day), and they didn’t want undesirables moving into their neighborhood.
Obviously, this type of comparison was not the intention of the authors. They were trying to classify globalization in an ugly light, but they were unaware that their methods were the same as those now-defunct and ugly theories; which were supposed to be more like capitalism, and globalization. These are the types of people who are the washed up remnants of the radical individualist 60’s hippie generation who may (Paul Krugmann—who was quoted by the authors) or may not (the Anarchist, Environmental Terrorist, and violent antiglobalist who terrorize WTO conferences) have placed themselves in the establishment culture of Hollywood, The Media, and Academia.
I go to the second quote:
2) Wal-Mart has also lulled shoppers into ignoring the difference between the price of something and the cost. Its unending focus on price underscores something that Americans are only starting to realize about globalization: Ever-cheaper prices have consequences. Says Steve Dobbins, president of thread maker Carolina Mills: "We want clean air, clear water, good living conditions, the best health care in the world--yet we aren't willing to pay for anything manufactured under those restrictions."
I glad that I was awoken from my complacent slumber. Perhaps as an American worker, I can now stop banging my thick skull against the anvil and start productively banging my socially justified hammer.
What was supposed to be an economic article is really *TA DA* an article on environmental policy. I really wasn’t buying that whole story of the downtrodden CEO anyway.. The author is apparently completely ignorant of the prime reason for pollution in this world—poverty. People simply aren’t worrying about pollution, or even personal hygiene if they are starving to death. As Americans we tend to forget that over half the world population lives in earthen homes, and a good half a billion people live without regular food and water. Water contamination is the #1 global health concern—not obesity, or smoking, or electrical wires above homes, or DDT (which would have actually saved hundreds of thousands from water contamination complications like malaria, and is not carcinogenic—sorry Silent Spring). The last two were banned or regulated based on politicized science—by the way (ironic how those terrifying magnetic fields that were supposed to cause autism and cancer now come in a variety of fashionable bracelets and car seat covers to cure the ailing body).
There are fashionable, ambiguous clichés like “sustainable development” or “the precautionary principle,” and these have the effect of preserving the economic development of the west and represent Modern imperialism toward the developing world.
It’s a nice way of saying “we got ours and we don’t want you to get yours, because you’ll cause too much pollution—never mind the fact that I fly a private jet and earn a multi-million dollar salary as a CEO of a competing retailer of Wal-Mart, and consume more energy with my home utilities then the whole energy consumption of an average 3rd world city.”
People are well intentioned, but I have great respect for the effects of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the many guises of self-interest (or what I would call not possessing a pure heart), and the inevitability of unintended consequences. I have more respect for people who change their views after hearing a well thought and presented arguments then those who cling to beliefs they had 30 years ago. The world, science, and the increasing complexity of our interactions change; ideologues and zealots don’t. The environmental movement falls into the Ideologue camp in my opinion, and sadly they (from either ignorance or misguided zealotry) attack the institutions (like Wal-Mart) that are effecting a tremendous positive change in developing countries. Austin Chase put it this way “when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy then the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.” Alexandre Dumas said furthermore, “in politics there are no friends only correspondence, no ideas only interest (and I would add—beliefs).”
Funny how jingoistic nationalism only applies to military activism in the form of nation-building, but when that mechanical pencil job goes to Mexico or (heaven forbid!!) China with all of its human rights violation (wait a minute, I thought that the USA and Israel—the only democracy in the Middle East—were the number one and two human rights violators according to Amnesty International—never mind that man behind the Islamic curtain feeding people into plastic shredders, DAMN THOSE “domestic” WIRE TAPS!!! IS THERE NO DECENCY??????). . . as I was saying, people get their knickers in a knot (to use a little Auzzie lingo) and start getting all patriotic about American unemployment rates as they wave their “Made in America” tags. (Sorry, that was my Ann Coulter evil twin—its getting late.)
Anybody who has visited Bangalore India, or any other globalization hub will realize the great good that this outsourcing has on the populations of those countries. To be sure, there are problems, but there is much good as well. The saying (as John Chadwick pointed out recently) was “you have to eat your veggies; children are starving in China.” Well, we should really be saying “you should study your math, the Chinese are starving for your job.” Perhaps we should shift the argument to the dismal mathematical scores that American kids have compared to Russians, Chinese, Indians, and on and on. Neo-luddite or feigned isolationist/protectionist arguments are simply disingenuous or ignorant of the real issues: global progress through innovation and free exchange of information (sorry totalitarian, non-democratic regimes—in the name of Khrushchev [remember that ash-heap of history?], “We Will Bury You” if you do not become freedom loving democratic societies). The spreading of democracy as well as economic free-enterprise is another topic altogether, however, and I am getting tired.
Now, if you want to argue about Wal-Mart’s practice of excluding Unions or denying healthcare to its employees, that is another topic as well.
Everybody has an agenda; except me of course.
Love,
Joe
P.S. If I offended anybody, I'm Sorry. Forget this article, it doesn't exist. . .
Sun Jan 22 13:16:49 MST CES Seminar: ![[Comments]](/nb//themes/Default/comments.png "1 comment")
