WalMart and Ethical Consumption
Scott Kirwin
WalMart is a sensitive subject around here. I discovered that yesterday when I wrote about the death of John Walton, heir to the WalMart empire. I'm not surprised given the mix of readers we have here at Dean's World: Neo-Cons, Randists, Republicans, Conservatives, Libertarians, Libertines and other rapscallions. WalMart has become a symbol for free trade and free markets - Laissez Faire capitalism at its best - or worst depending on your point of view.
As I stated in yesterday's post, I don't like WalMart. Unlike many who disparage the store I don't shop there - preferring to use the power of the free market to voice my opinion instead of the megaphone or worse, government intervention.
Over the past three and a half years I have been extremely active in the anti-offshoring movement, including founding the ITPAA which has become the largest repository on the web for information on offshoring, H-1b reform, and related topics. Unlike many who seek a government intervention to remedy the situation, I advocate the opposite: getting the government out of the labor supply business by ending the H-1b and L-1 visa programs. These non-immigrant visa programs give the government a faucet which it can use to flood the labor market with foreign workers to drive down the price of labor. I believe that the market should decide wages, and find the tampering of the labor market as repugnant as others would its meddling in the supply of gold or stocks. The H-1b and L-1 visa programs are the Achilles Heel of offshoring as UC-Davis professor Norm Matloff details here; without these programs, domestic service providers would be able to compete with those that offshore, ending the drain of jobs, resources and sensitive data abroad.
Likewise I believe the solution to WalMart is for consumers to buy products made in the USA or our allies like Japan, Canada, Australia and the UK even if it means spending a little more. I don't buy French products to protest France's anti-American actions, so why shouldn't I avoid supporting a regime in China that occupies Tibet, supports North Korea and threatens Taiwan by boycotting Chinese products?
Well, for one reason that it's hard to avoid buying them sometimes, impossible at others - especially at low cost outlets like WalMart or Target. So I don't shop there unless I really have to - which isn't that often.
If I take the power of the boycott from my anti-Apartheid days and combine it with my belief in the power of markets from my study of economics, the result is ethical consumption. Sometimes it is easy to do; other times it's completely impractical. For example, I would love nothing better than to keep gasoline refined from Saudi oil out of my car's tank, but that is currently impossible. So I try to do the best I can. While the Chinese Politburo is not losing any sleep over my avoidance of Chinese products, I don't lose any either by imagining my money buying a bullet that's used to kill an American serviceman. In the end, if enough of us do the same maybe they will needing fistfuls of ambien to get a good night's sleep - which, by the way, is made in the United States.
Out of curiousity, where do you live that you cannot do this?
I live in Delaware - which is nothing more than a suburb of Philadelphia. While SEPTA runs one train an hour thru DE to Philly, bus routes are sparse. Mass Transit works in and between large cities, but the suburbs are too widely distributed to make it practical.
Or both, depending on how thoughtfull you are.
I'm thoughtful (or at least I think I am in comparison to most) and I think capitalism is one of the significant liberties which provide the foundations of Western civilization.
But I don't typically shop at WalMart because they sell a lot cheap crap that I have no use for, and having a friendly--faced old timer greeting me at the door as I enter the store is no substitute for marketing quality merchandise.
Other than that, I'm not sure what ethics have to do with this particular consumer choice. They don't pay their workers very much, keep them from unionizing, and provide insufficient health insurance or non at all, from what I hear. But there's no pianos tied to the asses of any of their employees, and they are therefore all free to boogie out the door and seek employment elsewhere.
As for exploiting the Chinese who work in the factories to produce much of that stuff, I would say that is up to the Chinese, most of whom I don't give a damn about.
All told, I would say that one major enemy at a time is enough for the USA. Right now, that enemy is Islamo-fascism. We can worry about the Chinese after we get that problem solved.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
One more thing:
One could argue "Well, Scott, why don't you buy a home close to your job? That way you wouldn't have to commute."
Again, this is not practical and impossible if your spouse works too. Employers would have to place a premium on workers who live close to their locations - something that they have not done.
This solution would demand a return to the cities where there is good transport, a mix of employers and residences. While there is merit to this idea, I think it only emphasizes the difficulty of ethical consumption in the suburban American lifestyle.
I completely agree. However recall that the Soviets invaded Hungary while we were preoccupied by the Suez crisis.
We don't have the luxury of fighting one war at a time.
Looking back at the past few years, however, I am not so sure. As China has grown economically, they have started to develop a stronger middle class. While I realize the government controls most of the business in China (to a greater or lesser extent), they are devloping a strong economy that is based on their population. This places a lot economic power of China in the hands of their people. Certainly not nearly as much as their government still controls, but it is far more than they have ever had before.
Increasing China's economic ties to the US also increases the economic pressure we can bring to bear. It would be economically disasterous for China to take actions against the US that would result in economic sanctions, and the harm those sactions could inflict is growing every year.
I look at these ideas and think that perhaps Clinton was right in grating favored nation status to China. It does appear to be fragmenting the power that the government holds there (slowly, certainly, but it does appear to be happening), ant it does appear to increase the leverage we have against China.
What do you guys think?
I admire your integrity.
As to Communist China, not only did and do I oppose granting them "Most Favored Nation" status, I oppose recognzing them at all. Not until they hold a Nuremburg-style trial and hang Mao's mass murderers.
Scott Kirwin wrote:
"Arnold
I completely agree. However recall that the Soviets invaded Hungary while we were preoccupied by the Suez crisis.
We don't have the luxury of fighting one war at a time."
And we were on the wrong side in both cases! We betrayed both the Hungarian people and our English and French allies. Giving the Suez Canal to our enemies was as big a blunder (or treason) as the give-away of the Panama Canal under Jimmy Carter.
"WalMart has become a symbol for free trade and free markets - Laissez Faire capitalism at its best - or worst depending on your point of view."
Insofar as they use so-called "eminent domain" (government robbery) to seize other people's property by force, they are not capitalists, not free enterprisers, but merely corrupt, mixed-economy, range-of-the-moment pragmatists -- looters.
If all components at all levels had to be made in the USA, the computer industry would probably have never reached the size and scope that it has--certainly, the manufacture of DRAMs in places like Malaysia has contributed to making computers affordable.
I disagree with Scott so fundamentally on so many levels that I try not to get into discussions with him at all. I fear the discourse will turn uncivil, so I choose to remain silent and avoid the possibility.
But on this one point, I'm going to stand up for Scott: he didn't say "made in America"; he said "not made in a large, militaristic Communist country that oppresses minorities, restricts free speech, and engages in slave labor." I think it's fair to say that there's a difference.
(And Scott may or may not have argued for "made in America" in other contexts. I don't know. But I know that's not his argument here.)
I can't really get behind the "ethical consumption" notion except in very limited cases, because I don't think it works very well as an agent of change. Whatever freedoms exist in China today are because of Westernized economics and their growing middle class. Economic freedom is highly corrosive to opressive governments. The Communists in charge may think they can shield their failed and deadly political philosphy from taking serious damage, but they're wrong. They're already starting to rust.
I suspect the same would be true of Cuba, too, if the US goverment were willing to go that route. Isolating repressive regimes just makes it easier for them to be repressive and makes it more difficult for their citizens to interact with the outside world.
That sounds like the Sunshine Policy of Kim Dae jung in South Korea, and Konrad Adenauer's policy towards the Soviet Union in the 1960s. It didn't work in either of those cases, so I'm not quite sure why you think it would work here.
Instead I see us handing China the capital and technology it needs to challenge our interests in the world. Call it "Realpolitik vs. free markets".
You're both right, more or less as always. As I said, I don't shop WalMart's because I think their stuff is crap. Which is the best reason not to shop in any such place. But you've got good ethically-based arguments about not doing business with the big and little Hitlers of the world, even if they sport red stars instead of hakenkreuzen.
However, it seems to me that capitalism is in the process of swallowing China, hook, line and sinker. So isn't this a good thing? In the end, they are destined to be a consumer society just like ours. Small businessmen will begin accumulating capital, investing it, failing or creating bigger enterprises. Demand will grow for workers with better skills capable of generating greater productivity. These in turn will have choices of which business firms to which they will hire out those skills, and under what conditions and salary.
No government in the world can control this process unless it makes a conscious effort to destroy the machinery of their economy. The Chinese leaders may still call themselves communists, but they are businessmen at heart. And if not them, their children, nephews and nieces are.
Does all this mean that China one day will not necessarily be a dangerous enemy of the United States in particular and the West in general? Not at all. But competing capitalist societies are more likely to want to make money, not war.
In the meantime, we sure as hell have an enemy, and that enemy, the Salafism that has come to power in Arabia, is threatening to take power in Eqypt, and is supplying armies of suicide bombers to feed into Iraq, is enemy enough for all of us. That enemy needs to be destroyed. And I am not certain the United States now has the resources -- military, political and financial -- to engage in serious wars against two competing civilizations simultaneously.
Above all, we must concentrate all our efforts in this country to finding locally-available substitutes for the petroleum supplies for which we and our economy are held hostage from the oil sheikdoms of the Middle East.
Let the burgeoning army of new motorists in India and China struggle to pay the $5-$10/gallon for gasoline that may soon be demanded. We have the whole of North America on which to grow the cereal grains which can both be ground up for consumption by us and our cows and pigs, and in addition, can be distilled into hydrocarbon fuels.
And to hell with the commonly-heard argument that it costs as much to convert the biomass to Ethanol as it does to purchase gasoline from the petroleum pumped from the Arab sands. Modern-design nuclear energy will take care of that quite handily. And when it is ready, we will have the low-cost power supplies available to convert any hydrocarbon product to the hydrogen power that will be fueling our vehicles not many years from now.
(Am I feeling appropriately faustian over all this today, SMA? You bet your ass I am. I think the future of the West under freedom and capitalism will do just fine. I just wish I could be around 30 years from now to marvel at and enjoy all the great things I see coming through the combination of liberty and technology.)
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I'm not as sanguine about capitalism leading to liberty. Prussia and later Germany was the epitome of capitalism in its time, as was Japan. And we know what happened to those countries. Extreme examples? Perhaps, but I haven't been convinced by the Randian notion - not that I'm completely against it or anything.
"(Am I feeling appropriately faustian over all this today, SMA? You bet your ass I am. I think the future of the West under freedom and capitalism will do just fine. I just wish I could be around 30 years from now to marvel at and enjoy all the great things I see coming through the combination of liberty and technology.)"
Terrific! Once again, your style!
"Arnold
I'm not as sanguine about capitalism leading to liberty. Prussia and later Germany was the epitome of capitalism in its time, as was Japan. And we know what happened to those countries. Extreme examples? Perhaps, but I haven't been convinced by the Randian notion - not that I'm completely against it or anything."
Ayn Rand's definition of capitalism is: "Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately own."
Prussia, Nazi Germany, or Communist China could have all the businesses in the U.S.A. investing there, but they would still not be capitalist in Ayn Rand's sense. They were and are nothing more than statist mixed economies. If they do not recognize individual rights, they do not have free enterprise.
But I avoid it when I can. I don't shop in WalMart because most stuff is from China. More power to them if they can sell cheap stuff and make money legally.
I just don't like commies.