Wednesday, April 07, 2004
 
Steinberg on the Bandwagon

Neil Steinberg, of the Chicago Sun-Times, jumps on the anti-Wal-Mart bandwagon today:
    Wal-Mart is a thing of evil

    There is great irony that the Wal-Mart proposed for the South Side would be located on the site of the shuttered Ryerson steel mill, a bit of symbolism that would be too obvious in fiction, but in real life just sits there and smirks at us: the good-job, good-salary past of America bulldozed to make room for the penny-shaving gulag of Wal-Mart. Of course it's our own fault. We rhapsodize the small town past of America, with good old Mr. Henderson standing behind the oak counter at Henderson's Drugs, wrapping our box of cotton balls in brown paper and twine. But when forced to act on our convictions, it turned out we'd rather save a few pennies on our cotton balls by buying them in a 55-gallon drum from an indentured servant at Wal-Mart with Mr. Henderson greeting us at the door for minimum wage.

    Tales of Wal-Mart excess -- from forcing illegal immigrants to work unpaid overtime to triple-charging customers through a credit card snafu -- were already piling up when a truly frightening story arrived from Inglewood, Calif.

    The Inglewood city fathers, sensibly enough, blocked Wal-Mart from importing its Third World employment practices to their community. The Bargain Behemoth responded by getting a referendum on Tuesday's ballot with a proposal that would basically create a sovereign Republic of Wal-Mart in the heart of Inglewood; if you think I'm exaggerating, the New York Times said the measure would ''essentially exempt Wal-Mart from all of Inglewood's planning, zoning and environmental regulations, creating a city-within-a-city subject only to its own rules.''

    My bet is that voters pass the measure -- what is the integrity of your government compared to the lure of buying stuff really cheap? -- and no doubt Wal-Mart will find a way to jam itself into Chicago next.

    The most telling detail of the California nightmare is this: The goons Wal-Mart hired to gather signatures to get their measure on the ballot were paid a far better wage than the clerks in its stores.
How disappointing. Steinberg takes a couple of isolated incidents, mixes them together, and decides that the free markets aren't good. Or at least great success in the free markets aren't; maybe Steinberg prefers only moderate success mixed in with enobling failure. Granted, I'm putting words into his keyboard here, but people who hold up Wal-Mart as an example of what's wrong with capitalism are poor thinkers. I don't know what those people want, probably just something else, and heaven forbid if we ever get it.

Wal-Mart got to where it is by building stores where others wouldn't, by selling acceptable quality products at low prices to people who weren't being served by other department stores or boutiques. Although some portions of the corporation have done wrong (skimping overtime pay, hiring un-driver's-licensed illegal aliens) and some unfortunate incidents occur (accidental overbilling), it's not a force for evil. Its customers can shop at higher-priced stores if they get better service there or if that's important to them; its employees can get other jobs if it's important to them. Wal-Mart's the intersection of free wills in this little thing we call commerce. If it bothers you so damn much, bobos, take up substinence farming and start whining about your aching backs instead.

Wal-Mart is just the Microsoft for those who don't pretend to be technical.



Others weigh in:

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:30 PM
Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home
 
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."