Wal-Mart to close unionized store in Quebec

[Grantler]

Is this going to turn into a debate about Keynes' theory of economics vs. Hayek's cause that would be awesome!

[Hugo]

We already had one of those, it's here.

You could resurrect it if you want.

[Michael Hardner]

Okay, I read that thread and aged about twenty years. For better or worse, this forum is starting to elevate itself above the level where it can be understood by the average person.

Hugo, you are at once a nightmare and a dream come true. You seem to have a well thought out complex theory that is espoused by no one else. It is aggravating yet fascinating to walk through it.

I think that any good theory has to be internally consistent and logical at a minimum. But even theories that meet this test will [sometimes] fail in the real world.

While I still don't understand completely what you're talking about, I find it significant that you imply that private healthcare could possibly be supplied at roughly a cost of $9 per family. Is this correct ? Because if that's what you're saying, it's plainly preposterous. I think you're intellectually honest, but you may have some blinders as to the practicality of some of these things.

I'd still like to hear more about this polycentric legal society you're talking about. Where do these theories come from ? Is it von Mises ?

How would such a society come into being ? What role would the state have ? What would prevent the rise of organized crime/government ?

[Hugo]

While I still don't understand completely what you're talking about, I find it significant that you imply that private healthcare could possibly be supplied at roughly a cost of $9 per family. Is this correct ?

No, Michael, I am saying that private healthcare was actually supplied for $9 per family per year. You don't have to wonder about whether or not it was possible any more than you have to wonder if it was possible for American colonials to secede from British rule by 1783.

Is it possible now, after almost a century of government intervention, price-fixing and public ownership? Who knows? You can't roll back time and you can't undo the terrible damage that government did to the healthcare system.

If it reverted to a free market, I would expect that prices would reach this level again eventually. It might take as much as several centuries to undo the damage that socialism has done, however. Initially, prices might actually go up because of the necessity to do things like pay off the massive debts that government builds up, modernize aging and obsolete equipment, attract more medical personnel and so forth. But this is a short-term problem that will solve itself. The free market is wonderfully self-correcting.

I'd still like to hear more about this polycentric legal society you're talking about. Where do these theories come from ? Is it von Mises ?

No, it's from Murray Rothbard, and was also furthered by David Friedman (son of Milton Friedman).

How would such a society come into being ?

Much as the USA came into being. If you engender a culture of liberty you can make it possible. The problem is that anarchy in a state is a public goods problem. This, conversely, is also the reason why states tend not to arise again after anarchy is achieved: in anarchy, creating a state is a public goods problem.

What role would the state have ?

None!

What would prevent the rise of organized crime/government ?

As I said, government does not arise again because of the public goods problem it presents. All historical examples of anarchist societies have been ended by foreign invasion.

As to organized crime, we might ask how statism prevents the rise of organized crime! Short answer: it doesn't.

Note that organized crime is closely linked to economic activity that is banned by the state: drugs, prostitution, gambling etc. In the libertarian society these things would not be banned, since there is no such things as crimes against society and any free trade is legal. Therefore, there's not much for organized crime to do except petty theft, and that would be hard against the private police forces, who will be much better than state police forces because they have to serve consumers rather than themselves.

Note, for instance, that before Robert Peel introduced the first police force in London policing was done privately. Moreover, after the state police were introduced the crime rate did not actually drop at all. Evidently the state police were absolutely no improvement on the private police.

[Guest eureka]

Hogo, if I am short with you, it is because I find it extremely tiresome that debates on serious matters are derailed in having to read through your epistles on the State and Government. Epistles in which you appear to have never given any thought to the creed you follow.

Division of labour has been with us since the beginning of our species: nobody questions that. But, so has government. Government is no more than recognised authority appropriate to the society - and there has always been society. Society is as natural and necessary to humans as is sleep and food.

To answer you about insurance, there is no difference between Public and Private Insurance in terms of efficiency. There is, arguably, a possible difference in cost when, in private insurance there is a commission structure. That could be offset by the competitive factors. Thare are no studies on that: only ideological opinions.

The real argument for private insurance is in the requirements for reinsurance that all first payers have. I am not going to go into it because it is not particularly. I have, in the past, written on both sides of this question: it is one in which I have qualifications.

Your information about "healthcare" in the US nearly a century ago is not at all enlightening as a comparison with the present. That healthcare was rudimentary, at best and covered very little of societies needs. Only money could provide for even the care that was available. Your speculations about the effect of introducing "free markets" in healthcare again are not proof of anything but just speculation. In may opinion, fantasy.

There have never been anarchical societies. All those you have cited in the past have had authority in the mix. Authority may have been limited but it has been there. Organized crime existed in primitive societies also. It may not have been heavier than raiding crops or stealing a kill, but it existed. If government and crime because of public goods, then they are as inevitable as birth and death. Public goods are there, even if limites to families and crime will happen. Therefore, government is necessary if any society is not to degenerate into what most people think of as anarchism.

When you talk of "the only explanation" (being the evil of government) for all manner of ills, you ignore everything that is relevant to explaining why things happen or are. Healthcare and education, particularly the first, show this. What healthcare is and what it was are a Rolls Royce and a handcart: the handcart for carrying away the body.

There are expanatios and they are not government. Government is the means by which education and healthcare have become available to all of society. That availability is also what has driven much of the advances in medicine since it provides the need and the economic incentive.

There may have been other points in your argument, but my memory has failed there. However, I am sure that they are as ill conceived as the ones that I have covered. You have high intelligence, Hugo. It is just a pity that you could not apply it to the thought that should follow reading a book.

[Hugo]

debates on serious matters are derailed in having to read through your epistles on the State and Government.

Michael asked me some questions that I answered. You didn't have to read them since they weren't addressed to you. You can feel free to ignore my anarchism and focus purely on economic matters. I suspect you don't because you feel that anarchism gives you a red herring with which you can derail the discussion since you are so obviously losing.

Government is no more than recognised authority appropriate to the society - and there has always been society.

No, actually government is an organization that monopolizes law and justice within a geographic area. 'Recognized authority' takes many forms, like a boss, a priest, a god, a mediator, a psychiatrist, a doctor, whatever. I don't think we would call a priest or a doctor "government".

To answer you about insurance, there is no difference between Public and Private Insurance in terms of efficiency.

This cannot be true because public insurance lacks the price mechanism through which economic information can be communicated. Because it lacks this mechanism, a public institution has very imperfect information which destroys all possibility of an efficient outcome.

Your information about "healthcare" in the US nearly a century ago is not at all enlightening as a comparison with the present. That healthcare was rudimentary, at best and covered very little of societies needs.

That argument means that, if correct, planned economies must be better than free markets, because the Soviet Union had trains and the free markets of 18th Century America only had horses.

Of course healthcare almost a century ago was rudimentary. Public provision did not change that. My illustration shows that since the state began to provide healthcare the cost has skyrocketed.

You get a cigar if you can name me one single private industry where the prices of its products have increased in the same way. Heck, I'll give you the cigar if you can find one where the price has increased 1% of the increase in healthcare price in the same period.

There have never been anarchical societies.

Medieval Iceland and Holy Experiment Pennsylvania are historical examples of anarchism. Societies that were very close to being anarchist include Anglo-Saxon Britain, and modern Somalia. There are more, but I would have to go look them up, and as you aren't seriously interested in learning anything I see no point in doing that.

All those you have cited in the past have had authority in the mix. Authority may have been limited but it has been there.

Perhaps by your definition, but as we've seen, your definition means that parents, priests, bosses, bankers, lawyers etc. are "government", so that just demonstrates how invalid your definition is.

Government is the means by which education and healthcare have become available to all of society.

Seventy years ago, bananas were a luxury item affordable only by the affluent. Now anybody can get as much bananas as they could possibly consume. Even though bananas are extremely cheap, if you wanted to you could even find free bananas in many places. In fact, people in Canada who can't even get "universal" healthcare can still get bananas. Show me the state-run universal banana programme that made this possible, please.

That availability is also what has driven much of the advances in medicine since it provides the need and the economic incentive.

Most of the advances in medicine were for profit and private enterprise. Note that the private effort to map the human genome quickly outstripped the international government-funded effort to do so, for instance. Inoculation and vaccination, anaesthetic, antisepsis, and surgical technique are a few more examples of crucially important medical developments made by private individuals acting without the state.

[Guest eureka]

Losing, Hugo! I don't think so and you are still chasing your tail.

Public insurance has precisely the same information as private. The price mechanism for both is the stistical relationship between costs and price: nothing more.

Healthcare has not risen in cost in the way you claim. You do not consider what the cost of the "apple" of 1920's healthcare would be today. I would suggest that it has risen more than it should only because of the private component - that is that funeral homes make a lot more money out of the end product.

Healthcare, itself, today has a myriad features that were not present in that early idyll so how can the costs have increased as you claim? I could give you many things that have increased dramatically. Most would be because of private sector profit.

Government is not all the things that you claim except that social authority can include them. Government is the authority that any society, however primitive, inevitably must delegate administration to - not priests or bosses. Even those societies you claim as anarchist had delegated authorities. My readings long ago on those would enable me to better describe them but I have forgotten much of this and am not going to reread anarchy. It would be a fruitless exercise.

Advances in medicine may well have been largely through the profit motive> I have never said differently. However, it is the need for advances and the climate established by medical needs that fuels the advances.

[waynej625]

Other's out there pay low wages just like WalMart. Of course this is all about union busting. walMart just does not like to deal with organized labour in any shape or form, but then again Zeller's is not one bit different in that respect. The thing is that Zeller's cut their costs by having as few employees as possible. I know the Zeller's in my city employs so few people a cannon could be fired down the middle of their store and bobody would have to worry about an employee being hit, because the only employees are the cashiers, and a couple of manager types.

Aside from the way WalMart handles their labour problems, their service is great. You can really find someone to assist you when you need it.

[Hugo]

Public insurance has precisely the same information as private. The price mechanism for both is the stistical relationship between costs and price: nothing more.

You are very mistaken about the relationship between cost and price since they do not have one at all. Cost is the sacrifice made to produce an item, the price is what another will freely relinquish in order to possess it.

Consider that if you built a car like a Ford Focus, it would cost maybe $100,000 since you don't have the mass production of Ford, but you will not sell it for more than $15,000 since nobody would pay more than that for a car that they consider to be worth $15,000. However, a Ford Focus built by Ford will cost them $10,000 to build and will also be priced at $15,000. If what you say is true, then build me a Ford Focus in your own garage. You should be able to sell it for more than what it costs to build. Perhaps $110,000.

Your idea reminds me of when Homer Simpson happens upon a crashed sugar truck and decides to bag it and sell it for five dollars a bag (or so). Marge points out that the grocery store is selling them for 50 cents a bag, and they don't have broken glass and bits of metal in them. Homer made the same mistake you did.

The price mechanism is actually an information relay. The car manufacturer does not know the intricate details of all the thousands of people and processes that went into his raw materials, equipment and tools, and he does not have to since the prices of these items convey all the information he needs, as they also convey information on his needs and desires back to the people who make those things.

Public industry does not have the price mechanism, so it has to gather all this information another way, and since the price mechanism is the best way yet known to do this it becomes inefficient relative to the free market.

Besides, you are refuting your own argument. You earlier said that Wal-Mart deliberately prices goods below cost, but you have just said that price and cost are related, so how could this be?

Healthcare, itself, today has a myriad features that were not present in that early idyll so how can the costs have increased as you claim?

Televisions have today a myriad features that were not present in early television sets, so how can the cost of televisions have decreased since the 1930s? According to you a television should cost $40,000 today.

I could give you many things that have increased dramatically.

No, you couldn't. At least you couldn't give one that wasn't either directly provided or heavily regulated by the government.

If you can, by all means, do. But I asked you to last post and all I got was a promise that you could. Well, Eureka, I can "promise" you that I could fly around this room if I wanted to.

Government is the authority that any society, however primitive, inevitably must delegate administration to - not priests or bosses.

Delegating administration? I delegate administration of my garden to a landscaper. Is the landscaper my government?

You are going to have to accept my definition of government. All your various definitions have too many silly examples that fit them perfectly.

Reminds of of a story. Plato (I think) was asked to define man. He said it was a hairless, featherless biped. The next day a student brought in a plucked chicken and said, "Here is Plato's man!"

Even those societies you claim as anarchist had delegated authorities. My readings long ago on those would enable me to better describe them

Yes, I'm sure they would. Oh, and I just flew around this room. You couldn't see it because we're hundreds of miles apart. Sorry.

Advances in medicine may well have been largely through the profit motive> I have never said differently.

How would you interpret this passage?

Government is the means by which education and healthcare have become available to all of society. That availability is also what has driven much of the advances in medicine since it provides the need and the economic incentive.

You seem to be saying that the profit motive can only exist in an industry where government makes the goods universally available, or that better profit motives in such industries make their advancement faster than in markets without intervention.

This, of course, is a nonsense.

I'm also still waiting for an explanation on how so many goods and services have become universally accessible without government provision. Were you hoping I'd forget?

[Guest eureka]

What on earth are you talking about, Hugo. You are simply doing the same as the last time we went around. "You seem to be saying" etc. You know daen well what I am saying but you don't have what it takes to deal with it.

For insurance, it is unlikely that anyone on the Forum knows as much about it on the world scale as I do. And I am not wrong. Not everything fits into your tidy little fantasy world. It has nothing to do with the pricing of a Ford Focus. The mechanism is entirely different.Public and private insurance gather information in exactly the same way.

It is quite obvious why TVs have become cheaper and I will not get into the silliness of having to explain it. Healthcare is not the smae thing. It is not an item: it is thousands of items that do not have the features of mass production and cheaper sources of materials. Nor does technological advance always lower costs. It frequently increases tem for a more efficacious method of treatment.

For examples of things that have increased substantially, you have only to look within health itself. How about toilet paper? It has gone far beyond the rate of inflation of recent decades. It is also far more expensive to the consumer than the piece of a discarded newspaper that might have been used several decades ago.

How about your house. It has outpaced inflation unless you do live in a cave.

I am not refuting my own argument about WalMart. A child could understand what I said so I have to think you are being deliberately - can't think of a good word to describe, but you will get the drift.

Loss leaders are a departure from any price mechanism other than the one that calculates the benefit of taking a loss on certain items.

So, continue flying around your room; but do it quietly. You remind me more of the one who takes his gullible little band of followers to a mountain top crying that the end of the world is at hand but discovered that his watch was wrong.

[August1991]

So, continue flying around your room; but do it quietly. You remind me more of the one who takes his gullible little band of followers to a mountain top crying that the end of the world is at hand but discovered that his watch was wrong.

You too can continue flying around the room, eureka.

I suggest you hold up the mirror. Your comments about Hugo could just as easily apply to yourself. You too seem to be stuck with your own little band of beliefs on a mountain top.

Just to take the example of health care, all European countries have a private health sector with private health insurance. More and more private clinics are opening in Montreal, as The Gazette has reported in a series this past week.

[Hugo]

It has nothing to do with the pricing of a Ford Focus. The mechanism is entirely different.Public and private insurance gather information in exactly the same way.

Public industries do not have a price mechanism because their prices are coerced and not derived from trade. Therefore they lack the primary means of economic information relay. The price mechanism functions in exactly the same way for all goods and services, whether it is bananas, cars or healthcare.

After all, just because you say it doesn't make it so. I have gone to lengths to find examples and conduct demonstrations for you, and your rebuttal amounts to, "No it isn't."

Why isn't it? Until you can explain yourself you will get nowhere.

It is quite obvious why TVs have become cheaper and I will not get into the silliness of having to explain it. Healthcare is not the smae thing. It is not an item: it is thousands of items that do not have the features of mass production and cheaper sources of materials.

Healthcare is produced from a variety of goods and services, just like a television set (various labourers work to produce it, various transistors, circuits, pieces of plastic and glass are used).

You are telling me that goods and services can only become accessible to all with state intervention, and you are telling me that goods and services will always increase astronomically in price over time. Both of these statements I have already refuted with an example that you have not offered any argument over despite the fact that this is the third time I have asked you to. Your only other recourse is to deny the obvious, that healthcare is a service.

Nor does technological advance always lower costs. It frequently increases tem for a more efficacious method of treatment.

This is true only inasmuch as technology will decrease the price of an item relative to its quality, i.e. if the quality of an item increases, the price may also increase but it will not keep pace with the increase in quality, otherwise such an increase would not be implemented since consumers would judge it better to buy the older product.

For examples of things that have increased substantially, you have only to look within health itself. How about toilet paper? It has gone far beyond the rate of inflation of recent decades. It is also far more expensive to the consumer than the piece of a discarded newspaper that might have been used several decades ago.

So you say that toilet paper is more expensive than discarded newspaper, therefore, the price of toilet paper has increased?

By the same argument, modern cars are more expensive than walking, therefore, the cost of cars has increased over time.

How about your house. It has outpaced inflation unless you do live in a cave.

House prices increase as a quantum of the increase in their value. If my house accumulates in price it is because people have judged it to be even more valuable than it was when I bought it.

On the aggregate, the price of housing has decreased over time, not increased.

The problem with the application of this idea to healthcare is that it is impossible to ascertain what value people actually put on healthcare and its advancements because there is no price mechanism when it is provided by the state.

To put it another way, demand increases as price decreases. The price of healthcare has been artificially reduced to zero, therefore, people will demand healthcare for as long as they feel that healthcare is not of negative value for them. It is highly probable that a lot of healthcare development is malinvestment and of overall negative value, however, so long as the price mechanism is removed from healthcare this will not be corrected.

I am not refuting my own argument about WalMart.

Yes, you have. You said that Wal-Mart deliberately prices its products below cost to eliminate competition. Then you said that price was a factor of cost. However, if price can be changed while cost remains a constant as your first statement suggests, your second statement cannot be true. Conversely, if price cannot be changed while cost remains constant as you later opined, then Wal-Mart could not possibly change their prices when cost remains unchanged.

Let me illustrate. Let P (price) = C (cost)*2. If C is $2, then P must be $4. But if I could make P = $1 while C remains $2, then the equation is wrong and P is not a function of C at all.

Loss leaders are a departure from any price mechanism other than the one that calculates the benefit of taking a loss on certain items.

No, you said:

The price mechanism... is the... relationship between costs and price: nothing more.

How can a price "depart" or be removed from the price mechanism? How can an outcome be divorced from the procedure that creates it? Can children be conceived without parents?

[Guest eureka]

August, what does that have to do with Hugo's claims of the "extraordinary" increases in costs.

As for holding up a mirror, why should I. I have never seen such rigidity as Hugo is diplaying here. What I have proposed, I have put in simple terms that a schoolchild should understand. The responses are on the level of his not understanding that toilet paper has increased in price and is more expensive than the oft used alternative.

His house has experienced "extraordinary" increase but that is different (yet the same) as his other propositions.

My opinion of Hugo's capacities is not what it was. He can't get beyond the basic theorems of text books. The book says price/cost therefore there can be no refinement in second year.

Sometimes I think I must be a masochist to continue these things with Hugo but I live in hope that he will one day progress beyond his obsession.

[Hugo]

It's quite simple, Eureka. The price mechanism is a back-and-forth. Goods are offered at a price initially determined by the supplier, and the level of consumption at that price signals back to him the value that consumers place on his product. With that knowledge he can adjust his price, and consumers will adjust their consumption. If prices go up, less people will judge the product of greater value than its price, so consumption drops, and vice versa. Of course, equilibrium is never reached because the economy is not static but in constant flux and change, so this is why prices change.

The difference with public industry is that the feedback from consumers in the form of consumption keyed to price does not happen. This is of crucial importance in understanding why public enterprise is innately inefficient compared to free markets. Consumers cannot signify their interpretation of the price and the value of the good back to the supplier because the amount they consume is not set by them, but by the supplier!

Take healthcare. In a free market you consume healthcare services according to the amount and quality you actually use, but when healthcare is provided publicly you consume healthcare at the tax rate levelled upon you regardless of how much or how little you use the services that you actually buy. Therefore, neither the consumption nor the useage of healthcare services has anything to do with the value placed upon them by consumers.

That being the case, the providers of healthcare don't have any real way of knowing what value consumers place upon the services, what kinds of service they demand and so on. They can gather statistics on healthcare use, conduct surveys and so forth, but the problem with this kind of data is that it can only show you what happened, not what is happening or what will happen, so as a tool for computing future production they are all but useless.

[Grantler]

In addition to this conversation, what about this problem (I think it is a problem).

Wal-Mart brings manufacturers in and holds reverse auctions with representatives of the companies. In other words, manufacturers are stuck selling products below the value they should get for them because Wal-Mart sets their target buying price and makes the manufacturers under sell it to get the contract.

Look at the case of Rubbermaid. The price of resin rose and Wal-Mart wanted to buy the next batch of products for a lower price.

Wal-Mart is that big of a competitor that it ruined Rubbermaid. It is a huge company. Manufaturers are no long in charge of the prices for their goods.

The global retailers make the money.

[Trial-and-Error]

That being the case, the providers of healthcare don't have any real way of knowing what value consumers place upon the services, what kinds of service they demand and so on. They can gather statistics on healthcare use, conduct surveys and so forth, but the problem with this kind of data is that it can only show you what happened, not what is happening or what will happen, so as a tool for computing future production they are all but useless.

Hugo, let's see if I've got this straight. Sickness for profit is the only way to go cuz

(1) only a private company can guage the value consumers place on getting well. Does that mean that if you're not using the service, you must be denigrating its value?

(2) privatization is the only meaningful way of getting consumer feedback. Why is it that public hospitals can't get feedback? Seems to me that in Canada they're getting a good deal of meaningful feedback. It's only the political will to act upon it that's the problem (and no, it does not necessarily mean throwing a lot more money at it: Think management!)

Let's go with your system.

Let's say you have a struggling poet, a social worker and a well heeled gun manufacturer/whatever. The gun manufacturer pays megabucks for his hospital stay (1) cuz he can afford to or (2) he values his health or (1 and (2).

The poet being at the mercy of the state receives less than optimal care cuz (1) he can't pay for anything but the basics; or (2) he's not all that interested in getting well or (1) and (2)

The social worker whose work in the market place is valued poorly as her salary used to reflect receives only adequate care cuz (1) she's lost her job and can't pay for optimal care or (2) she's only moderately interested in getting well or (1) and (2)

So in your scheme of things, it's not the person we as a society need to value but rather the amount of money a person is able to acquire in order to play in the market--albeit the sickness market.

I mean there are yahoos like the struggling poet who would actually place more importance on putting a roof over their families head than on getting well. Obviously, skewed values and priorities. He could give up poetry and dig some ditches; better still, he could join the army and learn how to kill (an invaluable societal skill) or perhaps he could get a job working for the gun manufacturer (I mean why not learn the real meaning of contributing to society). That he's teaching his kids to be giving, kind, honest, and is providing them with a liberal education counts for little. He's basically a useless pauper subject to the mercy of the state.

The social worker who chose her profession because she wanted to make a positive contribution to society is unfortunately unemployed because something on the home front necessitated her leaving the job. Too bad. Well, not really, she could mortgage her home and come up with the monies to pay for good care. At least she will if she values getting well.

Yes, folks, it all comes down to P&L. We really must do more to encourage folks to go into the public health system so they can do whatever is necessary to bilk the sick. Can we all agree with Hugo that sickness for profit is a good thing?

The very idea of attracting the right people into the medical profession for all the right reasons is not the American way. There isn't anything ya can't make a profit out've. The Americans have, alas, raised greed to an art form. That we Canucks should follow is simply out of the question. Well, maybe not, we have our fair share of neocons--sad to say.

[Hugo]

Wal-Mart brings manufacturers in and holds reverse auctions with representatives of the companies. In other words, manufacturers are stuck selling products below the value they should get for them because Wal-Mart sets their target buying price and makes the manufacturers under sell it to get the contract.

This is not a problem and never has been. What you are observing is that in a free market, the consumer reigns supreme (as opposed to a planned economy, where producers do). In Wal-Mart's relationship vis-a-vis its suppliers, Wal-Mart is the consumer. A consumer can refuse to buy at any price, and the supplier can either choose to lower the price hoping that the consumer will find new value and buy again, or try and find another consumer who will pay the higher price.

only a private company can guage the value consumers place on getting well.

It would be more correct to say that no company that coerces sales can gauge the value its consumers place on its products.

Does that mean that if you're not using the service, you must be denigrating its value?

If you are not using any product it means that you, as an individual, do not find that product to be of greater value than the asking price. Let's say I buy a plasma TV for $3000, and you don't. All this means is that I find a plasma TV to be worth more to me than $3000, but you would find that other products which that money will buy are worth more than the plasma TV.

privatization is the only meaningful way of getting consumer feedback. Why is it that public hospitals can't get feedback? Seems to me that in Canada they're getting a good deal of meaningful feedback.

When somebody is not paying for a good, they will demand it so long as it is something more than worthless to them. This is all you are seeing here with current "feedback". It's worthless for discerning what people actually value, all it tells you is that people value healthcare more than nothing (duh).

The very idea of attracting the right people into the medical profession for all the right reasons is not the American way.

Oh yes, socialism would be a far better system if men were angels. They are not, however. Human beings are fallible creatures, and a system that utilises their fallibility is better than one that pretends they are perfect.

Your examples are faulty in that they assume a static economy, when it is not static at all. As we can already see, public healthcare causes the cost of healthcare to spiral upward. This means that over time, it becomes less and less affordable. The tax burden in Canada is now borne mostly by the poor anyway since the rich don't really have a lot more to be fleeced out of. Over time, as the tax burden becomes ever heavier and real incomes drop, increasingly fewer people will be able to afford healthcare (to wit, they will pay the taxes for their healthcare but have increasingly less left over to live on).

Your talk of virtue and refrain from greed makes me laugh, quite frankly. It's easy to be generous with somebody else's money. What you are advocating is massive theft and violence, so it amuses me that a morally bankrupt individual like you would lecture anybody on morality.

Perhaps you too can take the tax-definition challenge. Define taxation in a way that does not also describe high-minded theft, if you can.

[Guest eureka]

And so WalMart escapes again as we join the Economics 101 and Philosophy 100 classes. We leave the real world at the door and enter wide-eyed to listen to Professor Hugo read from his self-written text.

[Hugo]

What has Wal-Mart escaped - your little Communist "Speak Bitterness" Denunciation Meeting?

I don't see what Wal-Mart has done wrong. All they have done has been consented to by the people it was done to. I'm sure the people who were fired did not want to be fired, however, I don't think anybody believes in jobs-for-life anymore and one has to accept that an employment contract can be terminated by either party. If these employees had deserted Wal-Mart to work for a company with better pay, would you be so outraged? You still have shown no evidence that Wal-Mart is or ever could become the only employer and, quite frankly, such an idea is highly preposterous anyway.

The only thing I could even conceive of as being categorically wrong is the initiation of violence or the threat of it, and the only ones guilty of this are the people you support. This means the labour unions, who commit violence against property as a matter of policy (a sit-in strike, for instance) and even against people on occasion (attacking 'scabs'), and the government, who have committed violence as policy since their very inception and continue to commit massive violence against virtually every citizen every day that passes.

And this returns us to the question I had previously asked you, which you never answered: why would you want to replace nonviolence with violence, peace with war, co-operation with oppression? All socialists are of the same stripe. Lenin wrote that he would always use violence and terror as tools, and so will you. The only thing Wal-Mart might have escaped here is being subjected to socialist terrorism, and we should all be so lucky.

[Guest eureka]

What sort of idiotic "question" is that, Hugo? It seems to be more like an attempt at character assassination than a question.

It was estimated a couple of years ago, that the WalMart concept has cost the United States some 2,300,000 jobs. You can add to that losses in Canada and elsewhere.

I heard the other day, an interview where it was said that the five Walton boys have fortunes of 20 billion $ each while it takes between 2 and 3 WalMart jobs to keep a family.

Main street America is dying and in Canada too. Everywhere there is a WalMart, towns become anaemic.

And for what! To enrich some at the expense of all. Sure, they are doing nothing wrong. And they do not do that nothing with the consent of customers. The customers have lost the choice to keep their business cultures healthy.

[Hugo]

What sort of idiotic "question" is that, Hugo? It seems to be more like an attempt at character assassination than a question.

Thou sayest! I just asked you what you thought you could gain from replacing voluntarism with institutionalized violence. That you would take it as "character assassination" shows that you don't truly believe what you say since when it is spelled out to you, you find it overwhelmingly negative.

It was estimated a couple of years ago, that the WalMart concept has cost the United States some 2,300,000 jobs.

By whom?

And for what! To enrich some at the expense of all.

No, to enrich all. I already went over this in my mathematical demonstration, which you have not even attempted to refute at any point. As I showed you, if Wal-Mart pays an average of $2 per hour less than the competition and employs 50 people in a town of 50,000, Wal-Mart would have to offer savings of less than $4 per year to its shoppers in order to produce a net wealth-reducing effect - yet this is precisely the effect you are arguing, without any evidence or logic!

Main street America is dying and in Canada too.

Illustrate why this is something we should lament, please.

[Guest eureka]

That is not what you said, Hugo. Please read yourself accurately. You asked why I would want to replace nonviolence with violence etc. and said that "all socialists are of the same stripe." That is character assassination as well as a very foolish generalisation.

Why I don't respond to your "calculation" is that it makes no sense. You toss a few figures from nowhere around and expect to be taken seriously.

The 2,300,000 figure should be common knowledge, or, at least, knowledge to anyone who wants to posture as an expert on the WalMart effect. It got enough play in the Press in considerations about the shipping of jobs offshore. So who says! Dozens of concerned economists and commentators say.

[Guest eureka]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/

the_wal_mart_effect

This is the address for an interesting article on WalMart. I know you might not let it enter into your consciousness, Hugo, but some others might find it enlightenng.

[Guest eureka]

http://www.walmartwatch.com/info/page.cfm?

subsection_id=124

This, Hugo, is a page of links to sites about WalMart. It is a must have for one who wants to know something, anything about WalMart and, therefore, one that you cannot be aware of.

WalMart is an out of control monster and I have even taken the trouble to find this for you instead of merely giving you the facts. I do that because it is important that you be reducated.

[Hugo]

You asked why I would want to replace nonviolence with violence etc. and said that "all socialists are of the same stripe." That is character assassination as well as a very foolish generalisation.

No, it is a fact. All socialists advocate the use of violence to further their ends, as do you, wonderfully illustrated by your statement that I need to be "reducated" [sic].

If you deny it, say so. But you don't deny it, you just complain about it.

Why I don't respond to your "calculation" is that it makes no sense. You toss a few figures from nowhere around and expect to be taken seriously.

Which figures are you disputing? Or do you accept my figures but find fault with my math?

The 2,300,000 figure should be common knowledge, or, at least, knowledge to anyone who wants to posture as an expert on the WalMart effect. It got enough play in the Press in considerations about the shipping of jobs offshore.

Oh, I'm sure it did, like global cooling got so much press attention thirty years ago. It's not hard to find an audience for a popular idea, and right now socialism is quite popular. But "common knowledge" is neither here nor there, I very rarely accept anything just because it is "common knowledge." If it is indeed knowledge it should withstand a little scrutiny.

the_wal_mart_effect

This link is broken. I searched through the February and January archives and found nothing. Fix your links, I'm not doing your legwork for you.

Oh, and "tyranny of the marketplace"? Nice contradiction in terms. Almost as good as "democratic socialism."

http://www.walmartwatch.com/info/page.cfm?

Most of this is just complaints that Wal-Mart has not always done what the government told it to and moaning about the free choices other people make. These people are just more despots in disguise, since they want to dictate to others what they have to do rather than letting them choose.

It's hard to actually single out any real substantiated claims because the internal links are broken. They don't work with Mozilla or Firefox, and if you need Internet Explorer to view that page, well, that's pretty ironic from a self-proclaimed monopoly buster! Perhaps you'll find me a quote I can look at, if you can actually navigate their site.

If your sources can't even put together a functioning website, what does that say? If you want to read something rational about Wal-Mart, I suggest you try this. You won't, of course, because your mind is closed.

Isn't it annoying having your own insults thrown back at you? Maybe you'll be a bit more mature in future.