Quote:
|
Originally Posted by truncated
I certainly see your point, but I wonder where you draw the line on such issues. Does that not simply make Wal-Mart superior to Rubbermaid in a business sense, and in turn create a separate set of standards by which companies like Rubbermaid must operate in order to succeed within their own markets? While Rubbermaid may not be able to meet Wal-Mart's demands, one of its competitors will, which is simply perpetuating the cycle of capitalist competition.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be number-one advocate for big corporations. I'm just wondering myself how you differentiate between 'bullying' and simple superiority over your competition. Such distinctions are more easily made where pharmaceuticals, for example, are concerned, where actual prohibitions are placed on buying and selling based on both private and governmental interests; but in a 'free' economic society, for me personally, those lines tend to be more blurred.
Basically, I don't have an answer to that either.
|
If you can essentially achieve unlimited superiority in a free enterprise system, why is that less troubling than the government doing the same? At a certain point if Wal-Mart ends up controlling all the means of production...they're not just beating out the competition in their own market, they're manipulating it in every other. Rubbermaid wasn't a Wal-Mart competitor, they were a Wal-Mart supplier... In essence, Wal-Mart begins deciding what will be produced. In a certain sense, the people are still getting what they want because Wal-Mart will go where the profit is...
But if people put the highest value on low cost, it means Wal-Mart can do pretty much whatever it wants towards that end. I realize that in some free enterprise circles sweatshops are considered a good thing, but most people don't feel that way and yet support them anyway. They fulfill their immediate needs or even wants first. It's true that people support what is of value to them, but generally only what is most immediately and obviously of value. Wal-Mart offers low prices, that's obvious to everyone. It's also obvious that you can put a direct value on Wal-Mart's low prices. But to believe this inherently means Wal-Mart is good for people, you almost have to start out with the belief that free enterprise is a divine, flawless system...that it will all work out fine in the end, and that we will always act in our best interest.
If Wal-Mart is the ideal of capitalism, then let me be the first to say in this thread that I am fundamentally opposed to capitalism. However, I've also heard the argument that Wal-Mart is a mutant of a comprised free enterprise system (the United States), and could not have existed unchecked in a pure free enterprise system. I'm not sure if I buy that, but any system that regards Wal-Mart as a standard-bearer is fairly horrifying. I'm awed by Wal-Mart's accomplishments, but I don't support them, or any institution with that much power, let alone one that has shown it's capability to abuse it.