Greenwashing

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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To your first point, if that really made that much of a difference, Wal-Mart, Lowe’s and Home Depot wouldn’t be putting him out of business. I suppose you could look at it as being betrayed by some of his friends, if you really wanted to.

As far as being too stupid to know better is concerned, I still fail to see what is stupid about wanting to save money on something that is both qualitatively and quantitatively the same item by the same manufacturer. In fact, an argument that could be made that willfully and intentionally spending more on that item is a stupid thing to do, dependent, of course, on how much money the individual in question has to spend.

I think you have to look at it both economically and emotionally, and I think that for many people, the economics and the emotions behind what they purchase and where from clash resulting in a temporary cognitive dissonance.

So:

A.) Some people will purchase faithfully from Tom’s until Tom’s closes. Regardless of price. (Purely emotional)

B.) Some people will immediately switch their allegiance to Wal-Mart because of the prices. (Purely economical)

C.) Some people will deliberate with themselves over it, but will experience a cognitive dissonace when deciding whether they want to remain loyal to Tom’s, or whether they want to save money. Sometimes, the emotional aspect will win and sometimes the economic aspect will win. (Emotional and Economical)

In some cases, also, some people will buy certain things (particularly big ticket items) at the major stores and just get their small stuff from Tom’s.

As far as quality is concerned, it should be worth mentioning that Wal-Mart (at least my local Wal-Mart) sells Chips Ahoy brand cookies, so that’s simply a matter of quality vs. price. At the same time, it should be mentioned that Wal Mart’s Chips Ahoy brand cookies are at a lower price than any other grocery store in the area, and Chips Ahoy cookies are Chips Ahoy cookies regardless of what is paid for them.

Wal-Mart also sells the ingredients with which cookies can be made, also at a lower price than other stores. Of course, Wal-Mart sells Great Value brand baking goods, but also carries name brands as well. There you end up with another quality vs. price scenario.

For instance, I use Nickles Bakery 12 Grain bread, I won’t touch Great Value’s bullshit bread, and I’ll very happily spend the extra $1.11 on the Nickles Bakery bread. What I won’t do, however, is pay Kroger’s an additional $0.49 on top of that for the same Nickles 12-Grain bread. The Mom & Pop stores and convenience stores don’t even carry the 12-Grain bread, so whether or not I’d pay more for it there is moot, even though I wouldn’t.

As far as the treatment of Wal-Mart’s employees is concerned, did I mention that a starting cashier there makes more per hour than any other grocery store around here?

Got it in one, Moundsville even has an ice cream place.

The point is, prior to Wal-Mart and Lowe’s coming to town the local hardware store (Not actually named Tom’s) only had an equally small Ace Hardware with whom to compete. Essentially, he had a captive market because it was either him, Ace, or drive twenty miles. That’s when he made his money. I’m not claiming he makes money hand-over-fist now, but that he did when he didn’t really have any substantial competition.

You have a town of 10,000 and a surrounding area of around 3,000 where the nearest place to go for their hardware items (big and small ticket) was either Tom’s or Ace Hardware, and most people chose Tom’s because the location of Ace Hardware had virtually no parking anywhere near it. (Until it moved) Tom’s could charge virtually whatever it wanted to, within reason, but definitely on the high end of reason.

The actual place in question was a little bigger than a tool shack, probably a few square feet bigger than the Convenient Store.

He could feed his family just fine by selling out and getting a job as an Assistant Store Manager at Lowe’s, or something, God knows he has the experience required for the job. Hell, Lowe’s would probably pay to buy out his place (one less competitor) and then hire him, if he so desired.

That’s quite romantic, but the thing you have to understand is that many people are like me when it comes to this sort of thing. Regardless of where it is I go, I go, I shop, I leave. I don’t get into any conversations over how the John Marshall Monarchs HS Football Team is doing this year because that’s a complete waste of my time.

My face looks pretty straight.

What’s ethical about tacking on more for a shipping charge for what you ordered in than what you actually paid for shipping?

The money was still involved before Wal-Mart came to town, how before Tom even opened up his hardware store to begin with.

As far as friends are concerned, I’d pretty much have to consider you my best friend to go out of my way to pay you so much as $0.05 more than what someone else wants for what is the exact same item. Friendship is all well and good provided friendship stays the Hell away from my money.

One other point I would like to touch upon briefly:

You had mentioned earlier that in opening his hardware store, Tom’s is fulfilling a need in the community, namely, the need some people have for tools. If I may ask, how does Lowe’s or Home Depot fill that need any less than Tom’s when they are offering the same tools to the same community? Could it not be argued that Lowe’s and Home Depot are doing an even better public service to the community (at the local level) by offering more tools at lower prices?

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Right, but back to the stupidity part. Ad hom aside, it’s literally self-destructive to the community to give economic distribution to larger outlets outside of it. It doesn’t have to be an emotional tie, but more like common sense.

Small towns that know this don’t allow Wal-mart into their economy, and there are quite a few still upholding not only their morals for their neighbors but also keeping in mind what sort of detriment this could cause. Ultimately it’s a loss of autonomy and independence and the whole town gets poorer as the corporations get richer. They become dependent on outside aid, and those that own their resources like something as simple as food; globalization in the works. It makes them extremely vulnerable and eventually desperate; a position that’s become an everyday sight in this economy.

Case in point. The cheaper and mass produced/distributed, the lower the quality.

Well there have been unions formed and the conditions aren’t exactly always ideal, but compared to some other places I suppose we can agree that Wal-mart isn’t a fascist tyrant.

What I’m talking about is the overall treatment that results from viewing people as production machines. Sadly, my misanthropy and elitism leads me to the conclusion that the majority of Wal-mart’s employees are worthless and good for nothing more than ringing up items and stocking shelves but they’ve been put into the same position as say, the Indonesian kid. They probably come from a poor area, and/or out in the rural boonies of America with little opportunity to do much else and are forced to integrate into the globalized economy at the bottom ladder of the workplace. The fact that these people are working for Wal-mart is enough to make me feel sorry for them and their condition.

And I’m sure he did charge what he felt he could and people bought what they felt was fair. But we have to remember that Tom isn’t trying to make a lot of money off of people because his value system isn’t one of a rising city where he dreams of yachts and vacation homes…he just wants enough to be content. Maybe he also wants to have a nicer pick-up truck than his brother-in-law, but it’s not much to ask for, and he’s probably not going to cheat the whole neighborhood for it.

Yes, but that’s an awful aspiration, isn’t it? The apathy of today is directly related to this kind of attitude. To give in and just go along. You said somewhere passingly that you like the movie Idiocracy, methinks. Doesn’t that movie make you sad? To see how corporations are taking over people’s brains and breeding mediocre drones.

And that’s your value system, and you’re entitled to that, but I don’t think you’ve thought it through.

I don’t think Tom could really get away with being too much of an ass, unlike say Home Depot. Everyone in town knows where to point the finger, but people like BP can get away with murder.

With close communication comes knowledge of who, of the buyer and seller, and the processes and labor become simplified and understood so that it’s made easier and balanced.

Nope, because these companies are comprised of many heads, all of whom can’t beat Tom’s, because Tom is in the best interest of his friends, and the distance of communication cuts the meaning behind the labor.

Ahhh, Heidegger used Plato’s logic for this. I don’t quite remember what it was called but it’s in his “The Question Concerning Technology”.

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The basic intent behind such advertising is to lie, and willfully so, because to do otherwise would damage their “integrity” which they pride themselves on. You can call it strategic advertising or whatever, but the general aim is to deceive the customer, to intentionally withhold information in such a way as to create a perception of that which is not.

This is not a right analogy. If you are an employee of a company and came up with a great marketable idea, you cannot stake an individual claim to the profits or authorship. You are not an individual entity competing in the same area. Tom’s of Maine was an independent company, and the relationship (and the image) that it formed with customers was a company-to-consumer relationship. Colgate essentially bought that image, and markets it to consumers (except its not the same relationship).
You can argue that it is the same relationship, but I assert that it is not, because the people who pull the strings of that image are different people who have a different goal in mind. I foresee that in the future the big companies who own “organic” brands will start adulterating ingredients (either by diluting, or marketing and switching to “natural”).

Wow, it’s way at the bottom of the page, and I had to actually do a search for “colgate” to find it (if you don’t know what you are looking for, you’re never going to find it, and that’s one of the reasons why most consumers don’t even know about it)

What I am talking about is making it actively visible, not hiding it, like fine print.

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Example of dilution:

Organic Bistro sells frozen entrees made with organic vegetables, but uses non-organic chicken and turkey. “There is certainly no shortage of organic chicken or organic turkey, which are, obviously, more expensive than conventional meats,” said Mark Kastel, Cornucopia’s codirector. “By using conventional ingredients to cut costs, yet displaying the word ‘Organic’ so prominently on their packages, Organic Bistro is unfairly competing with truly organic companies that commit to sourcing organic meat.”
cornucopia.org/2010/04/organ … ng-abuses/

theorganicbistro.com/savory_turkey.html

Organic juices:
rwknudsenfamily.com/products … omegranate
Notice that the main ingredient is water, the juices are concentrates. It’s labeled as Pomegranate juice-blend, but the largest ingredient after water is apple juice.

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As explained in earlier posts, much of it is about expansion for the community and competition with other communities for tax revenues. I fail to see where common sense dictates that a community not grow or compete with other communities via what the community has to offer, including shopping locations.

I suppose the argument could be made that it may have been better had the advent of Superstores never taken place, or that it would have been better had no communities taken these Superstores in, but it has already happened, so any result of that argument is neither here nor there.

Anyway, businesses and cities must compete with one another, and in order to do so, they must adapt to the changing market. The only way to adapt to the changing market is to give the people what they want.

I’m still not quite sure how the whole town gets poorer if more jobs get created within that town. I also fail to see how the lowest level workers getting paid more money has an adverse affect on the community. Your highest wage earners are still going to be there when you take into consideration that Wal-Mart isn’t going to close any hospitals, lawyers offices or banks anytime soon. It seems that Wal-Mart brings into a town more than it takes away, at least in that sense.

How do you mean? You said Great Value is garbage compared to Chips Ahoy, and I pointed out that Wal-Mart also sells Chips Ahoy. You can’t possibly be trying to argue that Chips Ahoy Rainbow cookies from Kroger (or a convenience store) taste better than Chips Ahoy Rainbow cookies from Wal-Mart for no other reason than they cost more.

I’m glad we agree on that much, and let me assure you, compared to Wal-Mart, some small businesses are facist tyrants.

I really don’t think that Wal-Mart does that, Wal-Mart pays many people much more than they are actually worth.

I think that you’ve said it all, right there. Wal-Mart employs many people who would otherwise be unemployable, courtesy of Wal-Mart (and other places like it) more people are able to get into the workforce.

They didn’t just buy what they felt was fair, they bought what they had to buy whether they felt the price was fair or not because they were a semi-captive market.

Everyone has a different degree of material wealth required to be content, so I suppose it can only really be looked at on a case-by-case basis.

You conceded that Wal-Mart aren’t a bunch of tyrants, so I’ll concede that the majority of local business owners are more concerned with autonomy (in the sense of not having to answer to anyone) than they are with getting rich.

You have a terrific recollection, I just briefly mentioned that movie on a thread where the individual made an OP asking for comedic movie suggestions where the theme is social in its nature.

Someone who is properly motivated and ambitious can still climb the corporate ladder if they want to. Besides, the small businesses don’t necessarily have to give up, they just have to find a niche, or create a niche. I could give quite a few examples from the area in which I live of brilliant people who have done just that.

I also think that movie intentionally over-stated the case and was not necessarily meant to be prophetic.

This part of the statement is an excellent point. You could have even went a little further by stating that word-of-mouth is the best advertisement for a small business, but it can also be the worst. If Lowe’s screws a customer in a certain community, well then, Lowe’s screwed a customer, what do you expect? If Tom royally screws one of his customers, the whole entire community knows about it within a week and the business suffers.

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No, the general aim in this case is to let customers know Tom’s of Maine makes so and so products, and do such and such things. They advertised the same kind of products and actions the same way before being owned by Colgate–but you think those claims are now lies, simply because they’re owned by Colgate?

Create a perception of that which it is not? That follows from the assumption that being by Colgate means it must be at odds with what they claim their products to be (which don’t oppose the mission and associated quality of products they made prior to being owned by Colgate). You have no valid argument for the brand’s values, actions and products not being what they claim to be, you’re just emotionally defining them AS the corporation that owns them, and has brands that don’t emphasize the same values and products.

So you think if an author writes a book, and uses some of his own money to try to advertise it online, and the book has a certain cover, it is suddenly not the same product if a publishing house buys it and–though not actually changing a single word in the text (not actually changing the product and contradicting any of the author’s original claims about it)–publishes it with new covers and makes their own advertisements for it? You understand the importance of what the product is is the actual product, sold for a certain use, right? A company is defined by its product–Tom’s of Maine is to be defined according to the products it makes.

This idea of a relationship that a consumer irrationally assumes between it and a company is irrelevant. They’re not friends with Tom’s of Maine. Tom’s of Maine makes claims of what their products are, and the only lie is if they don’t actually make those products according to those standards. Colgate’s ability to spend more money on marketing, production and distribution doesn’t necessarily contradict any of it.

If you actually had proof that this has happened, then you’re argument about it being lies would have some validity, but as of now it is all based on associating “Natural”(or “Green” or whatever qualities you see in their expresses image) with small business, and associating big business with a lack of natural/green-morality, a lack of integrity and honesty and every other possible antisocial quality.

You actually had to search Colgate? I just clicked “Press” and scrolled down until I saw it.

Anyway, you yourself emphasized that they don’t mention each other anywhere on their sites. How is it like fine print? Fine print is required because it relates to the factual quality of the actual product.

I’m done.

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Haha, a great start to my working week :slight_smile:

I agree, and competition is a good thing. No question, I don’t resent companies for being successful. My point is that (for the benefits to be seen) the competition should take place on an even playing field; a monopoly-run state is no more competitive than a state-run monopoly.

Wal-Mart employs more people than the competitors it beats, at (as you said earlier) better wages…? I find this hard to credit, given the economies of scale, the drive to low prices and the level of service offered.

This ties in to my earlier point that the short-term optimisation of the free-market model is often opposed to the long-term aims of a society. Morality is all about eschewing short-term gratification for long-term benefits; homo economicus, besides being a myth, is only rational as far as his next paycheck.

Agreed, and I wouldn’t recommend that as his principal marketing strategy. But people don’t think about the long-term consequences of their shopping choices, because they don’t treat it as a moral matter. And then they complain that gas prices are going up and it’s not fair because they’re forced to use the minivan as they have to drive 15 miles to the nearest Walmart over in fucking Moundsville of all places and there’s no town centre that you could just walk down to any more and where the hell have the sidewalks gone anyway I remember when this was a nice place to live.

Then they probably blame immigrants, or the liberals, or the conservatives, or the atheists. :stuck_out_tongue:

Maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t. Maybe he’s turned down an offer to sell up to a major hardware chain precisely because he believes in that. But I’m not talking about “family values” or “All-American values”, I’m talking about any values you hold, values in the philosophical sense. If you value Wal-Mart, shop there. But in any case, every shopping decision you make is an expression of your values, even if it’s not conscious. It affects the marketing execs’ figures, it’s used to justify providing more of what you want, it contributes to the perception of “what the public want”. There’s no moral abdication possible, because the simple fact of buying is by its nature a moral act.

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Several times in this thread the notion that the best product has the highest quality and the lowest price. That it is desirable that we follow such an end. The problem is that those two notions are in conflict with each other and, all things being equal, the consumer is very sensitive to price. Because of that, market forces drive companies to cheat just a little so they can lower their prices. This very quickly results in a race to the bottom. But that isn’t all. The companies that choose not to engage in that nasty race then get to start raising their prices because there is less competition on the mid-to-high end.

But that isn’t all. The streamlining also takes money out of the local economy. Superstores serve to take money out of the local economy and pump it somewhere else. Now, that somewhere else may be very nice to live, but it exacerbates the market forces that creates the “race to the bottom” that we see all over the place.

Then people get to sit back and eat their Wonderbread with American cheese and wonder, “How did we get here? We did everything right!”.

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I agree with that 100%, which is why I am completely opposed to Regulated Monopolies, such as gas and electric utility companies are in many areas. In fact, you could take it a step further and pretty much just say that I am against captive markets altogether which is one of the positive attributes I think that the superstore movement has.

Of course, you’ll have the occasional market where there is just one superstore and that’s it, and I consider that a negative situation (again, captive market), but when we look at things in the overall sense, there will usually be competition.

I can back it up if you need me to. You’d have to give me some time, but I could do it. As far as the Moundsville market is concerned, I was in that market as both a base employee (when in H.S.) and also as a hiring manager, so I have some idea of who gets paid what, where.

The waiters, waitresses and bartenders might do better than the people at Wal-Mart, and sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t, at that time the waiters and waitresses got base which was 2-something an hour, plus they got their tips. The bartenders usually got $6.00/hr plus tips. As long as you got tipped more that $2.00/hour as a bartender, then you beat Wal-Mart.

The pizza guys got minimum wage, an automatic dollar for each delivery ($0.50 at one place) and they got to keep their tips, as well. Of course, when you break down fuel and maintenance (and their actual tips) what they make per hour varies, but probably was more than Wal-Mart.

I know that gas stations started people around $6.00/hr, whereas any other cashier whether it be a convenience store, host/hostess at a restaurant, other grocery store, bowling alley, or fast food generally made minimum wage. The people at Kroger actually made $6.00/hr prior to Wal-Mart coming, but Wal-Mart still paid $2.00 more per hour.

The groundskeepers up at the park on the hill with the golf course made $7.00/hour, you’re talking about goddamn physical labor in high temperatures, and Wal-Mart comes in and gives people a dollar more per hour to slide stuff across a register.

That’s the point, the people that could have done something about the uniformly low wages could have done something about it for years and they chose not to. If the City of Moundsville thought bringing in Wal-Mart would be worse for tax revenues or worse for the worker, then they wouldn’t have done it. The fundamental economical viewpoint of most of the people in that town is a sort of semi-socialism, they just put Republican on most of their tickets because most of them are very conservative on social issues.

Teletech was the only place, an inbound call customer service center where your average employee lasts less than six months, anyway, they paid $8.00/hour. The same as Wal-Mart, except it’s virtually impossible to get fired from Wal-Mart for anything except poor attendance. (Hearsay)

Great point, the market lacks impulse control. Evident just by following the DOW!

I understand your point about the long-term effects of shopping choices, but I have to throw down the gauntlet and state that Wal-Mart coming to town isn’t necessarily a death sentence. A small business can thrive against one or more superstores in town, and many of them do, but trying to make customers feel guilty or look at the situation morally is not going to help them. What would help them is finding ways over-and-above customer service to differentiate themselves and their products from the rest of the competition. There are plenty of ways to do it.

I LMAO’d at that. You forgot the homosexuals, though. That’s who they actually do blame!

I think that’s a fair point. At the same time, though, I think that everyone needs to understand that very few people are actively trying to hurt the small business, but shop at the superstores for some other reason, whether it be price or convenience or both.

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That’s a fair point, Xunzian, except it is the customers who allow these locations to cheat by not demanding higher quality products. I understand the issue of price sensitivity, but as you may expect, the only reason that Wal-Mart has items other than Great Value available is because some people will not buy Great Value. I think Great Value has maybe two items that I will buy, one being frozen vegetable stir-fry (pretty good, actually) and the other being frozen pizza (which I actually find better than most).

At the end of the day, any store has to give the consumer what the consumer demands and will refrain from producing, manufacturing or selling anything for which there is no demand. To go back to one of the first few posts in this thread, if everyone were buying Organic Milk of one kind or another, and I mean literally everyone, then they would completely discontinue selling inorganic milk.

Blanket generalization. It depends on the local economy in question, and how local you are talking about. As previously stated, some cities (and the residents thereof) are aided immensely by the existence of Superstores.

Is Wonder generic where you’re from? That’s not considered a generic brand here. American Cheese is OK for grilled cheese sandwiches, by the way. Some American cheese, fresh chopped red onion, a little homemade barbecue sauce and a nice sprinkle of parsley, works quite nicely.

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It isn’t a generalization at all.

What happens to property values when a Wal*Mart opens up? What happens in corrupt countries where the rulers keep the money in the country vs. those where they export them?

Seriously, check out Ha-Joon Chang’s, “Bad Samaritans”. It is a banned book, so you know it is good!

But, basically, your whole position is capitalist claptrap.

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It is a generalization because the opening of a Superstore does not have a negative impact on EVERY community in which a superstore has opened. The generalization is:

It does not take into account that money is frequently added to the local economy as opposed to taken away from it. For example, the location has to be built, the parking lot paved, the zoning paid for, and the licenses and permits issued before the location so much as takes in $1.00. Let me assure you that it’s not kids from third-world countries making $0.05/hr laying down the pavement in those parking lots, it’s often locals who get the building jobs. Even if it is not, then it is Wal-Mart’s own people from elsewhere, and obviously the money they get paid helps their locality to some extent.

As far as the unskilled labor is concerned, Wal-Mart pays them, and often better than they would have gotton paid prior to Wal-Mart coming to town.

I disagree with your assertion that my position is Capitalist Claptrap, I think that my position is as Socialistic as it comes. In my personal opinion, Socialism must start by raising up the lowest of the low in terms of wage earners, and of course, the only way to do that is to pay them more. Minimum Wage in a town where the jobless rate is in excess of 20% is not designed to help the low-level worker, it’s designed to fuck him. It fucks him because he takes a job for no other reason than it is better than working nowhere.

Also due to this minimum, READ: UNLIVABLE wage, the local businesses pretty much collude with one another and come to a de facto agreement that all low-level workers will receive minimum wage. They no longer have to use wages as a means to compete for the better part of the low labor, they’re perfectly happy spreading it out equally if it means paying all of the employees less, regardless of their skill level.

I remember working at a grocery store where I was actually in a union. I should tell you about that Union sometime, one of the first awesome Union benefits I received was the right to pay union dues but be guaranteed to make minimum wage (and also guaranteed not to make anymore, unless offered a salary position) for the first six months I worked there. Minimum wage was $5.15/hr at the time. I was also guaranteed to receive a raise of $0.05/hr every six months until I reached a cap of $5.55/hr with the provision that should minimum wage ever be increased beyond your actual wage, then you lose your seniority difference and simply have your pay raised to the new minimum wage.

One percent of everything I made for that, ain’t small business fantastic?

Wal-Mart comes in and they pay everyone $8.00/hr and the people from other grocery stores apply in droves. Wal-Mart theoretically could select from the best of the best of these people, of course, they have to hire a few people that are literally mentally handicapped because people watch their ADA compliance more strictly.

The point I’m making is that these sorts of things might bring the top down a little, they might even bring the middle down a little, but it seems as though they bring the bottom up a lot. They help the people who otherwise cannot financially help themselves (unless they save enough to move) because those people have been aligned against by the very small-business owners for whom other people make arguments in favor.

I’ve seen this, Xunzian. So, while it may be so that Wal-Mart treats their employees like shit by some people’s standards, you can rest assured that many small businesses as well as many towns (including virtually every small business in town) treat them worse.

By the way, you know one other thing the Union did for me? They agreed to set a limit of thirty-nine hours and forty-five minutes per week for every employee so that the employer would not legally (or otherwise) required to offer us any kind of insurance. You also got one paid vacation day (6 hours) a year for every year that you worked there and a whole $1.00/hr differential for working federal holidays.

Would you like to guess which Union? (No idea why they were the Union for a grocery store in the first place)

United Steelworkers Union

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My point of the monopoly-run state is that a large company has sway to change the system, the rules by which others have to play, to its advantage. As long as there is competition, the shops will keep sharp. I don’t know for sure that it’s a Gaussian thing, though; because of the positive feedback of growth it’s more likely to be a power law relation (limited by the size of the market) which is unstable - there’s nothing restraining the larger companies from growing further.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself - again, I’m not against growth or big companies - but it leads to an unstable system. If you’ve got a good system, you want it to stay stable. It’s effectively 99% of the reason why humans innovate - to make life more controllable, more predictable, more reliable, less prone to freak events spoiling everybody’s fun.

It was more the “employing more people” than the pay that surprises me. I guess if they’re open 24/7 and the hardware store runs a 50-hour week it could explain it, though. The weakness of small traders (in my experience) is the lack of convenience, they’re still largely based around the assumption that someone’s home during the day. And that’s certainly not necessarily the case here, almost every couple I know is on two incomes.

What’s wrong with looking at the situation morally, when their choices have a real effect? I’m not preaching that they should go to the hardware store or that they ought to avoid the supermarkets, just that they should consider what it is they’re doing with their money. I think there are a lot of things that supermarkets are very good for. Anything mass-produced - bin bags, detergents, pasta, fizzy drinks - I buy there, where it’s cheaper. The local deli gets me for the farm produce, the booze shop gets me for the wine and beer, and so on. The differentiators are different for each product.

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I agree with the point that you are making, but to me, this argument seems to wish away one captive market for a different captive market. You see, many people look at these superstores coming in and say, “They’ll be able to dictate everything to the market,” and of course, they’re right. I have no fundamental disagreement with that.

The difference is, especially when you are talking about a city size less than 20,000, or anywhere with a jobless rate of 15%+, the small businesses can essentially make the rules as well. They can’t really influence the laws, per se, but again you can go back to a de facto wage collusion which benefits the worker in no way whatsoever.

I remember in Glen Dale (Next to Moundsville) I bartended in this relatively new bar which paid $6.00/hour, a few streets from us was a bar that had been around much longer (and therefore, usually had much stronger revenues) and that place was always packed. The bartenders there made minimum wage plus tips where I was getting $6.00/hr plus tips. As you might guess, the bullshit justification for this that the latter bar owner threw out is because there was a greater amount of customers and greater revenue, the bartenders did better in tips than most other bars so he didn’t need to pay $6.00/hr if he didn’t want to.

The problem for those bartenders was that the majority of the customers at that bar were city workers and old people, and as you may suspect, city workers and old people don’t really tip. In fact, one of the bartenders over there and myself did a comparison of what we would make, on average, over six comparable shifts. Not including the wage difference, I still crushed that bartender by about $25/day, so obviously the latter bar owner’s point had no merit. Of course, the bartender in question mentioned this to that bar owner who replied I must just be better at the job, fired her and then she came over and worked at the bar at which I worked.

She destroyed me in tips, most females will destroy a male in tips, all other things equal.

This is where we have the problem of trying to deal in generalities in this topic, (I’m as guilty as anyone), it all boils down to the question: What system is being replaced? As you know, the same solution does not necessarily work best for different problems, and if there is no problem, no solution is required in the first place.

I understand. The grocery store that Wal-Mart closed employed around forty people total when I worked there, I would assume that it became less and less after Wal-Mart opened. Given all of their departments, I’m going to say that Wal-Mart has more people than that just working…on their day shift. The convenience store that got knocked out employed maybe six people, and the hardware store employed two people, if you count the owner.

The places in Benwood combined probably rolled with about twenty-five to thirty people per shift and had two shifts. I would venture that Wal-Mart probably employs 150% of all the places that closed, combined. That doesn’t even take into account the places that opened as a direct result of Wal-Mart’s presence.

I agree with the fact that the differentiators can be different with each product. I’ll tell you one thing that’s funny, in my town Kroger’s is the only place where you can buy a bottle of liquor, because the State will only license so many liquor stores depending on your city size. We get one, and many of the places around here get zero and have to come to ours.

Anyway, I suppose it all depends. I certainly agree with you that if Wal-Mart didn’t have something that I wanted, or didn’t have it up to the quality standards that I require, then I would definitely go elsewhere and look for it. Of course, in an area that’s been as historically economically depressed as this one, there aren’t really many high-end grocers. I think that the only time I really get anything (besides liquor) from anywhere other than Wal-Mart is I’ll go to the florist for flowers and there’s a local bookstore I go to to get all of my books, which is simulatenously the coolest place in the Northern Hemisphere.

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So they’re as bad as each other, but the big ones are worse at a higher level? I’m not sure I follow.

Don’t confuse local marketplace (which is by definition captive to, or rather comprised of, the vendors in it) with the market as a national or international system. If Wal-Mart fails, some financial scandal or pension crisis say, they’ll accept the inevitable government bail-out (as the largest private employer in the US, I believe?) and you pay to keep them afloat. They cannot be allowed to fail, they are too large. You’re truly a captive here; you don’t have the choice. Same as happened with the financial crisis, and the reason it’s so deep.

Excellent :slight_smile: Of course, if there were only one megabar within 40 miles she’d probably never have bumped into a competitor employee and couldn’t have switched jobs so easily. An extreme example, of course, but the point is we’d both agree that the competition is what keeps things sharp, I think.

Please note I’m talking about systems, not solutions - I’m an engineer and manager, so I get pedantic about these things! :stuck_out_tongue:

A system contains the solutions to problems within itself. The system isn’t being replaced, it’s being modified from within itself. This can be designed into a system - modern quality systems, like the Japanese are famous for, demand that they are improved themselves along with all of the company processes that they control - but this is a blind drive from an interested party within.

Systems can be optimised for many things. Efficiency, speed, quality, quantity, it all depends. The free market business model that we’re talking about is pretty much optimised on cost, with quality requirements (you don’t buy everything in a big plastic sack, there are people to help and advise you and keep the place clean) which effectively translates to optimising on efficiency. Nothing wrong with that, it’s a good thing.

But, and here is the but, efficiency is good for business and production. Social systems shouldn’t be optimised for efficiency but for robustness (with efficiency requirements). A middle-sized democracy wastes thousands of man-years of productive work in debate, consensus, lobbying and electioneering - as well as voting - simply to ensure that a system is robust. An efficient system would be a hierarchical dictatorship, that would get things done, but it’s not robust. It’s a brittle system, as strong as the weakest link. People want a stable, safe society in which to raise families and (in the terms of the US) pursue happiness.

Robust systems are by their nature inefficient. The efficient ideal is economy of scale, agglomeration of power and clear command structures. The robust ideal is modular, networked, full of redundancy. “Organic” - I hate the word. But it needs to be, because you can never plan for every problem you will face in the real world. If there were a first law of systems engineering, this should be it. I don’t know if you know of the book The Black Swan, but it’s a good, clear take on robust design from an economic point of view, I’d recommend it.

So if a part of the social system starts changing things to optimise the whole more for efficiency, that will by its nature reduce the robustness of the system. And that goes against what most people want from society, I believe, if they actually think about the sort of place they want to live. A business can go under in the name of the free market, a country probably shouldn’t. Within a business, you can accept being treated as a cog in an efficient machine, as that improves job security and paycheques, but when you leave the office you maybe want to be treated as a person worth caring about. But the efficiency of the free market is a far more immediate attraction, as it’s printed on every price ticket and screams from every advertisement, while social policy is a tick in a box every four or five years.

Please excuse the digression :slight_smile:

I’m lucky - I live in a university town, and there are loads of bookshops, including a couple specialised in philosophy. You don’t get a shelf-full of analyses, translations and summaries per philosopher on offer in the supermarket. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I understand your position here, but both Wal-Mart and the local place would grab the lifeline, it’s just that the lifeline is not going to be extended to the local place. Anyway, I don’t think it can be taken for granted that such is the case with the big corporations. Bear Stearns didn’t get a bailout, Ford refused, and Circuit City didn’t get a bailout either. The latter two are multi-national companies just like Wal-Mart is, at least Circuit City to the extent that they covered the U.S. and Canada.

Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the U.S., but it’s not like Circuit City only had a handful of people working for them.

Awww…shit! You can’t do that, that was my example.

You’re too good at this.

I suppose you’re right, but only to an extent. Imagine if Bar-Mart came in and was paying $8.00/hour and letting the bartenders keep all of their tips, would the $6/hour or minimum wage bartender be complaining that Bar-Mart was the only game in town?

I apologize that my response to your excellent, “Digression,” won’t be as long, but I think it’s a simple change in social structure. This may border existential, but I think that society wants to be more efficient and less robust. When I think about people who are five years younger than me or more, what they do is meet people over the Internet and they have to talk to them for a month or so before they’ll even agree to meet them for coffee. When I was their age (late teens) I’d just roll into a cafe and if I saw a pretty girl go up to her and be like, “Hey, how ya’ doin’?”

Anyway, I know it seems like talking to someone for a month on the Internet is inefficient, but it’s actually more efficient because you can talk to multiple people, at length, over that month. I would think that it could potentially speed up the dating and marriage process because you are able to learn things about the person in a month that might otherwise take six months to learn. That is becauise with the anonymity that comes with the Internet, you don’t have to be afraid to expose something that you might otherwise not want to expose in person, at least, not for a while.

For instance, if a perosn had genital herpes, then that person might date someone for a matter of months before telling them. Nowadays, there is probably a message board all for people with genital herpes so they can find one another more easily, AIDS, Rastafari, you name it.

It’s an awesome system for it’s efficiency, but the robustness is gone, as is anything genuine and unique about the process. You know the person before you know the person, if you know what I mean.

I think that’s what society wants. I see people with the cell phone constantly glued to their ear, or the plam of their hand as they are texting. I think that many people in society, a number which will surely increase, view face time as nothing more than a minor inconvenience which must occasionally be dealt with, that’s all.

I think that’s why I get along with people older than forty as opposed to people around my age (26).

But, either way, I still don’t have time to bullshit with cashiers. Not because I look down on them (I don’t) but because a friendship would never expand beyond I go to your store once in a while because I’m never going to go to their house (if invited) and they’ll never be invited to mine.

I’ll try to read the Black Swan, by the way.

You can get it on-line, often free. :stuck_out_tongue:

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As a European, I’d have to say I’ve only heard of Ford. And as an engineer in the auto industry, that Ford is a notable exception :slight_smile: If the government offer the bailout, you’re at the mercy of the industry.

Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the U.S., but it’s not like Circuit City only had a handful of people working for them.

No, if Barmart kept in line with inflation. But why would it?

There are a couple of large chains that do give the impression of trying to do the best for the employees - in the UK, the John Lewis chain is an example. But they do struggle to compete, apparently, and gain a not insignificant portion of their business for people who appreciate what they do. I’d just like to spread the number of people who appreciate it.

The internet is an interesting one. In itself, it is a very robust system - a huge number of links per node/person, a vast amount of “needless” information - a huge amount of unnecessary traffic to end users, a huge amount of routing and rerouting that allows spontaneous healing of servers that fall out. On a personal level, many boards and fora on which to meet people (hi!) and through which to maintain relationships.

At the same time, it’s a fantastic tool for those who want to move to efficiency, a tool for data farming and rigid organisation. You’ve no idea how hard it is to get get old-school managers not to see web-based management tools as “more control”.

All in all though, it’s another tool a diversifying of what society has available to connect and communicate. As long as it stays as a method, rather than the method, it’s good.

And that’s also an undue reliance on one thing, I agree. I don’t know if you needed to call anyone in NYC on 11th September 2001, or in London on 7th July 2005, but the phone networks were jammed; they were optimised for efficiency. The internet - with the exception of a few sites - stayed up. I’m 35, I can definitely remember a time that you couldn’t just look online and check train delays or call some callcentre in India to arrange an alternative insurance and 11pm. On the one hand, it’s more “convenient”, on the other you can’t rely on it in the sort of circumstances where you may most want to.

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Naturally, but as you saw with the banks that were bailed out (bonuses) and to a certain extent the car companies (GM and Chrysler) that took the bailouts, they were at the mercy of the Government to a great extent. That’s exactly why many of the banks repaid the bailout money ahead of schedule, so they could get out of the Government messing in their affairs. In the case of the banks, what many people don’t realize that the bonuses (while ridiculous) are about competiting to get or retain the best employees more than anything.

That’s one area where I think the Government should step in and make that mandatory. You’d very rarely have to worry about voluntary raises of pay anymore provided the employee stayed in the same position. The starting salary/wage (and all salaries thereafter) should be indexed to inflation on an annual basis. The same thing goes for minimum wage, they’re way behind on it half of the time.

The worst part is that they do it for Social Security, they have to, it’s already a law. Of course, if inflation doesn’t go up SS can remain the same, but you could do the same thing with wages/salaries.

Hi!

The last part assumes a lot. You said it right there when you mentioned, “Old-school,” managers. That’s what meeting people for the first time in person is becoming, old-school. I forsee the Internet becomeing the method within 50 years or less, probably much less, unless something even more impersonal replaces it.

That’s true, but what can absolutely be relied upon?

Just imagine if we all relied almost completely on the Internet many years from now and it went down completely, worldwide. I’m sure you have heard the phrase, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” common folk knowledge, but not necessarily practiced by societies.

79

It’s not in the banks’ interests to argue otherwise, of course. Most financial institutions now are multinational, they could keep the best people who are willing to change countries if one country decided to ban the bonuses, and they won’t lose the people who aren’t.

Does seem a bit backward to index welfare and not salaries. :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t know, I’m noticing more trends away from virtual offices and e-meetings in the engineering industry, the last few years. ICT may well be different; sales and buying is always going to be a lot more face-to-face. People are coming up against the limitations of the technology - and some of the limitations are being addressed (video conferencing was the big step so far), but I suspect some will remain.

It’s more in private life that it’s becoming the norm; I remember meeting a couple who’d met online in 1998 and thinking “eww, weird” - now a good proportion of my friends’ relationships started online in some form or another.

Just imagine if we all relied almost completely on the Internet many years from now and it went down completely, worldwide. I’m sure you have heard the phrase, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” common folk knowledge, but not necessarily practiced by societies.
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Exactly! You can’t rely on anything, because there are always unknown unknowns, but you can protect yourself from the worst effects of major problems if you design for it. On a societal level, but even on a personal level, how many people have all their savings in one bank, one pension fund - and bank/pension collapse is far from unheard-of.

The internet’s going to be hard to break, compared to if everything had to go through a huge server cluster in Seattle, say. It’s distributed, it routes around damage and (importantly) it uses several different technologies. There are always events that can and will screw you up, though. We rely on petrochemicals far too much, for example, to the extent that it dominates world politics. A simple technological matter and it shapes life for billions of people. If an oil-eating bacteria wiped things out overnight, we’d take a huge hit - and that’s an example where we’d have several alternatives, like nuclear and renewables, to help us out.

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I think it’s tough to assume that the best people are willing to change countries. In any case, even if bonuses were banned, they’d find some kind of workaround. It would either be stock options or salaries would be even more through the roof than they presently are.

Exactly. More sideways than backward. I have no problem with SS being indexed for diasbled people who really need it to be indexed or for people who already put their time (and money) into the system and reached an appropriate age, but I just think the same should be done for salaries, as well.

Either that or get rid of SS altogether and just have a small percentage set aside for disabled people. The whole thing is a Ponzi Scheme anyway, not sustainable, surprised it has lasted this long.

That’s exactly what I was getting at, private life. Most of an individual’s purchases occur privately, I really don’t think customer service matters as much as it used to. For instance, everybody raves about how great my personal level of customer service is (hotel manager), but I think that I’m decent but nothing special in that regard. I’m much better at everything else, so if I’m great at customer service by comparison I must be being compared against a fairly low standard.

I just think that we’re forgetting how to do too much, including thinking for ourselves. I remember on one of my days off they were doing maintenance on the hotel server that the franchise uses for all of our stuff, the desk clerk calls me panicking about how is he supposed to do the housekeeping list. It never occurred to him to go through the physical Registration Cards and write down the room numbers looking at the departure dates to determine whether the rooms is a check-out or a stay-over.

It just honestly didn’t occur to him at all, I was shocked.