How To Fight Tyranny.

by **Mentalgongfu** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:50 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Get rid of (or at least begin to advocate such)...centralized governmental authority and you will remove the ability for certain businesses/corporations to gain unfair advantage over their employees and customers. Without the coercion of immoral government authorities...any business is strictly at the mercy of voluntary customers (and voluntary employees).<hr></blockquote> Is the private water company at the mercy of its customers, or are its customers at the mercy of the water company? I guess it depends on how far away and how dirty the nearest river is. I can somewhat agree with your line of argument in this thread Rothbardian, but you seem to be insinuating that power held by a centralized government is more dangerous or prone to abuse than power held by a private company. I don't think that's necessarily the case. I'm not sure what you would qualify as a small and de-centralized government, but I'll use the example of the city of Clinton, Iowa. Clinton, Iowa, is governed by a city council of seven members, made up of four ward representatives and three at-large reps. As a council, the city government has a fair amount of power. But the real power in Clinton comes from Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). ADM is much bigger and holds much more power and influence than the city council. The financial and political resources behind the company ensure its interests will be served. If a few council members are co-opted and vote to use eminent domain to evict people from their homes for an expansion of the ADM plant, then the government is enabling the corporation. But if the council didn't exist or didn't want to cooperate, I have no doubt ADM has other means of making sure it gets what it wants. Whether the power is held by the city council or ADM, it is how that power is used which really matters. The fact is, while ADM provides jobs with very good wages and benefits, the company has also been convicted of price-fixing and is notorious for screwing over farmers, both in America and abroad. Just as a business is not inherently evil, neither is "government." In fact, in a representative system, if a government honestly serves the interests of the public, it can be very beneficial. Roads get built, potholes repaired, rapists arrested, etc. What I am trying to get at, is that yes, a powerful central government can be a huge enabler of corporate misdeeds, but it doesn't take a central government, or any government at all, for those who hoard power to oppress others. From what I can tell, no matter what the intentions of a government or business, as it grows in size and power, and attracts people seeking more of the same, it seems to drift closer to fas

by **isachar** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:55 pm

wrong again. The usefullness of the cow or goat bought by the $50 you spend on those sneakers you don't really need will continue to pay dividends long after your sneakers find their way to the municpal landfill. Seems like you just want an excuse to justify buying your sneakers at the lowest possible price, while congragulating yourself at the same time for being a great humanitarian. After all, as you indicate, buying cheap sneakers for yourself is the least you can do. This Xmas or for your wife's next B-Day, or whatever, buy some impoverished third worlder a cow or a goat instead. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=isachar>isachar</A> at: 6/9/06 2:57 pm

by **Dreams End** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 2:12 am

I agree with Roth...shopping at walmart gives you the additional benefit of being able to screw..I mean aid... foreign AND domestic workers. In one place! That's convenience. Do not set foot in these horrendous places. Hightower: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Boycott Wal-Mart Why you should wipe that smiling yellow face off your shopping list. BY JIM HIGHTOWER mail this article print-friendly format Alex Maness More FEATURES from May. 08, 2002 Up Goose Creek More from May. 08, 2002... ALSO IN NEWS & TRIANGLES N.C.'s Chris Daughtry comes home New evidence in Charles Walker murder trial Warming up? More (183)... Wal-Mart is now the world's biggest corporation, having passed ExxonMobil for the top slot. It hauls off a stunning $220 billion a year from We the People (more in revenues than the entire GDP of Israel and Ireland combined). Wal-Mart cultivates an aw-shucks, we're-just-folks-from-Arkansas image of neighborly small-town shopkeepers trying to sell stuff cheaply to you and yours. Behind its soft homespun ads, however, is what one union leader calls "this devouring beast" of a corporation that ruthlessly stomps on workers, neighborhoods, competitors and suppliers. Despite its claim that it slashes profits to the bone in order to deliver "Always Low Prices," Wal-Mart banks about $7 billion a year in profits, ranking it among the most profitable entities on the planet. Of the 10 richest people in the world, five are Waltons--the ruling family of the Wal-Mart empire. S. Robson Walton is ranked by London's "Rich List 2001" as the wealthiest human on the planet, having sacked up more than $65 billion in personal wealth and topping Bill Gates as No. 1. Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way--by roughing people up. The corporate ethos emanating from the Bentonville headquarters dictates two guiding principles for all managers: Extract the very last penny possible from human toil, and squeeze the last dime from every supplier. With more than one million employees (three times more than General Motors), this far-flung retailer is the country's largest private employer, and it intends to remake the image of the American workplace in its image--which is not pretty. Yes, there is the happy-faced "greeter" who welcomes shoppers into every store, and employees (or "associates," as the company grandiosely calls them) gather just before opening each morning for a pep rally, where they are all required to join in the Wal-Mart cheer: "Gimme a 'W!'" shouts the cheerleader; "W!" the dutiful employees respond. "Gimme an A!'" And so on. Behind this manufactured cheerfulness, however, is the fact that the average employee makes only $15,000 a year for full-time work. Most are denied even this poverty income, for they're held to part-time work. While the company brags that 70 percent of its workers are full-time, at Wal-Mart "full time" is 28 hours a week, meaning they gross less than $11,000 a year. Health-care benefits? Only if you've been there two years; then the plan hits you with such huge premiums that few can afford it--only 38 percent of Wal-Marters are covered. Thinking union? Get outta here! "Wal-Mart is opposed to unionization," reads a company guidebook for supervisors. "You, as a manager, are expected to support the company's position. ... This may mean walking a tightrope between legitimate campaigning and improper conduct." Wal-Mart is in fact rabidly anti-union, deploying teams of union-busters from Bentonville to any spot where there's a whisper of organizing activity. "While unions might be appropriate for other companies, they have no place at Wal-Mart," a spokeswoman told a Texas Observer reporter who was covering an NLRB hearing on the company's manhandling of 11 meat-cutters who worked at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Jacksonville, Texas. These derring-do employees were sick of working harder and longer for the same low pay. "We signed [union] cards, and all hell broke loose," says Sidney Smith, one of the Jacksonville meat-cutters who established the first-ever Wal-Mart union in the United States, voting in February 2000 to join the United Food and Commercial Workers. Eleven days later, Wal-Mart announced that it was closing the meat-cutting departments in all of its stores and would henceforth buy prepackaged meat elsewhere. But the repressive company didn't stop there. As the Observer reports: "Smith was fired for theft--after a manager agreed to let him buy a box of overripe bananas for 50 cents, Smith ate one banana before paying for the box, and was judged to have stolen that banana." Wal-Mart is an unrepentant and recidivist violator of employee rights, drawing repeated convictions, fines, and the ire of judges from coast to coast. For example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has had to file more suits against the Bentonville billionaires club for cases of disability discrimination than any other corporation. A top EEOC lawyer told Business Week, "I have never seen this kind of blatant disregard for the law." Likewise, a national class-action suit reveals an astonishing pattern of sexual discrimination at Wal-Mart (where 72 percent of the salespeople are women), charging that there is "a harsh, anti-woman culture in which complaints go unanswered and the women who make them are targeted for retaliation." Workers' compensation laws, child-labor laws (1,400 violations in Maine alone), surveillance of employees--you name it, this corporation is a repeat offender. No wonder, then, that turnover in the stores is above 50 percent a year, with many stores having to replace 100 percent of their employees each year, and some reaching as high as a 300 percent turnover! Then there's China. For years, Wal-Mart saturated the airwaves with a "We Buy American" advertising campaign, but it was nothing more than a red-white-and-blue sham. All along, the vast majority of the products it sold were from cheap-labor hell-holes, especially China. In 1998, after several exposes of this sham, the company finally dropped its "patriotism" posture and by 2001 had even moved its worldwide purchasing headquarters to China. Today, it is the largest importer of Chinese-made products in the world, buying $10 billion worth of merchandise from several thousand Chinese factories. As Charlie Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee reports, "In country after country, factories that produce for Wal-Mart are the worst," adding that the bottom-feeding labor policy of this one corporation "is actually lowering standards in China, slashing wages and benefits, imposing long mandatory-overtime shifts, while tolerating the arbitrary firing of workers who even dare to discuss factory conditions." Wal-Mart does not want the U.S. buying public to know that its famous low prices are the product of human misery, so while it loudly proclaims that its global suppliers must comply with a corporate "code of conduct" to treat workers decently, it strictly prohibits the disclosure of any factory names and addresses, hoping to keep independent sources from witnessing the "code" in operation. Kernaghan's NLC, acclaimed for its fact-packed reports on global working conditions, found several Chinese factories that make the toys Americans buy for their children at Wal-Mart. Seventy-one percent of the toys sold in the United States come from China, and Wal-Mart now sells one out of five of the toys we buy. NLC interviewed workers in China's Guangdong Province who toil in factories making popular action figures, dolls and other toys sold at Wal-Mart. In "Toys of Misery," a shocking 58-page report that the establishment media ignored, NLC describes: 13- to 16-hour days molding, assembling, and spray-painting toys--8 a.m. to 9 p.m. or even midnight, seven days a week, with 20-hour shifts in peak season. Even though China's minimum wage is 31 cents an hour--which doesn't begin to cover a person's basic subsistence-level needs--these production workers are paid 13 cents an hour. Workers typically live in squatter shacks, 7 feet by 7 feet, or jammed in company dorms, with more than a dozen sharing a cubicle costing $1.95 a week for rent. They pay about $5.50 a week for lousy food. They also must pay for their own medical treatment and are fired if they are too ill to work. The work is literally sickening, since there's no health and safety enforcement. Workers have constant headaches and nausea from paint-dust hanging in the air; the indoor temperature tops 100 degrees; protective clothing is a joke; repetitive stress disorders are rampant; and there's no training on the health hazards of handling the plastics, glue, paint thinners, and other solvents in which these workers are immersed every day. As for Wal-Mart's highly vaunted "code of conduct," NLC could not find a single worker who had ever seen or heard of it. These factories employ mostly young women and teenage girls. Wal-Mart, renowned for knowing every detail of its global business operations and for calculating every penny of a product's cost, knows what goes on inside these places. Yet, when confronted with these facts, corporate honchos claim ignorance and wash their hands of the exploitation: "There will always be people who break the law," says CEO Lee Scott. "It is an issue of human greed among a few people." Those "few people" include him, other top managers, and the Walton billionaires. Each of them not only knows about their company's exploitation, but willingly prospers from a corporate culture that demands it. "Get costs down" is Wal-Mart's mantra and modus operandi, and that translates into a crusade to stamp down the folks who produce its goods and services, shamelessly building its low-price strategy and profits on their backs. Worse, Wal-Mart is on a messianic mission to extend its exploitative ethos to the entire business world. More than 65,000 companies supply the retailer with the stuff on its shelves, and it constantly hammers each supplier about cutting their production costs deeper and deeper in order to get cheaper wholesale prices. Some companies have to open their books so Bentonville executives can red-pencil what CEO Scott terms "unnecessary costs." Of course, among the unnecessaries to him are the use of union labor and producing goods in America, and Scott is unabashed about pointing in the direction of China or other places for abysmally low production costs. He doesn't even have to say "Move to China"--his purchasing executives demand such an impossible lowball price from suppliers that they can only meet it if they follow Wal-Mart's labor example. With its dominance over its own 1.2 million workers and 65,000 suppliers, plus its alliances with ruthless labor abusers abroad, this one company is the world's most powerful private force for lowering labor standards and stifling the middle-class aspirations of workers everywhere. Using its sheer size, market clout, access to capital, and massive advertising budget, the company also is squeezing out competitors and forcing its remaining rivals to adopt its price-is-everything approach. Even the big boys like Toys R Us and Kroger are daunted by the company's brutish power, saying they're compelled to slash wages and search the globe for sweatshop suppliers in order to compete in the downward race to match Wal-Mart's prices. How high a price are we willing to pay for Wal-Mart's "low-price" model? This outfit operates with an avarice, arrogance and ambition that would make Enron blush. It hits a town or city neighborhood like a retailing neutron bomb, sucking out the economic vitality and all of the local character. And Wal-Mart's stores now have more kill-power than ever, with its Supercenters averaging 200,000 square feet--the size of more than four football fields under one roof. These things land splat on top of any community's sense of itself and devour local business. By slashing its retail prices way below cost when it enters a community, Wal-Mart can crush our groceries, pharmacies, hardware stores, and other retailers, then raise its prices once it has monopoly control over the market. But, say apologists for these Big-Box megastores, at least they're creating jobs. Wrong. By crushing local businesses, this giant eliminates three decent jobs for every two Wal-Mart jobs that it creates--and a store full of part-time, poorly paid employees hardly builds the family wealth necessary to sustain a community's middle-class living standard. Indeed, Wal-Mart operates as a massive wealth extractor. Instead of profits staying in town to be reinvested locally, the money is hauled off to Bentonville, either to be used as capital for conquering yet another town or simply to be stashed in the family vaults (the Waltons, by the way, just bought the biggest bank in Arkansas). Why should we accept this? Is it our country, our communities, our economic destinies--or theirs? Wal-Mart's radical remaking of our labor standards and our local economies is occurring mostly without our knowledge or consent. Poof--there goes another local business. Poof--there goes our middle-class wages. Poof--there goes another factory to China. No one voted for this ... but there it is. While corporate ideologues might huffily assert that customers vote with their dollars, it's an election without a campaign, conveniently ignoring that the public's "vote" might change if we knew the real cost of Wal-Mart's "cheap" goods--and if we actually had a chance to vote. Much to the corporation's consternation, more and more communities are learning about this voracious powerhouse, and there's a rising civic rebellion against it. Tremendous victories have already been won as citizens from Maine to Arizona, from the Puget Sound to the Gulf of Mexico, have organized locally and even statewide to thwart the expansionist march of the Wal-Mart juggernaut. Wal-Mart is huge, but it can be brought to heel by an aroused and organized citizenry willing to confront it in their communities, the workplace, the marketplace, the classrooms, the pulpits, the legislatures, and the voting booths. Just as the Founders rose up against the mighty British trading companies, so we can reassert our people's sovereignty and our democratic principles over the autocratic ambitions of mighty Wal-Mart. <a href="http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A17618">www.indyweek.com/gyrobase...id%3A17618</a> <hr></blockquote>

by **rothbardian** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:45 am

Mentalgongfu-- Thanks for your comments. Thanks even more for not being mean. Your subject is quite interesting but it takes a little longer treatment. Give me a bit of time to get back to you. Isachar-- You raise the issue of replacing these jobs with, again, a dependence on charitable donations. I don't see where you have addressed my point which is...that subsistence charity (whether a goat or not) can only be extended to a teensy tiny fraction of the impoverished of this world whereas... ...subsistence level income (or better) can be offered by the hundreds of millions of people who can at least offer to patronize the businesses in these Third World countries. You haven't touched that argument...that I can see. In any case, I strongly believe in BOTH avenues: Make a charitable donation AND buy those shoes. You are apparently proposing we use only one avenue. Why not help them derive income from their job and receive charitable donations? That has been going on all along anyway. (By the way, voluntary charitable donations from USA citizens VASTLY outpace all other countries in the world.) I don't understand the personal potshot about me congratulating myself "for being a great humanitarian". I have done no such thing and...you are precisely wrong. This is precisely NOT about dependence upon my 'generosity'. It's about the fact that there are vastly greater numbers of people (myself included) who can contribute financially to these poor people...if we are enabled to do so by simply giving them our business. And I have to wonder out loud what kind of (inadvertently?) condescending view you might have on the various peoples of the world such that you think they would be placated by...chickens and goats? These people would like Internet service, just for openers...thank you very much. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4020259.stm">news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4020259.stm</a> They would like access to the entire array of 'high' technology items that have made our lives so much easier, more practical, more efficient, more comfortable and more enjoyable. These people would like a position in the world's marketplace. You think they want to be sent back to the Stone Age, so they can...milk a goat? To me that is an amazingly low view. And I say yet again-- The absolute key to enabling the world's poor to gain greater access to the market place is to allow the pricing to drop dramatically. It would require that everyone in the world have the freedom to bid anything in the world down to the lowest price. Thus the cost of living would drop down to rock bottom, and it would bring the entire array of goods and services within reach of vastly greater numbers of the world's poor. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=rothbardian>rothbardian</A> at: 6/10/06 3:48 am

by **rothbardian** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 6:05 am

DreamsEnd-- I thought I would answer the article you posted by cutting and pasting my own chosen article. I believe it answers the gist of what your article was about: Something to Cheer at The New York Times (by George Reisman) Earlier today I would not have believed it possible that I would write something in praise of an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times. But Nicolas D. Kristof has written an article that demonstrates some serious understanding of a highly charged subject and has had the courage to express it in his column. The title of his article conveys its nature. It’s called “In Praise of the Maligned Sweatshop.” Datelined, WINDHOEK, NAMIBIA, the article opens with the statement, “Africa desperately needs Western help in the form of . . . sweatshops.” Kristof understands that the sweatshops would raise the demand for labor and cause a substantial improvement in economic conditions in comparison with what they are in the absence of the sweatshops. In the print-edition of the article, this point is driven home by a callout that reads, “What’s worse than being exploited? Not being exploited.” Here are a couple of gems that his article contains: "Well-meaning American university students regularly campaign against sweatshops. But instead, anyone who cares about fighting poverty should campaign in favor of sweatshops . . . . If Africa could establish a clothing export industry, that would fight poverty far more effectively than any foreign aid program. . . . [A] useful step would be for American students to stop trying to ban sweatshops, and instead campaign to bring them to the most desperately poor countries." Kristof even has an answer for advocates of paying a “living wage” in the sweatshops. He points out that because such a wage is above the market rate, the premium is typically pocketed by local managers, who are in a position to collect bribes for awarding the premium-paying jobs to workers of their choice, with the result that “the workers themselves don't get the benefit.” Kristof’s article has what I experience as a kind of premonitional quality. Namely, it gives a momentary glimpse of what the world might be like if the world’s most intellectually influential newspaper were regularly filled with articles of this kind. How different the intellectual climate of our country would be. How different its political and economic policies would be. How much freer and more rational our society would be. Of course, this is only a momentary premonition. But it makes me recall another such premonition that I experienced sometime in the mid-1970s, when I read that the Soviet government could no longer rely on the philosophy of Marxism to obtain the support of its people, but instead had to rely on Russian nationalism. That I recognized as a decisive crack in the whole edifice of socialism/communism. It’s just possible that in Kristof’s column, we have a comparable crack in the left-liberal edifice of The New York Times. And I say this in the knowledge that Kristof has written other columns that are as horrendously bad as this one is remarkably good. June 8, 2006 George Reisman is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics at Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business & Management in Los Angeles, and is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/reisman/reisman9.html">www.lewrockwell.com/reism...sman9.html</a>

by **Gouda** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:01 am

That's pretty disgusting, Roth. The writer is right about Kristoff - consistently horrendous - but this piece is no exception. A neoliberal who supports sweatshops? But of course. No time now, but I would like to reply more substantially and seriously to your previous posts...maybe on Monday. In the meantime, basta ya baby. The weekend is a great time to shop at Walmart, though it gets a little too crowded for my taste.

by **kurtangleitstrue** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 10:02 am

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>If there was no centralized police force or fire department, what are you to do when the nearby tribe decides to raid your village, kill your children, and set fire to your fields?<hr></blockquote> Fight back, turn the other cheek (or seek vigilante justice) and try and put out the fire. Centralized police & fire are not needed to take any of the actions I named.

by **isachar** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 12:30 pm

Roth, It's obvious you know little about indigenous economic development in developing countries. Charitable giving that results in a long-lived asset capable of multiplying several times over and giving life sustaining milk, cheese, eggs (chickens if you don't want to fork over the $50) is a form of economic development. Money earned indigenously with profits kept and recycled in the local economy will have a very strong local economic multiplier effect. Fund/profits can then be invested - through micro-or other lending to fund other locally owned and indigenous cell phone and/or internet and technology services. You choose to characterize it as "charitable", but this is just a word you use to dismiss its true character, which is seed capital for self--sustaining locally owned and controlled economic development. And, what could be MORE libertarian (and liberating) than that?

by **Dreams End** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 12:55 pm

Specifically, Roth, I think you should consider a) how "centralized" huge corps like Walmart are. Not government, of course, but at that level, sort of "quasi-government". b) how walmarts come in and actually drive smaller businesses OUT OF BUSINESS and drive wages down. Case studies all over the place. Mom and Pop can't compete with Sammy Walton. Mom and Pop close up shop while Sammy Walton stays on top. c) While I assume that you are anti-union, I also assume that you are in favor of the freedom of workers to withhold their labor in the event of dissatisfaction with Walmart or to have grievances addressed by management. Try to do either at Walmart...find yourself fired. d) while you oppose centralized government, one of the primary problems with government is its complete capitulation to large corporations. The "Super WalMart" here near me was originally opposed by the community AND by the councilman representing this community. Until, magically, he decided he was in favor of it. It is very rare that communities, and I mean the actual people living in these communities, not a government bureaucracy, are able to say "no" to a Walmart...they have too much money to throw around. So they disrupt local democracy. We are now the proud receivers of ANOTHER Super Walmart to be built even closer to my house. You can just about, on a pleasant day, walk from one Super Walmart to another. But the basic argument you are making is this. Conditions in some other countries are so bad that it is better to create sweatshops than to let them starve. The point is that it is the neoliberals (and I would dearly love for all here to be aware of neoliberalism...just as destructive in the long term, as neoconservatism) have created this FALSE DICHOTOMY. There is a third way...and a fourth and fifth as well. It is possible to bring in business AND have socially acceptable standards of safety and living for workers. And the irony here, Roth, is that consumer choices to avoid those companies which do not adhere to basic standards of decency can be a very effective, NON-GOVERNMENTAL, DECENTRALIZED, CONSUMER DRIVEN, way to create social change. You can give somebody 1% of the money you pay for your shoes. That's about what they get. Or you can seek out companies and manufacturers who adhere to higher principles and give THEM your money. Why have you decided that it's sweatshops or nothing? Personally, I think we need more than just consumer boycotts. So, for your benefit, here is a nice list of manufacturers who do a better job at utilizing more humane conditions for the folks who make their products. <blockquote>Quote:<hr> Apparel Avon, Ben Davis, Carhartt, Graybear, King Louie, Kodiak, Nemisis, Oshkosh, Outdoor Outfit, Platinum Sportswear, Powers, Pro-Fit, Rubin Bros., Stone Cutter, Team Safety, Thinc Actionwear, Time Out for Her, Union Jeans, Union Line, Wagoner, Wigwam (United Food and Commercial Workers [UFCW]); Canyon River Blues, Diamond Cut Jeans, Sherpa Britannia, Men's 505, Men's 517, Texas Jeans, Kids 'R' Us, Sherpie, Toughskin, Eddie Bauer, JohnHenry, Silver Unicorn, Britannia, Five Brothers, Givenchy, Tallia Uomo, Alexander Julian, Hilton-Oak Gittman Brothers, HSM, Thomas Bradford (Union of Needletrades, Industrial,and Textile Employees [UNITE]) Jackets and Sweatshirts Athletic Cap Co., B.D. Baggies, California Ranchwear, Chaps, Christian Dior from Warnaco Knitwear, Crystal Springs Shirt Co., Damon, Enro and Foxcroft from Apparel Group Ltd., Excelle Sheepskin and Leather Coat Corp., Fall River Shirt Co. Inc., Garan Inc., Garland Shirt Co. (Brooks Bros.), Leader Mfg. Co., Lifewear Inc., Liteear, Maple Mfg. Co., Paul Fredericks from Fleetwood Shirt Corp., Perfect Shoulder/Snap-n-Wear, Plains T-Shirt, Ree Sportswear Mfg. Shootout, Mountain, Stone Cutter from Universal Overall Co., Sure-Fit, Unionline, Union People Products, Windjammer by Universal Sportswear (UNITE)<hr></blockquote> The above is from here: <a href="http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/sweatshops/sweatfreeproducts.cfm">www.coopamerica.org/progr...oducts.cfm</a> and while I'm sure Rothbard is anti-union, as I said, these above are not necessarily perfect but are manufactured by union labor. This means that certain minimum standards are met. I'd like to have a better list that simply goes by working conditions in general, but it's not so easy to get such a list. The industries tend to...monitor...themselves. Okay, so I haven't convinced Rothbard...but maybe that list will be helpful to others. Meanwhile, you should know that there are plenty of sweathshops in the US you can "assist" with your money. Just ask the US Military: <blockquote>Quote:<hr> The Department of Defense is the world's largest purchaser of U.S.- made apparel. Approximately 20,000 men and women manufacture uniforms for the armed forces and unfortunately, many of these workers labor in sweatshops - in the United States. "Conduct Unbecoming: Sweatshops and the U.S. Military Uniform Industry", a new report documenting sweatshop conditions prevalent at many factories with government uniform contracts, is the result of extensive research and interviews with 88 workers at eight contractors throughout the southern United States over the last several years. The report uncovers a host of abuses at eight contractors. Workers are paid poverty wages to sew military uniforms. The average pay at these contractors was $6.55 an hour - only 85% of the U.S. poverty threshold for a family of three. Few workers surveyed were able to afford their employers' healthcare benefits, if offered. One company, Columbia Sewing, does not even offer its employees healthcare coverage. At another, 86% of workers interviewed have no healthcare coverage. As a result of the poverty wages, workers in this industry are forced to rely on state and federally-subsidized programs, such as food stamps or Medicaid, to feed their children, make ends meet, and provide healthcare for their families. In effect, U.S. taxpayers shoulder the costs of low wages and poor conditions in this industry. The report also reveals that many factories are unsafe. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) citations indicate that workers face hazardous conditions and avoidable occupational injuries at work. One group of military apparel contractors have been cited for over 120 health and safety violations over the past decade. In addition to health and safety violations, certain contractors have engaged in unethical or illegal behavior. At several companies, workers report cuts to earnings that may amount to wage and hour violations. There are documented violations of labor law at others. Furthermore, workers report a climate of intimidation and harassment on the job, favoritism toward select workers, and racial discrimination. The report argues that low-bid contract awards by the Department of Defense contribute to poor conditions in the industry. This practice encourages companies to cut corners at the expense of workers. Reputable contractors who provide benefits, safe working conditions, and better wages are routinely underbid by this competition. The report suggests that with better oversight and accountability of contractors, sweatshops can be eliminated from the military uniform supply chain. If the Pentagon assumes greater responsibility for evaluating and monitoring conditions in its supplier network, it can help raise standards in this industry, guarantee that uniforms are made under safe working conditions, and make the highest quality uniforms for our armed forces. For such an effort to be successful, the report makes several recommendations to the Department of Defense: · Contracting officers should more carefully evaluate a contractor's labor practices and working conditions, including wages and benefits, in order to ensure that contractors provide quality jobs, maintain the highest workplace standards and demonstrate adherence to integrity and ethics. In the course of this evaluation, procurement officers should consult with the Department of Labor and OSHA, among other government agencies. · The Defense Department should carry out inspections of contractor facilities and more closely assess contractor compliance, including confidential worker interviews as part of this process. · Contractors with poor working conditions and labor violations should be referred to the appropriate suspension and debarment officials within the Pentagon. In addition, the report proposes a code of conduct for uniform contractors to ensure that they are held to high labor standards and provide quality jobs: · Companies should be required to follow a sweatshop-free code of conduct that outlines their responsibilities as military contractors to provide jobs with decent wages, benefits and working conditions. · Companies should also be required to disclose in their contract bids the wages and health and pension benefits offered to their workers, other relevant working conditions, and any OSHA, NLRB or other violations that reflect on their status as a responsible contractor.<hr></blockquote><a href="http://www.behindthelabel.org/infocus.asp?id=95">www.behindthelabel.org/infocus.asp?id=95</a> The only reason Walmart and others like them are not utilizing fairer labor practices is that they can get away without doing so. Exercise your free choice as a consumer and choose to support companies that you know treat their workers better.

by **Dreams End** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 1:12 pm

Oh..hi! Nothing to see here...just posting a very LONG list of why Walmart sucks. It's not just Walmart, but they are rather symbolic. By the way, pay attention, please, Roth to the sections about how much money the taxpayer is spending on healthcare and other benefits for Walmart workers who are not provided these things and do not make enough money to afford their own. This is one of many hidden social costs to those cheap goods. All this comes from a website for the film "Walmart: The High Price of Low Cost". It is consistently true that companies such as Walmart are providing low cost items are not only doing so at the expense of workers but also by virtue of enjoying all kinds of government subsidies and funding based on the local tax base. Whether through tax breaks, infrastructure development, or the money we pay as taxpayers to take care of the basic needs of those working at Walmart, the low price is clearly an illusion. happy reading: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>from <a href="http://www.walmartmovie.com/facts.php">www.walmartmovie.com/facts.php</a> Citation of Statistics Used in the Film WAL-MART Drives Down Retail Wages $3 BILLION Every Year * "A recent study by researchers at UC Berkeley's Labor Center has quantified what happened to retail wages when Wal-Mart set up shop, drawing on 15 years of data on actual store openings. The study found that Wal-Mart drives down wages in urban areas, with an annual loss of at least $3 billion dollars in earnings for retail workers." * UPDATE: Since the completion of our film, the study has been finalized and published, and the published findings produced a different number for the annual loss in retail earnings than the preliminary figure we used in the film. The published study ultimately found that Wal-Mart actually reduced the take-home pay of retail workers by $4.7 BILLION dollars annually. Unfortunately for the retail workers this statistic concerns, Wal-Mart's effect on retail wages turns out to be worse than we had anticipated. * Source: Arindrajit Dube, "Impact of Wal-Mart Growth on Earnings throughout the Retail Sector in Urban and Rural Counties" [PDF File], UC Berkeley Labor Center, November 2005. $86 MILLION a Year to California Taxpayers * In 2004, a study released the UC Berkeley Labor Center found that "reliance by Wal-Mart workers on public assistance programs in California comes at a cost to taxpayers of an estimated $86 million annually; this is comprised of $32 million in health related expenses and $54 million in other assistance." * Source: Ken Jacobs and Arindrajit Dube, "Hidden Costs of Wal-Mart Jobs" [PDF file], UC Berkeley Labor Center, August 2, 2004. * Wal-Mart dismisses the findings of the UC Berkeley study, "Hidden Costs of Wal-Mart Jobs," as a "union hit piece." However, text from Wal-Mart's own internal memo substantially corroborates their findings. An excerpt from the memo states: "We also have a significant number of Associates and their children who receive health insurance through public-assistance programs. Five percent of our Associates are on Medicaid compared to an average for national employers of 4 percent. Twenty-seven percent of Associates' children are on such programs, compared to a national average of 22 percent (Exhibit 5). In total, 46 percent of Associates' children are either on Medicaid or are uninsured." Source: Wal-Mart Internal Memo [PDF File], via New York Times * The researchers from the UC Berkeley Labor Center recently re-visited the situation, using Wal-Mart's own findings as a basis for their analysis. This is what they have found: Applying Wal-Mart's reported percentages of workers and children enrolled in Medicaid/SCHIP implies Wal-Mart workers and children cost $456 million to taxpayers nationally through their use of public health programs. This does not include the costs of adult dependents. (See Table 3) Adding in the cost of adult dependents, the number approaches the original estimate reported in the Labor Center report. * Also, the original report did not include costs to the public for Wal-Mart employees who are uninsured. Information from the Wal-Mart memo also points to the possibility of additional taxpayer costs incurred from uninsured employees, as analyzed by the Labor Center: The memo further reports that 19% of Wal-Mart employees lack health insurance. The cost of uncompensated care for those workers adds an estimated $202 million in taxpayer costs nationally, and $10 million in California. These costs were not quantified in the original report (see Table 4). Source: The updated analysis, with additional references to primary source material, can be found on the UC Berkeley Labor Center website (see: "Internal Wal-Mart Memo Validates Findings of UC Berkeley Study," November 2005) * In addition to these new findings, a paper presented at the recent Wal-Mart sponsored conference by Michael J. Hicks of the Air Force Institute of Technology and Marshall University, finds that "Wal-Mart does increase Medicaid expenditures by roughly $898 per worker, which is consistent with other studies of the Medicaid costs per low wage worker across the United States." o Source: Michael Hicks, "Does Wal-Mart Cause an Increase in Anti-Poverty Program Expenditures?" [PDF File], via Business Week, October 26, 2005. HEALTHCARE STATISTICS An up-to-date compilation of states' reporting of employers whose workers are enrolled in Medicaid or state health programs is being maintained by Good Jobs First, a non-profit research group based in Washington, DC. The film does not list all 15 states that report such data. Philip Mattera, research director for Good Jobs First, has also given testimony on this healthcare data before the Maryland Senate. That testimony can be found on the Good Jobs First website [PDF file]. ALABAMA: 3,864 Children of WAL-MART Employees are Enrolled in Medicaid * "Retail giant Wal-Mart tops the list of companies in Alabama whose employees have children on Medicaid, the [Montgomery] Advertiser reported, citing state records. Wal-Mart workers' children account for 3,864 children on the Medicaid rolls at a cost between $5.8 million and $8.2 million." * Source: Associated Press, "Wal-Mart No. 1 in Employee Medicaid," The Decatur Daily, February 23, 2005 ARIZONA: 2,700 WAL-MART Workers on Medicaid * According to state data provided to Capitol Media Services and reported by the Arizona Daily Star, "Close to one of every 10 Wal-Mart employees is getting health insurance paid for by Arizona taxpayers, according to figures obtained Friday from the state...In the Arizona statistics, nearly 2,700 people listed their employer as Wal-Mart out of more than 28,000 company employees in the state...The numbers came as a surprise to state Sen. Richard Miranda, D-Phoenix, who tried earlier this year to get a law requiring the DES [Department of Economic Security] to disclose the employers of people on AHCCCS. That measure was defeated amid opposition from corporate lobbyists, including Rip Wilson representing Wal-Mart." * Source: Howard Fischer, "Wal-Mart 1st in State Aid Enrollees," Arizona Daily Star, July 30, 2005 ARKANSAS: 3971 WAL-MART Workers on Public Assistance * "Nearly 10,000 workers with Arkansas' nine largest employers receive public welfare for themselves and their families, according to the state Department of Human Services. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., with 3,971 of its 45,106 employees on public assistance, topped the list." * Source: Brian Baskin, "Top 9 Employers in State Have 9,698 Getting Public Aid," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 17, 2005. CONNECTICUT: 824 WAL-MART Workers Have Children in a State Heath Care Program * According to a report prepared by the Connecticut Office of Legislative Research examining enrollment data for the HUSKY (Healthcare for UninSured Kids and Youth) program for children of low-income families, "The same employers account for the highest number of employed parents of HUSKY A [traditional Medicaid] and B [state CHIP] children. For example, Wal Mart employed the highest number of HUSKY A parents (824 in September 2004) and the second highest number of HUSKY B parents (79 in December 2004)." * Source: Robin K. Cohen, "HUSKY A and B - Enrollment and Employer Data," Connecticut Office of Legislative Research Report 2005-R-0017, January 10, 2005. FLORIDA: 12,300 WAL-MART Workers and their Dependents on Medicaid * "Wal-Mart Corp., which is getting millions of dollars in state incentives to create jobs in Florida, has more employees and family members enrolled in Medicaid than any company in the state. ...The giant retailer, which has 91,000 full-time and part-time employees in Florida, has about 12,300 workers or dependents eligible for Medicaid, the growing health care program for the poor and the elderly...According to figures released Thursday by Florida's Department of Children and Families, Wal-Mart and four other large companies that receive state incentives have an estimated 29,900 employees or their family members enrolled in Medicaid...The figures suggest taxpayers may be double-subsidizing low-wage employment by paying companies to create jobs and by paying for the health care of some of those companies' employees." * Source: Sydney P. Freedberg and Connie Humburg, "Lured Employers Now Tax Medicaid," St. Petersburg Times, March 25, 2005. GEORGIA: 10,261 Children of WAL-MART Employees are Enrolled in PeachCare for Kids * "A state survey found 10,261 of the 166,000 children covered by Georgia's Peach Care? for Kids health insurance in September 2002 had a parent working for Wal-Mart Stores...Wal-Mart is the state's largest private employer. But when the top four companies on the list are measured by number of PeachCare children per the number of employees in Georgia, Wal-Mart still dominates." * Source: Andy Miller, "Wal-Mart Stands Out On Rolls Of PeachCare," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 27, 2004. MASSACHUSETTS: 4,172 WAL-MART Workers and Dependents on State Health Care * "Section 304 of Chapter 149 of the Acts of 2004 requires the Executive Office of Health and Human Services to produce a list of employers who have 50 or more employees using public health assistance each year." As a result, the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, in collaboration with staff from the Office of Medicaid, compiled a report of employers who had 50 or more employees on MassHealth and the Uncompensated Care Pool (UCP). The report found that in 2004, Wal-Mart had 1,258 employees participating in UCP and 823 employees participating in MassHealth. * Source: Executive Office of Health and Human Services Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, "Employers Who Have 50 or More Employees Using Public Health Assistance," February 1, 2005 (an additional data spreadsheet can be found here) TENNESSEE: 9,617 WAL-MART Workers on TennCare * "Wal-Mart, with about 25 percent of the company's 37,000 workers on TennCare, tops the list of businesses with employees on the expanded Medicaid program. Wal-Mart is the state's largest private employer." * Source: Associated Press, "Study Shows Thousands of Wal-Mart Employees on TennCare," WKRN-TV Nashville, January 20, 2005. TEXAS: 4,363 Children of WAL-MART Employees on CHIP * "The Center for Public Policy Priorities, a non-partisan research center based in Austin, has obtained data on the 20 employers in the state with the largest number of employees whose dependents participate in the Children's Health Insurance Program. (Employer data for Medicaid are not available.) The data for February 2005 show Wal-Mart at the top of the list, with 2,333 employee families in CHIP, with an estimated 4,363 individual children enrolled." * Source: Good Jobs First [PDF file], with data provided by the Center for Public Policy Priorities. WISCONSIN: 1,252 WAL-MART Employees and Dependents on BadgerCare * "The biggest employer of BadgerCare recipients was Wal-Mart, which had 809 of its employees and 443 of employee dependents enrolled in the state program in April. Providing health care for those 1,252 people costs Wisconsin about $2.7 million a year; Wal-Mart turned a profit of $10.3 billion in 2004." * Source: Stacy Forster, "Big Companies Fill BadgerCare Rolls," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 24, 2005 WAL-MART Costs Taxpayers $1,557,000,000,00 to Support its Employees * "The Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce estimates that one 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in a cost to federal taxpayers of $420,750 per year - about $2,103 per employee. Specifically, the low wages result in the following additional public costs being passed along to taxpayers: o $36,000 a year for free and reduced lunches for just 50 qualifying Wal-Mart families. o $42,000 a year for Section 8 housing assistance, assuming 3 percent of the store employees qualify for such assistance, at $6,700 per family. o $125,000 a year for federal tax credits and deductions for low-income families, assuming 50 employees are heads of household with a child and 50 are married with two children. o $100,000 a year for the additional Title I expenses, assuming 50 Wal-Mart families qualify with an average of 2 children. o $108,000 a year for the additional federal health care costs of moving into state children's health insurance programs (S-CHIP), assuming 30 employees with an average of two children qualify. o $9,750 a year for the additional costs for low income energy assistance." * The total figure is based on the average $420,750 per-store figure, multiplied by 3700 (the approximate number of stores currently in the United States). * Source: Rep. George Miller / Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, "Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart", February 16, 2004. WAL-MART and Full Time Status * In the film, a former Wal-Mart co-manager claims that store managers are told to "Keep the number of associates from being full time, as many as you can, keep many of them part time, as much as you can." A paragraph in a recently released internal memo from Wal-Mart corroborates the co-manager's statement: 5. Capture savings from current initiatives to improve labor productivity. These initiatives include reducing the number of labor hours per store, increasing the percentage of part-time Associates in stores, and increasing the number of hours per Associate. Source: Wal-Mart Internal Memo [PDF File], via New York Times * Wal-Mart says that "Wal-Mart's 'full time' status begins at 34 hours per week, not 28, for associates hired after 2002." Before 2002, however, Wal-Mart's definition of full-time WAS 28 hours per week, and was raised in 2002 to 34 hours per week in order to raise the bar for healthcare eligibility for their employees - as the raise in hours coincided with the increase in eligibility requirements for healthcare. According to Wikipedia, "In 2002, Wal-Mart increased the waiting period for enrollment eligibility from 90 days to 6 months for full-time employees. Part-time employees must wait 2 years before they may enroll in the plan, and they may not purchase coverage for their spouses or children. The definition of part-time was changed from 28 hours or less per week to less than 34 hours per week." The change was not done to benefit more full-time employees, but to discourage more employees from being eligible for Wal-Mart's healthcare plan. Suppose we accepted this correction. The 34-hour per week full-time definition still is not the 40-hour definition employed by most businesses in America. Also, at Wal-Mart's stated average hourly wage of $9.68 per hour (source: WalmartFacts.com), a 34-hour week results in an annual wage of only $17,114 � STILL below the poverty line for a family of four. $7,000 ANTI-UNION CAMERA PACKAGE per store $30,000 UNDERCOVER SPY VAN per store $100,000 24 hour ANTI-UNION HOTLINE $7,000,000 Rapid response team with CORPORATE JET * Source: Data provided to the producers by Stan Fortune, former manager and 17-year employee of Wal-Mart * According to a recent report issued by American Rights At Work ("Wal-Mart: Rolling Back Wages, Workers' Rights, and the American Dream"<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"> , at least 59 complaints have been issued by the National Labor Relations Board on the basis that Wal-Mart uses illegal surveillance techniques to monitor union activity inside and outside their stores. These include the following claims: o "Following a NLRB investigation of worker charges in Denver, Colorado; Paris, Texas; and Orlando, Florida, the government has charged Wal-Mart with illegal surveillance, threats and intimidation of its associates." o "Wal-Mart will face trial on February 10, 2003 for illegal surveillance of union supporters." o "Workers in Paris, Texas suffer similar injustices�The NLRB investigation of Wal-Mart's actions resulted in a complaint charging that Wal-Mart managers carried out surveillance on their workers, restricted workers' attire in an effort to retaliate against union supporters and also threatened and interrogated workers." o "In Orlando, Florida, Wal-Mart faces a NLRB trial on June 28, 2003 for illegal surveillance of workers, illegal threats and harassment of workers." o Source: UFCW, "Wal-Mart's War on Workers," PR Newswire, January 8, 2003, and the National Labor Relations Board. $50 MILLION to settle an off-the-clock class action suit in Colorado * In 2000, "Wal-Mart paid $50 million to settle a class-action suit that asserted that 69,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees in Colorado had worked off the clock." * Source: Steven Greenhouse, "Suits Say Wal-Mart Workers Forced To Toil Off The Clock," New York Times, June 25, 2002 [reprinted via Common Dreams] In Texas it is estimated that they cheated workers out of up to one hundred and fifty million dollars in unpaid wages * "In a recently certified class-action suit in Texas on behalf of more than 200,000 current and former Wal-Mart workers, statisticians estimate that the company underpaid its Texas workers by $150 million over four years by not paying them for the many times they worked during their daily 15-minute breaks. That $150 million estimate does not include other types of unpaid work. The statisticians, who analyzed time records from 12 Wal-Mart stores, found that the Texas employees averaged at least one hour of unpaid work each week from working through breaks." * Source: Steven Greenhouse, "Suits Say Wal-Mart Workers Forced To Toil Off The Clock," New York Times, June 25, 2002 [reprinted via Common Dreams] Wal-Mart Managers delete time from workers' timecards * In Massachusetts, "a Middlesex court judge has put his imprimatur on a suit alleging the retail giant failed to pay employees for time worked and neglected to give them meal and rest breaks, the Herald has learned. The eight-page ruling by Superior Court Judge Ernest B. Murphy cites an affidavit by a computer expert hired by the plaintiffs. The expert allegedly found 7,000 instances during a one-year period when Wal-Mart managers deleted large blocks of time from their employee payroll records." * Source: John Strahinich, "Judge OKs Employee Lawsuit Against Wal-Mart," Boston Herald, January 7, 2005. * Meanwhile, in California, a class-action lawsuit potentially involving up to 215,000 current and former Wal-Mart and Sam's Club employees "charges that Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., deleted thousands of hours of time worked from employees' payroll records by erasing overtime hours and by penalizing employees who forgot to punch in after their meal breaks by denying them pay for the remainder of those days." * Source: "Alameda County Suit Alleges Wal-Mart Cheated Workers," Bay City News, January 20, 2005. Wal-Mart currently faces lawsuits in thirty-one different States for wage and hour abuses potentially involving hundreds of thousand workers. * Wal-Mart Wage and Hour "Off the Clock" Class Actions: 1. Adcox v. WM, US Dist. Ct. ("USDC"<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"> , Southern Dist. of TX, 11/9/04; 2. Armijo v. WM, 1st Judicial Dist. Ct., Rio Arriba County, NM, 9/18/00; 3. Bailey v. WM, Marion County Superior Ct. IN, 8/17/00; 4. Barnett v. WM, Superior Ct. of WA, King County, 9/10/01; 5. Basco v. WM, USDC, Eastern Dist. of LA, 9/5/00; 6. Braun v. WM, 1st Judicial Dist. Ct. Dakota County MN, 9/12/01; 7. Braun v. WM, Ct. of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County, PA, 3/20/02; 8. Brown v. WM, 14th Judicial Circuit Ct., Rock Island, IL, 6/20/01; 9. Carr v. WM, Superior Ct. of Fulton County, GA, 8/14/01; 10. Culver v. WM, USDC, Dist. of CO, 12/10/1996; 11. Carter v. WM, Ct. of Common Pleas, Colleton County, SC, 7/31/02; 12. Gamble v. WM, Supreme Ct. of the State of NY, County of Albany, 12/7/01; 13. Gross v. WM, Circuit Ct., Laurel County, KY, 9/29/04; 14. Hale v. WM, Circuit Ct., Jackson County, MO, 8/15/01; 15. Hall v. WM, 8th Judicial Dist. Ct., Clark County, NV, 9/9/99; 16. Harrison v. WM, Superior Ct. of Forsyth County, NC, 11/29/00; 17. Holcomb v. WM, State Ct. of Chatham County, GA, 3/28/00; 18. Hummel v. WM, Common Pleas Ct. of Philadelphia County, PA, 8/30/04; 19. Iliadis v. WM, Superior Ct. of NJ, Middlesex County, 5/30/02; 20. Kuhlmann (In Re: Wal-Mart Employee Litigation) v. WM, Circuit Ct., Milwaukee County, WI, 8/30/01; 21. Lerma v. WM, Dist. Ct., Cleveland County, OK, 8/31/01; 22. Lopez v. WM, 23rd Judicial Dist. Ct. of Brazoria County, TX, 6/23/00; 23. Mendoza v. WM, Superior Ct. of CA, Ventura County, 3/2/04; 24. Michell v. WM, USDC, Eastern Dist. of TX, Marshall Div., 9/13/02; 25. Montgomery v. WM, USDC, Southern Dist. of MS, 12/30/02; 26. Mussman v. WM, IA Dist. Ct., Clinton County, 6/5/01; 27. Nagy v. WM, Circuit Ct. of Boyd County, KY, 8/29/01; 28. Newland v. WM, Superior Ct. of CA, Alameda County, CA, 01/14/05; 29. Osuna v. WM, Superior Ct. of AZ, Pima County, 11/30/01; 30. Pickett v. WM, Circuit Court, Shelby County, TN, 10/22/03; 31. Pittman v. WM, Circuit Ct. for Prince George's County, MD, 7/31/02; 32. Robinson v. WM, Circuit Ct., Holmes County, MS, 12/30/02; 33. Sago v. WM, Circuit Ct., Holmes County, MS, 12/31/02; 34. Romero v. WM, Superior Ct. of CA, Monterey County, 03/25/04; 35. Salvas v. WM, Superior Ct., Middlesex County, MA, 8/21/01; 36. Sarda v. WM, Circuit Ct., Washington County, FL, 9/21/01; 37. Savaglio v. WM, Superior Ct. of CA, Alameda County, 2/6/01; 38. Scott v. WM, Circuit Ct. of Saginaw County, MI, 9/26/01; 39. Smith v. WM, Circuit Ct., Holmes County, MS, 12/31/02; 40. Thiebes v. WM, USDC, Dist. of OR, 6/30/98; 41. Willey v. WM, Dist. Ct. of Wyandotte County, KS, 9/21/01; 42. Williams v. WM, Superior Ct. of CA, Alameda County, 3/23/04; 43. Wilson v. WM, Common Pleas Ct. of Butler County, OH, 10/27/03; 44. Winters v. WM, Circuit Ct., Holmes County, MS, 5/28/02. * Source: Wal-Mart Stores 10K Filing, March 31, 2005, Pg. 16, Item 3. Federal Poverty Level Family of Four - $17,650 * Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001 Federal Poverty Guidelines Average Wal-Mart Hourly Sales Employee Wages - $13,861 * "On average, Wal-Mart sales clerks -- "associates" in company parlance -- pulled in $8.23 an hour, or $13,861 a year, in 2001, according to documents filed in a lawsuit pending against the company." * Source: Anthony Bianco and Wendy Zellner, "Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?" Business Week, October 6, 2003. Primary source information on 2001 wage data is from the testimony of Dr. Richard Drogin, in Dukes v. WM. Wal-Mart is paying eleven million dollars to settle Federal allegations it used illegal immigrants to clean its stores. * "Wal-Mart will escape criminal sanctions and pay $11 million to settle claims stemming from a federal investigation of illegal workers hired by the company's cleaning contractors, the company said Friday...The more than four-year investigation was led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania. It produced 245 arrests of undocumented workers in 2003." * Source: CNN/Money, "Wal-Mart Pays $11M Over Illegal Labor," CNN.com, March 18, 2005. Wal-Mart is facing a class-action lawsuit for discrimination against $1.6 million former and current female employees. * Source: Liza Featherstone, "Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights At Wal-Mart," Basic Books, 2004. * For more information on this lawsuit, please visit the Wal-Mart Class website. Edith Arana was told by a manager, "There's no place for people like you in management..." - WAL-MART and Racial Discrimination Wal-Mart disputes a claim made by Edith Arana in the film, that she experienced racial as well as gender discrimination in her experience working at Wal-Mart, by saying hers is an isolated incident. * In fact, in addition to Edith Arana's claim, Cleo Page and Betty Dukes, two of the six named plaintiffs in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, the largest gender discrimination class-action lawsuit in history, have also filed individual race discrimination claims against Wal-Mart. Several of the other women involved in the class-action have provided depositions that attest to racial discrimination as well as gender discrimination. Those testimonies are available at the WalMartClass.com website and include the declarations of the following women, who testify to racial discrimination in addition to their gender discrimination claims: o Umi Jean Minor o Gina Espinoza-Price o Jennifer Johnson o Thearsa Collier o Lorie Williams * The company also faces a smaller class-action lawsuit from African American truckers who charge discrimination, which was publicized recently in the New York Times (source: Jonathan D. Glater, "2 Black Truckers Sue, Accusing Wal-Mart of Hiring Bias," New York Times, July 14, 2005). * Also, the following reports attest to further racial discrimination practices: o "The EEOC noted�that only one of the 20 drivers Wal-Mart hired in 2002 was black. The EEOC also noted that Wal-Mart hired some white drivers with more serious driving violations and less experience than black applicants." + Source: Tammy Joyner, "Truck Driver Applicant Accuses Wal-Mart of Racial Bias," Cox News Service, September 23, 2004. o In 2001, the Mexican-American Political Association initiated a boycott of a Fresno, CA Wal-Mart. Ben Benavidez, president of MAPA, claimed that "MAPA received complaints from current and past employees about the store manager and some of his assistants making remarks such as, "You see one Mexican, you've seen them all," "We don't want our store front to look like a Mexican flea market," and something to the effect of, "Have you noticed how Mexican women like to buy body-revealing clothes?" + Source: Louis Galvan, "Fresno Wal-Mart Mistreatment Alleged," Fresno Bee, November 24, 2001. o The NAACP's 2005 Industry Survey gave Wal-Mart a grade of C- "within the areas of employment, vendor development, advertising/marketing, charitable giving and investing/ franchising." + Source: NAACP 2005 Industry Survey * Wal-Mart also testifies to its diversity by citing several awards it has won for racial diversity, including a citation from DiversityInc Magazine. That same magazine also published an article entitled "Wal-Mart Diversity Head Can't Back Claims With Numbers," in which it states: "The company won't say how many women and people of color now work as hourly associates, supervisors, managers and executives, and it won't describe hiring goals that it touts as critical to its new diversity efforts. As a result, Porter -- a 12-year-veteran of Wal-Mart -- has no factual support for her claim that Wal-Mart's existing diversity efforts have been successful or her contention that those well-publicized hiring goals will produce any significant change." (Source: Linda Bean, "Wal-Mart Diversity Head Can't Back Claims with Numbers," DiversityInc Magazine, June 23, 2004.) City of Cameron give WAL-MART $2.1 MILLION to set up shop * "The city [of Cameron, MO] provided $2.1 million in infrastructure improvements through sales and property-tax increment financing in the area of a Supercenter and surrounding industrial park. Wal-Mart served as the developer for the project." * Source: Good Jobs First, "Shopping For Subsidies: How Wal-Mart Uses Taxpayer Money To Finance Its Never-Ending Growth," May 2004. City of Brookfield gives WAL-MART $300,000,00 to open doors * In Brookfield, "A Wal-Mart Supercenter of 110,000 sq. ft. was opened in 7-98. A voluntary annexation incorporated that area into the city. Utilities cost of $300,000 were paid by developer with a reported agreement that funds would be paid-back by the positive sales tax revenue generated by the Supercenter with consideration of the decrease in revenue experienced by the largest five businesses in town at that time." * Source: Donna Kennedy and John Morrison, Hometown Merchants Association Report. Primary Source information: City of Brookfield, Missouri Department of Economic Development. According to the Missouri Department of Economic Development, TIF subsidies are only intended for light industrial projects and usually would not apply to a Wal-Mart development, yet somehow Wal-Mart received TIF deals in both Cameron and Brookfield. WAL-MART SUBSIDY NATIONWIDE: $1.008 BILLION * In an initial search of "electronic archives of local newspapers to find cases of Wal-Mart stores that had received" development subsidies, Good Jobs First uncovered "91 stores that have received public assistance. In total, these subsidies were worth about $245 million to Wal-Mart and the developers of shopping centers in which a Wal-Mart store served as an anchor. Individual subsidy deals in those 91 stores ranged from less than $1 million to about $12 million, with an average of about $2.8 million." Later, Good Jobs First conducted "searches in a database covering the one type of subsidy�industrial revenue bonds�for which some centralized information is available. This enabled [Good Jobs First] to identify another 69 stores that received low-cost financing of approximately $138 million. This brought the total number of subsidy deals [Good Jobs First] identified to 244. The total value of all the subsidies was $1.008 billion." * Source: Good Jobs First, "Shopping For Subsidies: How Wal-Mart Uses Taxpayer Money To Finance Its Never-Ending Growth," May 2004. Esry Family Subsidy: $0 * The Esrys did not receive any kind of "tax abatement" through a tax-increment financing deal. Their grocery stores are not eligible for TIF-subsidized infrastructure improvements under Missouri law, though Wal-Mart developers were somehow able to receive TIF deals that they normally would not be eligible for. The Esrys also have a small farm, which does qualify for federal funds. Federal small-farm subsidies differ from the types of subsidies that Wal-Mart receives from state and local governments across the nation. According to Wikipedia, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is required by law (via the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, the Agricultural Act of 1949, and the CCC Charter Act of 1948, among others) to subsidize over two dozen agricultural commodities. The money for small-farm subsidies is already earmarked, by law, for that purpose in the government's budget. In contrast, the most common types of subsidies that Wal-Mart receives, including tax-increment financing (as described below), appropriates a portion of a city's tax revenue to finance infrastructure projects (construction of sewer and water lines, ingress and egress routes, etc) that most small businesses would have to pay for or finance themselves. (For more about TIF subsidies, read Greg LeRoy's book "The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging And the Myth of Job Creation".) Currently in the U.S. there are 26,699,678 SQUARE FEET of empty WAL-MARTS * "As of [March 5, 2005], Wal-Mart Realty has a total of 356 buildings for sale or lease, a total of 26,699,678 million square feet of empty stores. That's enough empty space to fill up 534 football fields. This phenomenal figure makes Wal-Mart the King of Dead Air in America and the world. No othe retailer has this many dead stores in its inventory. The annual figure ranges around 350 to 400 from year to year." * Source: Al Norman, "Wal-Mart Has 356 "Dark Stores" Available for Sale or Lease," Sprawl-Busters.com, March 5, 2005. 1999: All new WAL-MART construction halted in state of PENNSYLVANIA due to Environmental Violations * "The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has signed a consent order and agreement with Wal-mart that will improve environmental construction practices for the Arkansas-based retailer's stores throughout Pennsylvania...The agreement is the result of violations of water quality laws and regulations at a Wal-mart under construction in Honesdale Borough, Wayne County, between January and September 1998...Wal-mart must correct all remaining violations at the Honesdale site under a schedule in the agreement. The retailer also will pay a $100,000 civil penalty to the Commonwealth and $2,800 to the Wayne County Conservation District...Three stop-work orders were issued by DEP for different areas of the construction site, and a hold was placed on new permits for Wal-mart construction sites throughout the Commonwealth as a result of the violations in Wayne County." * Source: Press Release, PA Department of Environmental Protection (Northeast Regional Office), February 4, 1999. 2001: EPA orders WAL-MART to pay $1.0 MILLION fine for Clean Water Violations in: TEXAS, OKLAHOMA AND MASSACHUSETTS * "The Justice Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today reached an environmental agreement with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to resolve claims the retailer violated the Clean Water Act at 17 locations in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Massachusetts. This is the first federal enforcement action against a company for multi-state violations of the Act's storm water provisions. The settlement commits Wal-Mart to establish a $4.5 million environmental management plan, to improve the retailer's compliance with environmental laws at each of its construction sites and minimize the impact of its building on streams and watersheds. The settlement also compels the company to pay a $1 million civil penalty." * Source: Press Release, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency/Department of Justice, June 7, 2001. 2004: WAL-MART fined $3.1 MILLION by EPA, the largest ever for a retailer, for Clean Water Act violations in TEXAS, COLORADO, CALIFORNIA, DELAWARE, MICHIGAN, SOUTH DAKOTA, NEW JERSEY, TENNESSEE and UTAH * "$3.1 Million Penalty Is Largest for Storm Water Violations at Construction Sites" * "The Department of Justice and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, along with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Delaware and the states of Utah and Tennessee, today announced a Clean Water Act settlement for storm water violations at Wal-Mart store construction sites across the country...In addition to paying a $3.1 million civil penalty to the United States, Tennessee and Utah, Wal-Mart has agreed to spend $250,000 on an environmental project that will help protect sensitive wetlands or waterways in one of the affected states, which are California, Colorado, Delaware, Michigan, New Jersey, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah." * Source: Press Release, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency/Department of Justice, May 12, 2004. 2005: Connecticut EPA orders WAL-MART to pay $1.15 MILLION for Clean Water Act violations in 22 stores * "Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner Gina McCarthy today announced a $1.15 million settlement with Wal-Mart involving environmental violations at 22 stores related to stormwater and other water management issues." * Source: Press Release, CT Attorney General's Office, August 15, 2005. Cost for WAL-MART Factory Worker to Assemble: $0.18 Retail cost at Wal-Mart: $14.96 * Data provided by Charles Kernaghan, National Labor Committee WAL-MART Imported $18 BILLION from CHINA in 2004 * "The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, says its inventory of stock produced in China is expected to hit US$18 billion this year [2004], keeping the annual growth rate of over 20 per cent consistent over two years." * Source: Jiang Jingjing, "Wal-Mart's China Inventory To Hit US $18B This Year," China Daily, November 29, 2004. Lee Scott earnings for 2005: $27,207,799 * Data computed from Wal-Mart Stores 2005 Proxy Statement; includes long-term incentives awarded in 2005 and contemporary value of stock options. Average WAL-MART Hourly Sales Employee Earnings: $13,861 * "On average, Wal-Mart sales clerks -- "associates" in company parlance -- pulled in $8.23 an hour, or $13,861 a year, in 2001, according to documents filed in a lawsuit pending against the company." * Source: Anthony Bianco and Wendy Zellner, "Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?" Business Week, October 6, 2003. Primary source information on 2001 wage data is from the testimony of Dr. Richard Drogin, in Dukes v. WM. HELEN WALTON: $18.0 BILLION ALICE WALTON: 18.0 BILLION JOHN WALTON: 18.2 BILLION ROB WALTON: $18.3 BILLION JIM WALTON: $18.3 BILLION * Source: David Armstrong and Peter Newcomb, ed., "The 400 Richest Americans,", Forbes, September 24, 2004. Cost of WAL-MART Jet Fleet: $125,350,000 * Data provided by Jeff Fiedler, Food and Allied Service Trades, AFL-CIO The WALTON FAMILY Has Given LESS THAN 1% of Their Wealth to Charity Bill Gates has given 58% * Source: Business Week, "The 50 Most Generous Philanthropists" [PDF file], November 29, 2004. Wal-Mart Stores' Contributions to a Community * According to the Wal-Mart Facts website, "The typical Supercenter raises or gives $30,000 to $50,000 a year to local charitable needs ranging from youth programs to literacy councils." From a survey of Wal-Mart's grand opening contributions, its giving averages to about $47,222 per store. According to the Nation, "The WMF's 2003 IRS 990 form is 2,239 pages long, far longer than that of the Ford Foundation, which has billions more in assets. That's because most WMF gifts are tiny: thousands or even hundreds of dollars to churches and Lions clubs and Boys and Girls clubs, $500 to the YMCA of Nashville and Middle Tennessee and to the Tulip Trace (Indiana) Girl Scouts Council and so on. Communities where Wal-Mart faced a particular battle over opening a new store--Inglewood, California, or New York City--enjoyed especially generous largesse. Like the flowers and other tokens of courtship from a suitor who later becomes a wife-beater, such gifts are often followed by demands for public subsidies and tax breaks. In this way Wal-Mart is repeating the strategy that has served it so well in Arkansas, where Wal-Mart and the Waltons' charitable gifts are many and company critics are relatively few. Says Lindsay Brown, president of the Central Arkansas Labor Council, 'It's a hell of a plan, and it works.' " Taken in the context of Wal-Mart's taxpayer costs, however, Wal-Mart's per store charitable contributions do not match up to the amount of money a store takes in the "numerous forms of public assistance--Medicaid, Food Stamps, public housing--that often allow workers to subsist on Wal-Mart's low wages. A report by the House Education and Workforce Committee conservatively places [public assistance costs] at $420,750 per store; the Wal-Mart Foundation's per-store charitable giving is just 11 percent of that amount ($47,222)." * Source: Liza Featherstone, "On The Wal-Mart Money Trail,", The Nation, November 21, 2005. The WALTON FAMILY Made $3.2 MILLION in Political Contributions in 2004 * "Led by Sam Walton's only daughter, Alice, the family spent $3.2 million on lobbying, conservative causes and candidates for last year's federal elections. That's more than double what it spent in the previous two elections combined, public documents show...a USA TODAY review of public documents reveals a small-town Arkansas family emerging as a political juggernaut on tax issues, extending Wal-Mart's influence over U.S. society even more." * Source: Jim Hopkins, "Wal-Mart Family Lobbies For Tax Cuts," USA Today, April 5, 2005. A WAL-MART Worker may donate money from their paycheck to the CRITICAL NEED FUND, a program to aid other employees in times of crisis, like a fire or tornado. In 2004, WAL-MART Employees gave OVER $5 MILLION to help fellow workers * Source: Form 990, Wal-Mart Associates in Critical Need Fund, 2004 The Walton Family gave $6,000 * Source: Walton Family Foundation The WALTON FAMILY received a federal tax cut of: $91,500.00 per HOUR in the 2004 tax year * "FAST has calculated that in 2004, assuming the Walton family continues to hold their 1.68 billion shares of Wal-Mart stock and the company actually pays the 48 cent per share dividend projected, the five Walton family members (Helen, Rob, Alice, Jim and John) will save at least $190,367,803 in federal income taxes." * Source: Jeff Fielder, "Cheney Visit To Wal-Mart Shows He'll Never 'Get It'," Food and Allied Service Trades Department (AFL-CIO), May 5, 2004. Screen Crawl of Wal-Mart Parking Lot Crimes that Occurred in the First 7 Months of 2005 * Compiled from searches of newspaper and television news archives on Google and Lexis/Nexis. View the list. Screen Crawl of Community Victories Against Wal-Mart * Compiled from searches of the Sprawl-Busters database, Google, and Lexis/Nexis. View the list. Some Facts on Wal-Mart's Impact on Local Business "Wal-Mart's influence begins before a store even goes in." - Los Angeles Times * When Jon Hunter applied for a business loan for H&H Hardware (presumably against the equity on the building that he had been paying on for the past 15 years), the bank actually de-valued Hunter's property, specifically citing Wal-Mart as a factor: "I put this business plan together that with the help of hard, different hardware organizations and people and I went to several different banks to check on some funding. And, ah,when I got an appraisal on my, on the business and, and the buildings, you know, the appraiser actually came in and de-valued the building. Here I figured it would be appreciating, after, like ten years, and he came in with a lower value and I questioned him, said, "How can this be?" I say, you know, "With inflation and, the economy's not great but it still should be at least holding its value." And he said, "No," he said, ah, "Any time a Wal-Mart's coming in to a town they, they knock the values down because sooner or later there's going to be a bunch of empty buildings and none of them are going to be able to sell." This shows that there is a recognition by market forces that Wal-Mart has a negative effect on local businesses in surrounding areas. * To say that Wal-Mart wipes out ALL existing businesses is of course ridiculous, and we do not make that point in our film. Businesses close for a number of reasons; the point we are making in the film, a point that is supported by a wealth of evidence present and not present in the film, is that Wal-Mart, in the final equation, hurts rather than helps these businesses in the struggle to remain open and competitive. As Greg LeRoy, author of the recent book "The Great American Jobs Scam," puts it, "Just because there are more places to shop does not mean people have more money to spend." Several studies, including those presented at Wal-Mart's own recent economic conference, affirm that Wal-Mart does not create new economic activity, but merely captures existing sales from businesses in the town and the surrounding areas. These effects are also not immediate, but build up over a length of time. * Consider the following findings from existing academic studies that have studied Wal-Mart's effect on local markets: o A study of small and rural towns in Iowa showed lost sales for local businesses ranging from -17.2% in small towns to -61.4% in rural areas, amounting to a total dollar loss of $2.46 BILLION over a 13-year period. o In Iowa, retail businesses in several categories experienced a decline of up to 59% over a 13-year period. + Source: Kenneth Stone, "Impact of the Wal-Mart Phenomenon on Rural Communities In Iowa" [PDF file], University of Iowa, 1997 o In Mississippi, local food stores in counties hosting a Wal-Mart supercenter lost sales of up to 17 percent over 5 years o For every gain in sales by a Supercenter, there are corresponding losses in sales for local and/or family businesses + Source: Kenneth Stone, "The Economic Impact of Wal-Mart Supercenters on Existing Businesses in Mississippi" [PDF file], University of Iowa, 2003 o In Maine, Wal-Mart captured an average $7.8 million from local/family businesses in their host towns during the first year of operation. + Source: Georgeanne Artz, "The Impact of Wal-Mart on Retail Market Structure in Maine," unpublished thesis, University of Maine, 1999 o Retail Forward, an industry consulting firm, estimates that for every Wal-Mart Supercenter that opens in the next five years, two supermarkets will close. + Source: Retail Forward, "Wal-Mart Food: Big, and Getting Bigger," 2003 <hr></blockquote>

by **rothbardian** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 3:29 pm

Isachar-- I understand the basic concept you were talking about. My initial impression was that it was a little dismissive ("Here's a goat you impoverished person. I hope you feel better"). But if there are carefully developed plans out there, I am actually very, very interested in the idea of helping Third World families get set up in a self-sustaining business. A seed investment to set somebody up like that is a very satisfying approach to 'charitable giving'. I have a friend who has started (and then sold off) a number of businesses, who is trying to set up a 'connections' website, where people can click on photos of a family or individual, their backstory, the type of business they would like to start, and the amount of investment required. I have been told that for a paltry sum (a couple hundred dollars?) a person could be set up with a knife-sharpening business or a cleaning business etc. (And again, I still believe in working both ends at the same time.) DreamsEnd-- Geez, I hope all that acreage of posting doesn't bog down the flow of conversation. I hasten to add, I'm very grateful for any interest shown in this, one of my favorite topics. Obviously, one can find a lot of bad things being said about Walmart these days. Like Gouda, I can't get to all my comments just at this moment. Suffice to say, I look at the 'big picture' with these things...and any approach to this matter that leaves these already impoverished people in a worse plight (removing what little employment they have)...I am opposed to. But you raise some interesting issues about 'quasi-goverment' also. I'll get to some comments later.

by **rothbardian** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 6:34 am

I always believe the quickest way to clear up confusion is to look at the big picture-- Here we have people arguing that Walmart has too much power...a power they have used unjustly. So the proposal being made is...that we raise up an even greater power, a greater entity...of dimwitted bureaucrats with the powers of centralized government. I find that to be utterly and completely illogical and contradictory. The idea that a non-coercive 'monopoly' (such as Walmart) is bad – and that the only way to combat this is to impose a compulsory monopoly (coercive government)...could there be anything more contradictory than that? I don't think so. If powerful and corrupt people have caused a problem and have perpetrated injustice (as some are alleging about Walmart), the solution cannot possibly be to raise up an even more powerful group of people who are equally susceptible to corruption. The solution, as I keep saying over and over, lies in THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. Do not ADD power to an already obscenely powerful and corrupt, bloated, dimwitted, inefficient government. Instead, take the power away from them. The huge and vast majority of the problems associated with economic injustice stem from the ability of businesses to hide in the skirts of coercive, corrupted government. Get rid of the skirts, get rid of the coercive powers...and every business is at the mercy of voluntary customers. Every business would also be at the mercy of any competitor that would come along. If they were not treating their employees well, another business could rise up that was offering better things. If they offered too much to the employees and thus the prices on their products (or services) shot up...another competitor would move in. The business making the most employees and customers happy at the same time would find themselves at the forefront. The whole thing is based on accountability to reality...instead of corrupt, coercive 'inside' arrangements with worse-than-useless bureaucrats. As Isachar was pointing out-- as things now stand, companies can come into a region and arrange with centralized government, for there to be almost NO competition at all. DreamsEnd-- when you were theorizing that Walmart has risen to such a level as to be "quasi-government"...I say again, in the absence of coercive government, Walmart is quasi-nothing. They have no power to force anything, they have no guns, they have no gun-toting bureaucrats to dispatch, they have no prisons. Can squabbles break out here or there? Can some conflicts ensue? I am sure there will be such. Libertarianism does not claim to offer a conflict-free world. What we do argue however...is that there won't be a thousandth of the troubles and woes we now have, where outfits like Halliburton can hide in the skirts of government...can parasitically attach themselves to the powers of centralized government...and drive entire nations into war for their own personal profit and empowerment. Pull the plug. Reconstitute our communities in terms of freedom and voluntary association. Coercive government has had it's run, and in the twentieth century it has left a huge, bloody, gory legacy of totalitarianism run amok, and wall-to-wall wars. DreamsEnd-- Another one of your comments that relates to this: "...one of the primary problems with government is its complete capitulation to large corporations..." Then get rid of this entity. There would no longer be anyone there to do any 'capitulating'. The corporations would have nowhere to turn to. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. You also made the comment-- "But the basic argument you are making is this: Conditions in some other countries are so bad that it is better to create sweatshops than to let them starve." I never advocated the creation of sweatshops. However I don't see anyway to deny Kristof's statement that if Africa, for example, could successfully get into the clothing manufacturing business, as other parts of the world have...it would be a dramatic economic improvement that Africans desperately need. To my consternation, influential PC libs have successfully kept millions of poor folks worldwide, from being able to take this step up. Some people want to refer to anything that twitches as a "sweatshop". But these companies have set up their business, and people jump at the chance to work at these places. The conditions and the pay (although poor in many cases) are still obviously better than other opportunities in their region, otherwise they would do something else. In another comment, you were trying to encourage me to "seek out companies and manufacturers who adhere to higher principles and give THEM your money. Why have you decided that it's sweatshops or nothing?" My response would be-- Are you asking me or asking America? The majority of people cannot afford to buy pants at Eddie Bauer for fifty dollars. They need to go to Target or Walmart and spend fifteen dollars. That is the reality. And so- yes, you pegged me correctly-- I don't view unionization as "adhering to higher principles". Not by a long shot. And as far as these workers in Third World countries-- I support them because that IS the present reality. If I don't support them, they starve. How can anyone refuse to support them in their present situation? Astonishingly, many libs nevertheless indirectly advocate these people's starvation and hardship, in a deadly pursuit of political correctness. Anyway...things are getting a little circular at this point in the conversation. I've already covered some of this stuff in previous posts and haven't seen any comment from anyone. So I will reiterate yet again: The absolute key to enabling the world's poor to gain greater access to the market place is to allow the pricing to drop dramatically. If you want to help poor people, then contribute to the process of making everything cheaper and therefore closer to within reach of the less prosperous. Stay away from Eddie Bauer (assuming DE's categorization is correct). When 'freedom' people (like myself) refer to unions as "enclaves of unfair economic privilege", pro-union folks respond with-- "Well then...you should contribute to the process of unionizing your business or your profession, so that you can also partake in the privilege of union wages." Am I the only one here who sees the dead-end?-- If everyone in the land had access to the quasi-coercive powers of a union and could set their wages virtually at will...there would be a huge collision with reality. Hey, why not give ourselves all a million dollar salary, while we're at it? Meanwhile, only those who are lucky enough to have access to brute political power, get the disproportionate incomes. The union worker gets double or triple wages compared to the non-union guy. And the non-union guy can't get into the union because (as I said) it is an unethically exclusive enclave, in so many cases...PLUS he gets hounded out of work if the union people turn up the heat over the issue of non-union labor. And these unions are inappropriately and unfairly backed by the teeth of coercive government. When one of my boy's teachers was mean and discourteous to him, I had no recourse. He came into our meeting with his union rep and it was all over before it started. They have the rules rigged up (as absolutely ALL unions do) so that he would practically have to murder my son before his job is under threat. If I could get all my tax money back and hire a tutor...the tutor would have to treat us courteously or else I would no longer utilize his services. Unions illicitly and immorally take my freedoms away, in that regard. Here in California, the teachers/police/firefighters unions are in the process of destroying the state's economy. They can have their union officials (in corrupt cahoots with paid-off politicians) set the wages and benefits at whatever Disneylandesque levels they want. Ninety percent retirement benefits (or even higher) are the norm here. A firefighter (who spends three fourths of his on-duty hours watching DVDs and cooking gourmet meals) works thirty years and quits with 90% of his last year's income...for life (even if he's fifty-two, or whatever). Typically, they will cram in every overtime hour they can get during that last year, crank up their income to well over a hundred thousand...then get 90% of that for the rest of their life. As an independent business owner, I have to carry a brutal tax burden to pay for this corrupt union-contrived fantasy. As I said, this is on the verge of getting a little circular. If somebody starts directly addressing some of my previous statements (like Mentalgongfu has) that would be interesting to me. Otherwise I feel like I'm spinning my wheels just a bit. I might move on. But I'm interested in the issues Mentalgongfu has raised, so I'll get to that.

by **rothbardian** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 7:44 am

Mentalgongfu-- I wanted to address a couple of your observations-- I can only speak to the specific example you give, but I think you would find that the principle of freedom applies to any scenario that could be conceived. In the absence of coercive government and all of it's meddling 'red tape' baloney, the issue of a water company presents no real difficulty. In a free world, if the water company was trying to overcharge, there would be a dozen different ways to quickly brush that aside. The community could invest in a water tower. They could start digging wells. There might even be an economic war of retribution against the employees of the water company ("A gallon of milk? That'll be sixty dollars, please."). Last and far from least, a competing company would be free to lay down their own plumbing lines into the community, and thus shut down the gougers. In any case, this idea that says..."because economic monopolies might emerge in the community...we need to allow a power monopoly to reign over us"...makes absolutely no sense. If voluntary monopolies are bad, then how could a coercive power monopoly be the solution? (And make no mistake...all centralized government has a power monopoly, otherwise it wouldn't be...the 'government'. This power monopoly scenario has taken the world to the very brink of worldwide totalitarianism. If the colossal misconception of Abraham Lincoln were actually true and 'centralized government' actually derived it's powers "from the consent of the governed"...we wouldn't have had 250 million war fatalities in the 20th century and be currently staring down the abyss of world enslavement. IMO) You made the comment- "you seem to be insinuating that power held by a centralized government is more dangerous or prone to abuse than power held by a private company." ABSOLUTELY, completely and unequivocally! As I have said elsewhere on this thread... a business has no power to force anything. They have no guns. They have no gun-toting bureaucrats to dispatch. They have no prisons. They can't take my son from me and force him to die in some bloody war. There is ABSOLUTELY no comparison. Now I have to tell you that your example involving Archer Daniels Midland doesn't apply in a free world scenario...because when classical liberals like me are talking about decentralized government...we don't mean by that, "less" government, or "less centralized" government. We mean NO centralized authority. NO power monopoly...even on a smaller 'city-wide' scale. Therefore the whole "eminent domain" thing goes out the window. If ADM wants to build on somebody else's land, they have to get the agreement from the private owner, period. There are no central authorities to buy off or to elbow in on, even with the big bucks ADM has at it's disposal. Might ADM conceivably hire some goons and try to strong-arm the owner? Not very likely...for a number of reasons. It's hard enough to run a business profitably even in a peaceful scenario...much less if you've created a small civil war for yourself. If a business has been profitable so far...there is nothing to gain and everything to lose in becoming embroiled in a conflict (armed or otherwise). While you and your business were distracted and bogged down...one of your competitors (with the wisdom and foresight to treat it's customers and community fairly) would slingshot right past you. Even more importantly....in the absence of coercive government, your ability to function in the community is based solely upon your reputation...upon how your credit is rated (financially and otherwise). In the light of how this company would have treated this individual...who would want to strike contracts with this outfit? Other competing businesses would become a preferable option. Take the example of one of the more prominent 'private' communities in existence today, and you might get an idea of how all of this functions-- The National Football League (NFL). If you had somehow gained entry into this exclusive and lucrative community (either as a player, a coach, a referee, an executive or as an 'owner') you would have a very strong motivation to 'play by the rules' or else risk dismissal from the community. (Back to your example-- if ADM wanted to stay 'in the ball game' in the national community or network of communities, they would have great inclination to adhere to the rules and keep up their credibility and credit rating.) And there is something about a private community's ability to make speedy, decisive judgment calls on matters like these. It is usually done with breathtaking lightening quick speed and efficiency...in amazingly stark contrast to the bogged down processes of government bureaucracy. There is none of the politicization, no outside agitators who (literally) have no business or concerns in the matter, no bizarre procedural gimmicks like "filibustering". There is this strongly unifying priority....the community's profitability and functionability. This has a very prevalent, pervasive tendency to blow out the baloney and get down to the nitty gritty...and make the necessary decisions, so that the community can get on with it's business and it's functioning. Notice how the NFL (just like many other private communities) has literally hired it's own judges, who are mere employees. Their judges ( the field judges/referees who call the games) make binding decisions that effect millions and even billions of dollars. In stark contrast to government judges, there has not been so much as a whisper of corruption among these privately hired judges, in my lifetime. And there is ZERO tolerance for any silly, addlebrained 'activist' tangents on the part of these NFL judges...such as we often see with government judges. Can you imagine, for example, an NFL judge presumptuously declaring he was going to begin incorporating some elements of baseball into the NFL, in the name of political correctness or "multiculturalism" (or whatever)...in the way many government judges arrogantly play it fast and loose with established law and with the US constitution? They would fire that NFL referee...out of a cannon. Efficient, highly expert, no nonsense, highly innovative professionalism...year after year. And these are privately hired employees! There is 100% accountability, 100% dispensability, and NONE of this silly, ridiculous 'pomp and circumstance' culture that government judges have cooked up for themselves, where they're having people refer to them as "your Honor" or "your Royal Eminence" (or whatever). Private or internal arbitration inside these private communities are accomplished quickly, efficiently and almost overnight. The government's legal procedures, by contrast, can take mindboggling decades. Another good example that illustrates the dramatic changes that would take place in the absence of coercive centralized government...is the U.S. Civil War. That entire war was instigated when Northern PTB elements sought to impose a huge 50% tariff on Southern merchants/PTB. Because of their parasitic attachment and control over the US government and the politicians they had bought off...the Northern PTB were successful in having this tariff imposed on the South. (Lincoln, by the way, had absolutely no interest in the slavery issue and he stated this over and over. He practically had to be made to sign the Emancipation Proclamation at gunpoint.) Think about it--- In the absence of centralized government authority, and without all of the government's 'military' resources, and without the ability to coerce young kids to fight a war to the death....this massive dispute could never have gotten anywhere. How much of their own money would the Northern PTB have spent to pay for mercenaries, before they cut their losses? You would have seen a conflict a thousand times smaller than the huge tragic massacre that ensued. The government's ability to coercively create a 'collective' of military slaves, finances and weaponry set the stage for this evil holocaust. IN FACT....it is almost completely certain that this dispute would never have occurred in the first place...because in the absence of a coercive government, there would be no hope of sustaining a 'tariff'. There could be no such thing as a tariff. Northern merchants would never have even gotten the idea. (This Civil War analogy also illustrates another justification for getting rid of centralized government-- it would blessedly eliminate the possibilty of huge and worldwide wars...wars that can only be coercively funded and coercively manned.) --------------- We have all been brought up under this notion that there is a huge array of services that could only be provided by dimwitted, lazy, corrupt bureaucrats and politicians. What an amazing misconception. Consider for a moment the 'self-organizing' principle of freedom. In the aftermath of the Katrina hurricane, for example, there was immediate, impromptu and effective 'on-the-spot' organization going on among hundreds and thousands of people who spontaneously and instinctively sprang into action. Why would non-government human beings be less capable of organizing and structuring their own lives? What a bizarre concept! As a matter of fact, by contrast, government actions were a disastrous joke. Dimwitted, unmotivated, pompous bureaucrats who were stupidly trying to micromanage the situation from a thousand miles away in Washington DC...and at the same time were systematically squelching and shutting down these organized efforts of private citizens. There has been one horror story after the other about these things. Consider, for example, how private Somalians have been building much of their infrastructure with lightening speed and efficiency....specifically in the absence of any organized government. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4020259.stm">news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4020259.stm</a> I could easily replace the entire multi-billion dollar snafu called "the Department of Education ". Just give me my tax money back and I'd hire a tutor (maybe go in together with five other sets of parents). There-- I've just gotten rid of one entire huge chunk of coercive government...in four seconds. Community security? Why can't I (along with my association of neighbors) hire an ex-government police officer as security? If there were the inclination for some neighbors to 'freeload' on these services, the mechanism of insurance premiums built right into community membership, would cover such issues. And think about the positive change in the dynamics, when your community security agent...is your employee. Instead of the trigger-happy "shoot first, ask questions later" cowboy mentality...there would be greater restraint. That kid you're about to gun down for flashing his cell phone at you, while slinking through the neighborhood after a late night out...could be the son of the guy who signs your paycheck. And why would private security agencies be any less efficient at networking and coordinating with other private agencies across the country? They'd be twice as efficient, and thrice as innovative. I could go right down the list...national security, highway construction, air pollution issues, medical care. All of these various issues have been handled very poorly by bureaucrats and would be handled with vastly greater superiority by private individuals. Anyone interested in these things can link over to lewrockwell.com; mises.org; fff.org (etc.) and do some internal googling. And I'd be happy (time permitting) to comment further on the specifics of these things, if some here would like to discuss further. Here is a good series of articles to check out: <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/molyneux/molyneux-arch.html">www.lewrockwell.com/molyn...-arch.html</a> That's all for now. I'm certainly receptive to any comments, no matter how challenging. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=rothbardian>rothbardian</A> at: 6/12/06 5:54 am

by **AnnaLivia** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 12:34 pm

the government (that's us just as soon as we care to be the government again) is what can stand in the way of the tyranny of wealthpower giants. like this: <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/english/business/article1341741.ece">www.aftenposten.no/englis...341741.ece</a> "Murder the idea of having wealthpower giants" "oh, hell...here comes our funeral. let us pry for our missed understandings." words to the wise: "don't let a libertarian bathe your baby".

by **rothbardian** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 3:02 pm

AnnaLivia-- I detected one sliver of a 'reasoning process' in that first statement (about "we the people" being the actual government). The rest of it was completely incomprehensible to me, although there appeared to be yet another ugly insult in there about...Libertarians and babies? I dunno. Anyway...the whole issue of 'the people' actually being 'the government' is an interesting topic. It was unfortunately (IMO) presented in an incomplete form in the Declaration of Independence...the idea that government may only derive it's powers from the consent of the governed. The lack of fully formed definitions regarding this subject created essentially a critical flaw. Along with some other insidious elements which were weaseled into our nation's founding, this left the door open a crack, for a scheming PTB. My view on this is very simple-- If a so-called 'government' wants to truly derive it's powers from my consent...then support of any 'government' needs to be voluntary...otherwise it has NOT received my consent. It has coerced my compliance. Therein lies the end of freedom...and the end of the 'we the people' concept. In that regard, I should clarify some comments I made about Lincoln, in my last post-- The pure concept itself (the idea of the government's power being derived only from the consent of the governed) is, strictly speaking, a freedom concept. But Lincoln was able to slip through the cracks left by the Founders. He irrationally argued that despite his huge leap into coercive and dictatorial government (with the elimination of voluntary association, his imprisonment of all critics, and his military enslavement of hundreds of thousand of American boys) he was still upholding this principle. Pure sham.

How To Fight Tyranny.

Re: Isn't the fishing pole better than the fish?

Re: Isn't the fishing pole better than the fish?

Walmart...THAT'S convenience!

So I don't really "need" shoes? Uh...OK. (?)

New York Times: "In Praise of Sweatshops."

Re: New York Times: "In Praise of Sweatshops."

........

Re: So I don't really "need" shoes? Uh...OK. (?

Re: ........

Re: ........

Setting people up in business for themselves.

Supporting a power monopoly over a power monopoly?

Freedom from the 'state'--a life and death matter.

us, collectively

Voluntary support of 'government'

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