The BBC: Official Voice of Ecofascism

[curiousgeorge]

Icefisher, although I haven't "studied" the issue of Walmart, et al, with respect to economic impact in small towns, I do live in a small town with 1 Walmart (as well as several other national chains). From the small town perspective, Walmart is where you go for the day to day goods when quality and service is not a priority and cost is. However, even then, people do not shop exclusively at Walmart, regardless of their financial situation, but also patronize small "mom & pop" operations in sufficient volume to keep them in business as well. Walmart recognizes this, and does not try to force all the "little guys" out of business, because they realize that doing so would hurt Walmart in the long run - they need those "little guys" as consumers. Their other operation - "Sams Club" - get's a heck of a lot of business from "mom&pop" shops.

They are tough competitors, but they largely compete with other large retail operations, such as Sears, Target, K-mart, Kroger, etc.

In the end, it's the consumer who decides who survives and who doesn't.

[steve]

Icefisher,

Here you are posing a problem and not a solution. Or perhaps your solution is to replace big bad monster TESCO with a more encompassing idealist monster, a socialist utopia, which if you read your history you will find to be even worse and to be no utopia at all. In fact, its the nature of the world that there is no utopia. Life is a struggle to adapt to change and that will never change except to the extent we can adroitly adapt.

I did pose a potential solution which was to allow local communities to reject large stores for good reasons, without risking a large legal bill. That's democratically fair - or are you suggesting we get rid of democracy

As I said, I've nothing against superstores in general. It's about whether the environment they exist in favours them unfairly against other businesses. I'm all in favour of systems that reward innovation, hard work and entrepreneurial skills, but in a world dominated by large corporations that almost cannot fail, cutting red tape and shrinking government for the sake of it can damage innovation.

I can see that the Tesco example may not apply to the US where there already seems to be a ubiquity of malls.

I do know that manufacturers work endlessly to get their products on Walmart and TESCO shelves because they will sell one heckuva lot of product.

That's another problem with their domination of the Tesco model. Your product can only succeed after you have provided Tesco with a large loss-leader. If your product is successful, Tesco's domination can slice your margins to the bone, or Tesco will duplicate your product with a slightly different coloured packet. Innovation and hard-work fails to be rewarded.

Sorry to moan on. The only point I really wish to put is that small government per se is not the answer as it always seems to be small government that continues to support large corporations.

[icefisher]

Jun 11, 2010 10:50:16 GMT steve said:

Sorry to moan on. The only point I really wish to put is that small government per se is not the answer as it always seems to be small government that continues to support large corporations.

Evidence please. I think that is a completely unsupported supposition and is in conflict with your previous statement that government supports big business.

Lets face it Steve. It takes fewer government employees to regulate TESCO than it takes to regulate everyone.

Pretty simple math to get to the bottom of this ridiculous argument of yours.

[steve]

I didn't make a previous statement that small government supported big business.

What I am suggesting is that those who most strongly advocate small government, advocate for reducing regulations that favour the little people while failing to reduce the regulations that favour the big.

The claims about wanting to support a dynamic market are hollow because the resulting market has left the banks, the airline companies and the car companies in tact despite many of them effectively going to the wall at some time in the recent past. What the heck is Chapter 11 if not a method for company execs to keep hold of their comfy boardroom chairs?

Anyway, I'm off for a week or two so can't continue this any more. Tatty bye!

[Pooh]

In Reply #44 Yesterday (6/10/2010) at 12:48pm, icefisher wrote:

"I studied socialism in college and can tell you that socialist government is bad while socialism as an ideal is not so bad."

Agreed!

Samuelson, Paul Anthony. Economics, an Introductory Analysis. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955.
(Page 734) Last Word: "It is too easy to compare the obvious imperfection of our known system with the ideal perfections of an unknown planned order."

It is still true. Whatever "system" is devised, there will be some that exploit it. The SEC and MMS come to mind as recent examples. History includes the tax bill of 1986 which limited executive salary deductions to $1,000,000. Dan Rostenkowsi (Chicago Congressman and 32nd Ward Committeeman) forced the tax bill on President Reagan with the promise that Congress would not increase spending. That promise was broken. Corporate Executives began to be compensated with stock options and stock (which led to manipulation of earnings).

Congressman Rostenkowski eventually went to jail (1994) for pilfering from his congressional postage stamp allowance. His district seat was eventually won by Blagojevich. (“The more things change, the more they stay the same”)

The problem with governmental / bureaucratic / socialist / "progressive" corruption is that it takes a very long time to set things right.

[icefisher]

Jun 11, 2010 15:26:16 GMT steve said:

What I am suggesting is that those who most strongly advocate small government, advocate for reducing regulations that favour the little people while failing to reduce the regulations that favour the big.

I run into this a lot. People who suggest abandonment of principle because somebody they don't like also believes in the principle.

Jun 11, 2010 17:41:36 GMT glc said:

The claims about wanting to support a dynamic market are hollow because the resulting market has left the banks, the airline companies and the car companies in tact despite many of them effectively going to the wall at some time in the recent past. What the heck is Chapter 11 if not a method for company execs to keep hold of their comfy boardroom chairs?

Anyway, I'm off for a week or two so can't continue this any more. Tatty bye!

The world is not a perfect place. It is a good question why anything that is too big to fail should not be publicly owned as ownership should belong to those who take the risks. In general I favor privatization and trust busting to deal with issues of too big to fail.