[ExI] undercover at Walmart

[The Avantguardian]

--- On Tue, 2/10/09, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> > Walmart is only the peak of the mountain.
> > 
> > >From the 1970s onward, western society changed
> from making things to
> > buying things.
> ... 
> > Why spend time making something when you can buy it
> cheaper 
> > from China?

Because the oppressive and totalitarian pseudocommunist government of China gets a very large portion of the proceeds of buying those cheap goods. Your purchases have made the Chinese government the *wealthiest* in the world. If you consider a positive net worth wealth that is. 

> > 
> > Well, now we know why. And the millions unemployed and
> 
> > homeless know as well.
> > 
> > BillK
> 
> BillK I see that problem but remind me, why this is
> Walmart's fault?

Because Walmart seems to prefer paying taxes to a country that machine guns its college students for protesting, rather than to the U.S. Furthermore they censor their Internet traffic, sell poisoned food including baby formula abroad, and let North Korea's nuclear program run wild. What's there not to like about China? And if some our capitalistic virtues are rubbing off on China, then I would beware of the Chinese totalitarian vices being rubbed off on us. 

> westerners have environmental standards, labor unions and
> high prices for
> workers in our country which would make it nearly
> impossible to produce
> goods as cheaply as China can churn them out and ship them
> over.  The
> difference isn't small.  

It's cheaper to just dump our garbage over the fence into our neighbor's yard rather than paying for garbage pickup too. That doesn't really make a case for the practice however. Similarly, it is not a good idea if you take any stock in moral values, to take ones wife on vacation to a foreign country just so you could beat her legally.
 
> Last month I bought some Chinese power tools, two drills,
> two jigsaws, three
> grinders.  Each one cost me 11 bucks.  Seventy seven bucks,
> for a box of new
> tools durn near too heavy for me to hoist!  Their quality
> wasn't stellar,
> but acceptable.  The only possible way western
> manufacturing can compete
> with that is to have a completely automated assembly line,
> a lights out
> factory, employing approximately one person.

I agree this would be preferable.
 
> This isn't Walmart's fault, it is ours, for not
> building the robofactories
> when capital was still available.

Ours? Walmart had more capital to build those robot factories than I did. If you had the capital then shame on you. ;-)


"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo