Posted on 01/17/2005 10:28:09 AM PST by jb6
"It's called capitalism. The commies will never get it."
Nor will a lot of posters here at Free Republic. Wal-mart bashing is a popular pastime here among the 'real conservatives'.
Wal-Mart should be viewed essentially as a tax cut. Whereas small retailers used to make high margins on everyday items - Wal-Mart is blowing these things out at much lower prices, and much lower margins. Sustained by one of the most impressive and efficient logistics networks going - Wal-Mart is sharing the excess profit, which formerly went to the local grocery or office supply store, with consumers. If the logic that returning money to taxpayers is justified by the contention that they know how to spend their money better than the government is at all valid - then Wal-Mart is just fine.
I hear the bitching and carping in small towns that seems to come from he local Jaycees/Kiwanis or Chamber of Commerce when a Wal-Mart is proposed. It's just the death wheeze of an old and inefficient scale/way of doing business. That's a good thing.
As I frequently tell my economics students...no one is holding a gun to anyone's head forcing them to shop at Wal Mart. Wal Mart's success is not based on "screwing" people. Where that the case they would have gone out of business long ago. Their success is based on the fundamental law of demand--people buy more goods at a lower price than a higher one.
Well .. be happy in your opinion!!
"No, I don't like Wal-Mart for the same reason why I don't like Microsoft. They are anti-competative ..."
Fiddlesticks. Walmart and Microsoft are two of the most competition oriented companies around and that's the secret of their success. Read the article, it's all about how Wal-mart beats their competition by offering goods at the lowest possible price. That is competition.
This article is more than a year old, and had already been posted at least 3 times on Free Republic. Why did you spam it again today?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?s=Wal-Mart+You+Don%27t+Know&ok=Search&q=deep&m=all&o=score&SX=41ec1b4876bb356060831482167c591ac0f69d19
And out of curiousity, were you the banned 'LibertySailor' who previously posted this article?
"nasty liberal conspiracy"
In the first place - I never said it was.
In the second place - I do suspect it since the primary financier of this little GET WALMART is through the TIDES FOUNDATION (which the "shove it" person has been very vocal about) - which is funded by the HEINZ FOUNDATION.
As soon as the Heinz money is no longer involved - then I will believe it's not a liberal conspiracy.
BTW, I'm not trying to get jb6 unnecessarily banned, but rather simply don't see why already posted stale articles should be recycled.
Wow, thanks for posting-- I just realized that I need to run out and pick up a few things at, you guessed it, Walmart! ;)
"How severely brainwashed do you have to be to look at a jar of pickles and see a vision of Marxist class warfare? Anyone who looks at a jar of pickles and sees anything more than pickles is deeply disturbed."
That hurts. When I see a gallon jar of pickles I see hamburgers, onions, and a gallon jar of mustard. I must be really sick.
What do you think Wal-Mart's market share is today, and how does it compare to retailers in prior generations? There's no such thing as a retailer with "monopoly-like power" anymore, mainly because retailing by its very nature is very competitive.
I agree.
It seems that many manufacturers that aren't willing to make that deal do okay.
And it's also why Wal-Mart carries many items of lesser quality than other stores.
Personally, I don't go to Wal-Mart very often, but I certainly don't mind that they are in business.
For those THREE reasons, we will continue to buy items from Walmart that we can use.
Just go to the back of the electronics department, find Walmart's heart and destroy it. Problem solved. Kumbayah...
My shopping game: every time I read an anti-WalMart article I add to my "buy at WalMart" shopping list.
Well .. I like Walmart. I don't buy everything there - but I have found some wonderful bargains there. And .. I've always been treated very well by their clerks .. which is what keeps me going back.
These detractors are just that - detractors .. probably the union members who hate Walmart - too bad - I have no sympathy for them.
Fiddlesticks yourself. Both have been accused of illegal anti-competative behavior. In the case of Microsoft, it seems they've simply taken technology when they couldn't get what they want (see Stac and a sellection of current lawsuits against them). In the case of Wal-Mart, the accusation concerns them changing the conditions of contracts after-the-fact. Do you know what happens when a retailer or vendor doesn't pay a vendor on time for a huge shipment? Do you know how much it costs to go up against an army of lawyers from a company rich enough to buy the entire airline industry? I'm sorry but I don't consider bully tacticts and illegal behavior to be a normal part of "competition".
Read the article, it's all about how Wal-mart beats their competition by offering goods at the lowest possible price. That is competition.
They offer goods at the lowest possible price by raping their vendors, in my opinion. Whenever one company has the power to rape another and have it say, "Thank you. Please rape me again!" the balance of power is not healthy. It wasn't healthy when Microsoft forced hardware vendors to sign an agreement that they couldn't sue Microsoft for patent infringement if they wanted an OEM Windows 95 license and it isn't healthy when Wal-Mart forces vendors to sell them goods below costs that will keep that company healthy. If you were willing to sign a contract that allowed me to take anything I wanted out of your house any time I wanted or a contract that let me decide how much food you got to feed your family every day, just how much control would that suggest I had over you and just how "willing" would you really be if you signed a contract like that?
Sure, those vendors have a "choice". Try to stay in business while being abused by the big boy or go out of business. Yeah, that's some choice. The same sort of choice Eastern European women are given when they are forced into prostitution.
Concentration of power is bad. Lack of choices and competition is bad. There is no difference between having to pay a Microsoft a fee when you buy a computer and having to pay a sales tax if your only other choice is, "Don't buy a computer." There is no difference between Wal-Mart forcing prices on a vendor and government price controls if the only other choice is, "Then don't sell those goods." Those are non-choices. Neither Microsoft nor Wal-Mart is quite at that point in many areas but they're getting close.
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