Walmart is the rapist!
werehippy
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Schrodinger wrote:Yar wrote:Exactly. So why not enforce a price minimum on goods? Then Wal-mart would be unable to drive the Mom and Pops out of business.
If we stopped giving tax breaks to companies that outsourced and started rewarding companies that didn't, we would essentially be doing the same thing, since one of the reasons Wal-Mart gets such a cheap price is because they force outsourcing upon their suppliers. And then there are towns that bar Wal-Mart from entering entirely.
I've yet to hear a good reason for my Walmart SHOULDN'T drive the Mom & Pops out of business (given it acts within the ethical framework established by law, which I'll allow it may very well not). If a big store is able to provide better service (in terms of lower prices, wider selection, whatever drives business to them and away from other businesses) while still earning a profit, society is better of if they replace the Mom & Pop stores that can't compete.
Society is better served and the new provider of goods is making as much or more profit than the business they replace. The only losers are the owners of the Mom & Pop that goes out of business, and it's not in societies interest to support inefficient businesses just because they are small. The owners will simply have to move on to other areas where they can hopefully be economically useful, as opposed to the burden on society they would represent if they were artificially supported in maintaining their weaker business in the face of a better alternative.
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That's like you discussing whether or not your sister should be in a relationship with her abusive crack dealing boyfriend, and you responding by saying, "I've yet to hear a good reason on why they SHOULDN'T get married, given that he stops beating the shit out her and dealing in cocaine."
For all intents and purposes, Wal-Mart behaves unethically. Yeah, perhaps it would be a different story if they didn't, but right now they do. Trying to defend a hypothetical Wal-Mart doesn't do much good.
"If." Wal-Mart forces their suppliers to lower their prices if they want to continue selling at Wal-Mart. Suppliers then have to find ways to bring cut corners, diminishing the quality.
Unfortunately, a lot of that "inefficiency" may come from treating your employees like actual human beings, and engaging in fair and ethical business practices.
It's one thing to SAY Walmart is completely unethical, and another to get me to believe that's the only reason they are as large as they are, and that it has nothing to do with with lower prices, wider selection, or their bar none excellence in capitalizing on economies of scale.
Walmart has engaged in some more than nebulous economic activity, and been brought to task for it. That doesn't wash out the fact that they out perform the hell out of almost any other retail chain or independent store, and at the end of the day that's what matters.
You might as well bitch a neurosurgeon can demand a 6 figure salary. It's in everyone's best interest for Walmart to get their goods at the lowest price they can, and its either pure conjecture on your part or idiocy on the suppliers part to act unethically to meet a contractual obligation to Walmart. If Walmart choses to buy a cheaper good and makes a profit selling that good, everyone benefits. There's no special award for selling only really nice stuff.
And that's all well and good, but it doesn't actually change the situation in the least. I'm not interested in paying more for toilet paper and soda just so Ma and Pa can run their own store and they can be nice to Johnny the stock boy. I just want to get my shit and get on with my day, and whoever can provide that service the best is all I (and economics) care about.
http://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/joint.htm: "One thing is held to cause another when in fact both are the effect of a single underlying cause. This fallacy is often understood as a special case of post hoc ergo prompter hoc."
You attribute their success to their lower prices, but you seem to think that their lower prices have absolutely nothing to do with unethical behavior designed to cut costs. For instance, one common tactic is that Wal-Mart will frequently underclock their employees, so that they get paid less than what they've actually earned. Their managers will actually be punished by the higher ups if their employees clock in too many hours. Now, why do you think Wal-mart does this? Do you think they do this for the sake of being evil bastards, or do you think they do this for the sake of saving money?
Outperform them in what way? Simply saying "lower prices" doesn't really answer anything.
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/77/walmart.html
For Vlasic, the gallon jar of pickles became what might be called a devastating success. "Quickly, it started cannibalizing our non-Wal-Mart business," says Young. "We saw consumers who used to buy the spears and the chips in supermarkets buying the Wal-Mart gallons. They'd eat a quarter of a jar and throw the thing away when they got moldy. A family can't eat them fast enough."
The gallon jar reshaped Vlasic's pickle business: It chewed up the profit margin of the business with Wal-Mart, and of pickles generally. Procurement had to scramble to find enough pickles to fill the gallons, but the volume gave Vlasic strong sales numbers, strong growth numbers, and a powerful place in the world of pickles at Wal-Mart. Which accounted for 30% of Vlasic's business. But the company's profits from pickles had shriveled 25% or more, Young says--millions of dollars.
The gallon was hoisting Vlasic and hurting it at the same time.
Young remembers begging Wal-Mart for relief. "They said, 'No way,' " says Young. "We said we'll increase the price"--even $3.49 would have helped tremendously--"and they said, 'If you do that, all the other products of yours we buy, we'll stop buying.' It was a clear threat." Hunn recalls things a little differently, if just as ominously: "They said, 'We want the $2.97 gallon of pickles. If you don't do it, we'll see if someone else might.' I knew our competitors were saying to Wal-Mart, 'We'll do the $2.97 gallons if you give us your other business.' " Wal-Mart's business was so indispensable to Vlasic, and the gallon so central to the Wal-Mart relationship, that decisions about the future of the gallon were made at the CEO level.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22507-2004Feb7?language=printer
"In the beginning, we made money," said a manager reached by telephone, who gave his name as Mr. Li.
"But when Wal-Mart started to launch nationwide distribution, they pressured us for a special price at below our cost. Now, we're losing money on every box, while Wal-Mart is making more money."
"If her boyfriend choses to get a girlfriend who lets him beat the shit out of her, everyone benefits.
Unfortunately, do this enough times, and all the Johnny's of the world stop being able to shop from your place of work, which means that you go out of work as well. Whoopse.
Company entertainingly fucks up when it realizes that it can't actually provide that many pickles and that it's created a product line it just can't service.
Wal-mart, realizing that this is still a fantastically fast selling product, tell the company to go fuck themselves when they want more money and go and ensure they can keep a popular product moving at a popular price.
So what part of this is unethical? Because right now I'm seeing "oh shits, we fucked up" and Wal-Mart saying "well fix it, because we're not here to nanny your ass"
New idea: You stop strawmanning, and start explaining your damn examples.
And who's idea was it to fuck up in the first place? Why wasn't Wal-Mart willing to let them raise the price, after it was clear that the fuck up had occurred?
Vlasic, for example, wasn't looking to build its brand on a gallon of whole pickles. Pickle companies make money on "the cut," slicing cucumbers into spears and hamburger chips. "Cucumbers in the jar, you don't make a whole lot of money there," says Steve Young, a former vice president of grocery marketing for pickles at Vlasic, who has since left the company.
At some point in the late 1990s, a Wal-Mart buyer saw Vlasic's gallon jar and started talking to Pat Hunn about it. Hunn, who has also since left Vlasic, was then head of Vlasic's Wal-Mart sales team, based in Dallas. The gallon intrigued the buyer. In sales tests, priced somewhere over $3, "the gallon sold like crazy," says Hunn, "surprising us all." The Wal-Mart buyer had a brainstorm: What would happen to the gallon if they offered it nationwide and got it below $3? Hunn was skeptical, but his job was to look for ways to sell pickles at Wal-Mart. Why not?
"Oh shit, you're hitting me in the head with that shovel, and it really hurts!"
"Well, then fix it, I'm not hear to fix your problems for you. (smack!)"
"OW!"
Just saying, "well fix it" to someone you're currently screwing over doesn't magically make it better.
Edit: Just to get back on topic, the topic of "minimum prices" can also be analogous to the the "minimum wage." Is it fair to force Vlassic to sell $2.97 gallons, anymore than it's fair to make a worker work at $2.97/hr? If a worker does work at $2.97 an hour doing grueling work, is it fair to say, "Well, you fucked up and that's your own fault," the way that you're saying here?
Look, if Vlasic didn't want to sell gallon's of pickles then why the fuck did they do it? They're exactly the type of company which should get destroyed in the process because they deliberately pursued a product line that was unsustainable. They should have foreseen this. It is not Wal-Mart's problem that they didn't, it is Wal-Mart's problem that customers want pickles in gallon jars and there's evidently plenty of people willing to do it for under $3. So they weren't really in a bind were they, they were just unwilling to expand enough to make it work.
Look, fucking stop it ok. Either give me a business argument which explains why the market didn't just eliminate a weak and poorly managed business here, or admit you just want to hate on Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart didn't screw anyone over - Wal-Mart had a product they could move and needed to fill demand. And everyone else in the field apparently was completely willing to do so for the price they wanted.
So, do we conclude that Vlasic is the victim, or do we conclude that Vlasic was in fact poorly managed and didn't look at the externalities of entering into a business arrangement, and were annihilated by their competitors who saw Wal-Mart, rather desperate to keep a popular product line going, potentially willing to hand off a lot of other business in order to get it? Fuck, why is Wal-Mart the bad guy here? Why aren't Vlasic's competitors who apparently price undercut them strategically to destroy them?
"Look, if that girl didn't want let her boyfriend to beat the should out of her and take her money, then why did she do it?"
"Look, if that gang member didn't want to get shot out all day while making less than the minimum wage, then why did fuck did he do it?"
Obviously, there's a big difference between what people want, and what people are willing to do. It's a subtle, though important distinction. The answer to your question was already in the bolded excerpt above, where it says, "Hunn was skeptical, but his job was to look for ways to sell pickles at Wal-Mart."
Right, just like people who are poor deserve to be poor, because they "deliberately" persued a line of work that would pay them poorly. :roll:
So people aren't allowed to make mistakes and correct them afterwards?
Sounds like the justification for the Iraq war. "Yeah, maybe the democrats were lied to and mislead by false information. But it's not our fault they believed us!"
Like what? Please explain yourself, rather than just making blanket assertions on how the free market will magically fix everything if we leave it alone.
See above. You keep saying they were weak and poor, but you're not providing any alternative. It's like saying, "It's okay to employ child labor at pennies per hour and deny them workman's comp when they get injured. After all, why SHOULDN'T we eliminate children who are weak enough to lose an arm and poor enough to be willing to work for me?"
That they "needed"?
So you're saying that it would have been physically impossible for Wal-mart to raise the price without going bankrupt? Would it also be physically impossible for, say, Nike to pay their workers a dime per hour instead of a nickle? It's like the gang leader, who has to pay his members like shit, in order to remind them who's boss.
And they would have found themselves in the same situation. Remember, the only reason Vlassic got involved was because they were just as willing to get a piece of the Wal-mart pie as the startups were. Getting screwed is getting screwed, regardless of who it happens to.
Reminds me of the MadTV sketch, where the manager puts his two employees in a fight to the death, in order to determin the employee of the month. Who's the bad guy, the employer who forced them into it, or the employees who participated? Well, my immeadiate thoughts go to the person who forced them into the situationin the first place.
And again, to keep it on topic, the same goes for the minimum wage. Is it fair for a business to pay their workers a nickle per hour, just because they can? At some point, the people in the market place realized that constantly trying to undercut each other to gain business didn't do much for them other than decreasing the value of gaining business. There were just as many jobs as there were before and just as many potential employees trying to get them, the only difference was that the job now paid far less. It's a basic prisoners dilemma. As a result, we created the minimum wage, and shortened the work week, in order to limit the effect that unemployment would have on price and duration.
We also saw the same thing in the agricultural market, which is why FDR created farm subsidies as part of the new deal. Now and days, we see this happening in the international markets. E.g., chocolate farmer grows a certain amount of chocolate, but since the market has been saturated, he has to grow twice as much product in order to gain the same amount of income. But since so much more chocolate has been grown, the market is further saturated, and the price collapses further, spurring more growth. Which is the basis for the "fair trade" movement, which dictates a guaranteed "minimum" price for product grown.
Unfortunately, simply stating "well, fix the problem," when the problem lies with the system itself, is NOT a useful answer.
Exactly? It was his job to look for ways to sell pickles to Wal-Mart. He did his job, the company management said "ok we will do this". At what point did Wal-Mart force the company to do this in this process?
I never said this, stop fucking strawmanning my position. There is a world of difference between individual and corporate rights.
The company's responsibility was to fix this problem for themselves. Why the fuck should Wal-Mart now have some type of responsibility to continue doing business with the company? What about it's responsibility to its shareholders, to it's customers? When the hell did being a large company suddenly ensure you had to bail small ones out of bind?
Oh, and strawman number 3 in the same fucking post.
No I have a more fun idea, why don't you tell me why Wal-Mart has a magical responsibility to save small companies who can't supply it's stock when they have offers from others to do it? Why does Wal-Mart have to save this particular company? What if the other companies really needed that business? By your logic Wal-Mart should be buying goods at any price from every company lest - god forbid - someone who's uncompetitive goes bankrupt.
Other companies were clearly, as is stated in the article, able to give Wal-Mart gallon jars of pickles for 2.97, and were leveraging that position to get more business from Wal-Mart, which is probably how they were going to make it work. Why should Wal-Mart punish the consumer and punish it's shareholders by raising prices when it doesn't have to? What is ethical about the management making a blatently unprofitable decision there when apparently, the 2.97 gallon jar of pickles is highly doable.
Because businesses != individuals, this is a fourth fucking strawman of my position. Fucking hell, get a clue about economics and maybe a clue about the differences here.
You have completely failed to actually state why this company should exist when apparently, in the same article, many others were able to do it just fine and were leveraging that position to outbid them.
And fuck it, I can't be bothered to respond to any more of your drivel because you continue to completely misrepresent my argument (that a business != an individual, and that businesses must be competitive) and then throw in a few more strawman arguments for good measure. Because really, we gotta prop up the hay producers in this thread apparently.
EDIT: And here's another funny point, in the course of arguing with you, I've made an excellent case as to why we absolutely need the minimum wage - to allow for greater labor equity while still allowing business competition. At the bottom end, the guys slicing cucumbers aren't worth very much at all to whichever company they work for since they're more or less completely disposable. Minimum wage guarantees them what should be technically a living wage, and protects them in cases where the company they work for folds since it becomes impossible to wipe out all the companies in an area and then hire everyone at terrible rates - the minimum rate is protection for those doing the manual relatively unskilled labor of the process, yet potentially allows training and higher pay to differentiate your product from one of your competitors if you want to go that route (though in the case of pickles I doubt anyone anywhere would notice much difference in this regard).
http://www.penny-arcade.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1073843913&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=150#25361645
Apparently I do. Was that a rhetorical question?
Stephen Downes on when addressing something that you believe to be a strawman: "Show that the opposition's argument has been misrepresented by showing that the opposition has a stronger argument. Describe the stronger argument."
You have not done this. Mind you, my argument was an analogy, not a strawman.
Because...? Please explain the difference, in the context of this discussion. Right now, all you're doing is basically saying, "All analogies are strawman by nature, because they are analogies."
By doing what?
False dilemma. These goals are not mutually exclusive.
The same reason why don't let people work at two dollars an hour, even when there are offers to do so. Again, getting screwed is getting screwed.
If "uncompetitive" means "not driving yourself into economic bankrupcy," then yes. I would be in favor of said "uncompetitive" behavior.
So was Vlasic, until they realized it was killing them. You seem to be willfully ignorant of that point, even after it's been brought up on numerous occasions. But even then, the question is... does that make it right? If this was the 1930s, is it okay to employ child laborers at a penny per hour with no benefits, just because I can easily find other child laborers willing to do the same? Why or why not? Don't just say, "But that's different!" Try providing an actual explaination.
You expect me to somehow be able to attack an argument that is based on a larger overall principle that can be applied to other things, without actually addressing the overall principle that can be applied to other things. Thus, making a logically impossible burden of proof.
Unsubstantiated assumption. Your assuming that it would be physically impossible for Wal-mart to have made a profit when selling them at a higher price. The fact that said pickles had traditionally been sold at a higher price to begin with, and still managed to turn a profit, makes your assertion laughable.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Article never said that. What the article said was that the competitors were willing, and only under certain conditions (if Wal-Mart gave them their "other business."). Which could just as easily mean, "They would be willing to take a loss on product a, in the desperate hope that they could make up for it via sales on product b."
So let's see, you make up a deliberately flawed argument, claim it as identical to my actual argument and then attack the flawed argument? Oh right, a strawman - I knew we had a word for that!
Taking a hard position with Wal-Mart? Downsizing? I'm not a company manager, I don't have to prove the company was saveable either. Maybe it wasn't and it simply needed to be wound up. Yet funnily enough all of this is accepted part of our economic system because it allows greater efficiency. So why don't you also prove how this company was being more efficient then anyone Wal-Mart threatened to take their business to?
No, but they can be and you've yet to actually prove why they weren't in this case. You've also yet to prove why by the same logic it's somehow totally ethical to not do business with other companies offering better rates.
Which is irrelevant because on the company level there are no individuals, everyone moves on finds new jobs and the company is wound up. The minimum wage (as I pointed out in my edit) especially protects people in this exact situation and exists for that reason. Why should company's be arbitrarily protected? This has been a problem in America for years with the steel industry and has needlessly made it relatively uncompetitive and inefficient.
Once again, why are we holding company's as individuals? They're clearly not, we clearly have built systems that protect the individual while enabling free enterprise - as stated, this is why we have minimum wage in the first place.
Once again you conflate individual rights and company rights. Company's are not individuals. They are not sick children and advocating winding them up when they become unsustainable is not akin to voting to kill every child currently having chemo. Oh right - a strawman (which, guess what, is commonly disguised an analogy).
Wal-Mart's responsibility to it's shareholders is to provide growth and a return on their investment. So yes, it is unethical for management to intentionally stagnate the company without reason - which it would've been, because you're yet to prove any reason the company should have survived.
Make a post without resorting to talking about company's like individuals where I use that term, and maybe you'd be right. Not only have you failed to do that but you've compared my position to lying about the Iraq war, rape victims and sick children.
Which is simply leveraging their market position. Which ironically, by your logic, makes them more responsible then Wal-Mart for putting the company out of business - clearly it's unethical for them to offer such prices if they're unsustainable. Which is why you're argument doesn't wash - Wal-Mart is easily the victim, it's all in the phrasing really, which means you just want them to be the villain because everybody loves an underdog.
No, in that case, I was comparing one party's willingness to do something unfavorable to another party's willingness to do something unfavorable, despite not actually wanting the unfavorable thing in question. And I never said "rape," either, I said "beat the shit out of her and take her money."
Appeal to tradition fallacy. Might doesn't make right, see above.
Appeal to wishful thinking, and disproven by the prisoner's dilemma as I already explained.
And you would be wrong. At best it would be a false analogy, and only if you could prove that it wasn't identity in terms of the property or relationship being compared (which you haven't.).
If I say, "the moon orbits the Earth to gravity, just as the Earth orbits the sun," you would not be able to proclaim, "OMG, that's a strawman, because the Earth and the moon aren't the same thing!" Of course they aren't the same thing -- that's what makes it an analogy. But the relationship and property still holds true.
Right. Because history has shown that taking a hard position always works agaisnt a corporate bully that's vastly more powerful than you.
Yeah, because downsizing is always the answer to everything! It's not like those employees actually do anything to support the company.
Prisoner's dilemma, economic depression. Already went over this.
Incoherent statement.
Why not? Prisoner's dilemma still applies to companies just as easily as it does to people.
Appeal to tradition fallacy. "This behavior can't be unethical, because the system hasn't been built up to protect against it" is not an argument.
Which I guess is why they also have a history of employing illegal immigrants, underclock their employees for hours worked, and literally turning a blind eye while their customers get raped in their parking lot -- because they don't want to go through the expense of adding any security cameras to the outside. Doesn't make it ethical, however.
Yep. Wal-Mart is easily the victim. Won't somebody PLEASE think of the Wal-Mart?
And you did use rape, you used it repeatedly. That you also used beating your girlfriend arguments doesn't change that fact, and nor does one make it any less of a strawman. But you know what, if you'd develop some fucking content to your argument or address any actual points rather then trying to win a pissing contest in pointing out argumental fallacies (which you're losing badly no matter how you want to spin it) then you might actually succeed in convincing me of why Wal-Mart is wrong in this case because god forbid I might actually think that and just think you've picked the weakest and stupidest possible example.
The only problem you have is that you haven't actually shown why tradition doesn't apply here. To do that you'd have to show examples of people not doing what Wal-Mart did in this case, intentionally, that weren't subject to the externalities.
Secondly, prove me wrong on the second assertion - it's not a fallacy when it's not linked to the argument. And you might note I haven't argued Wal-Mart did the best thing, I've argued that what they did wasn't unethical, because, as I keep saying, a company is not an individual and cannot be treated as such - which you keep doing.
Whatever you want to say to make yourself feel better at this point, but it's a strawman because you chose it to be one: weak argument - "rape victims are wrong co they wear short skirts by your logic" - connected it to my actual argument - "company's can be allowed to be screwed over by their actions" - and attacked the former, rather then the latter. Strawman. You haven't actually disproven my actual argument, because you're still completely intent on treating company's like individuals and arguing as such. False analogy, strawman, whatever you want to call it, you're not actually making a point here so stop being a retard.
Except that the last point applies, I never said those things had to work, and considering you have exactly this 1 example to prove Wal-Mart is a corporate bully how about you not reason your way circularly towards it.
The true gem - go learn reading comprehension, and then maybe go study economics for a year or so because god knows you need it.
Fucking finally you actually respond to the key contention - bravo.
Except you don't. A company is not an individual. Prove why it should be (EDIT) treated as one.
Once again I get to stop at the point you actually get round to making an argument. Stop waving your ePenis and make some fucking points relevant to the argument.
Which is why I also presented "Look, if that gang member didn't want to get shot out all day while making less than the minimum wage, then why did fuck did he do it?"
Strawman, in this case an actual strawman, because I didn't say "rape" in that example. I said "beat the shit out of her and take her money, then why did she do it?" It's entirely possible to have the shit beaten out of you, without being raped.
Sure I did. In the bolded portion above. You simply chose not to address it.
Really? I did? Did I sign a written agreement towards this or something?
Never said this, but you're explicitly claiming I did. Which means that in your case, it legitimately is a strawman, since you're claiming that I made a specific argument when I didn't.
Actually, I attacked both, by pointing out the relationship, thus making it an analogy. From Wikipedia: "Analogy plays a significant role in problem solving, decision making, perception, memory, creativity, emotion, explanation and communication. It lies behind basic tasks such as the identification of places, objects and people, for example, in face perception and facial recognition systems. It has been argued that analogy is "the core of cognition" (Hofstadter in Gentner et al. 2001). Specific analogical language comprises exemplification, comparisons, metaphors, similes, allegories, and parables, but not metonymy. Phrases like and so on, and the like, as if, and the very word like also rely on an analogical understanding by the receiver of a message including them. Analogy is important not only in ordinary language and common sense, where proverbs and idioms give many examples of its application, but also in science, philosophy and the humanities. The concepts of association, comparison, correspondence, mathematical and morphological homology, homomorphism, iconicity, isomorphism, metaphor, resemblance, and similarity are closely related to analogy. In cognitive linguistics, the notion of conceptual metaphor may be equivalent to that of analogy."
Ad hominem. My point was made by describing and explaining the prisoner's dilemma, which you still haven't addressed. The fact that you desperately wish my argument to be a strawman, with no explaination, doesn't magically make it become one.
Reading comprehension doesn't magically make a statement like "everyone moves on finds new jobs and the company is wound up" magically coherent. Nor do ad hominem attacks.
Which is what makes it an analogy.
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Yes, I already did when I cited the prisoner's dilemma in relation to economics, and presented numerous economic examples. Case in point:
Is it fair for a business to pay their workers a nickle per hour, just because they can? At some point, the people in the market place realized that constantly trying to undercut each other to gain business didn't do much for them other than decreasing the value of gaining business. There were just as many jobs as there were before and just as many potential employees trying to get them, the only difference was that the job now paid far less. It's a basic prisoners dilemma. As a result, we created the minimum wage, and shortened the work week, in order to limit the effect that unemployment would have on price and duration.
We also saw the same thing in the agricultural market, which is why FDR created farm subsidies as part of the new deal. Now and days, we see this happening in the international markets. E.g., chocolate farmer grows a certain amount of chocolate, but since the market has been saturated, he has to grow twice as much product in order to gain the same amount of income. But since so much more chocolate has been grown, the market is further saturated, and the price collapses further, spurring more growth. Which is the basis for the "fair trade" movement, which dictates a guaranteed "minimum" price for product grown.
This was never addressed.
Again, might doesn't make right. Economically, the people who employed child labor might have been succeeding.
And as I showed, through the prisoners dilemma, that in itself is not a justification. I'm sure that back in the days of child labor, there were hoards of children looking for work. I'm sure that if the minimum wage didn't exist, there would be hoards of laborers working for $2/hr. That doesn't make it right.
Which is why I connected it via the prisoners dilemma, and which you chose to ignore.
Once again, you don't seem to know what the word means. Strawman is in reference to misconstruing stated arguments, not in the use of analogies in general.
Actually, a corporation is considered a "natural person" under the 14th ammendment thanks to a Supreme Court decision in 1886. However, they're also the property of the shareholders so it's a little contradictory. If a corporation benefits from being treated as an individual then they will try to get the courts to treat them as such. If it's more useful to them not to be an individual then they will do what they can to avoid being treated that way.
Whether it's ethical or not is kind of immaterial - corporations exist for the sole purpose of making money for their shareholders. I'd be astounded if Wal-Mart didn't use their buying power in this way. Asking them not to is like asking a lion to become vegetarian because zebras don't like being eaten.
If that was really the "sole purpose" for existence, rather than one purpose among many, then how in the world do you explain not-for-profit corporations?
Suppliers such as Vlassic are run by humans, as well as employing them. If the suppliers die, then people are unemployed. Which is also the same primary motivation people use for justifying the minimum wage, the fact that employers have absolutely no coercive threat to hold over you other than the threat of unemployment. And in fact, you yourself were advocating this very policy when you insisted that the corporation should downsize.
So basically, I'm comparing the threat of unemployment to the threat of unemployment. You're right, a complete strawman. How in the world can these two things be compared?
So who are these forms for: http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/business_services/publications_and_forms/nfp.html
Does being a retard come naturally for you or is this something you've been slamming your head into the wall for years for?
Yes, because there are always far more avilable jobs than there are available workers. That's exactly why the minimum wage was instated at the height of the great depression in the first place.
And you see, that is a strawman, because you're misrepresenting the logic of my argument. There's a big difference between "corporations shouldn't be forced to sell others to sell at disasterously low prices that prevents them from making a profit, even though the market has shown that they are willing to pay far more, just because they can get away with it," and "people should be able to sell there product at any price they want, and force people to pay for it." In my example, there is historical evidence showing that people wouldn't have minded paying Vlassic's prior prices, which were still standard for the market (e.g., comparable to the prices in other stores.). In your example, there is no such precedent. Hence, a strawman.
But then, you've never understood the actual meaning of that term in the past, so why start now? It's amazing, it's like talking to someone on opposite day or something.
For clarification, this is an example of a strawman:
"The Theory of Evolution says that complexity in the universe increases over time. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that any increase in complexity is impossible. Hence the Theory of Evolution is inconsistent with the laws of thermodynamics." [In fact the Theory of Natural Selection only concerns biological organisms on earth and says nothing whatsoever about the complexity of the universe as a whole. Similarly, the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that on average complexity will tend to decrease, not that there cannot be localized increases from time to time.]
Even though the subject in both statements is the same (complexity over time), the argument that person B is refuting is fundamentally different from the one that person A is presenting.
This is not an example of a strawman:
Energy is also measured in joules. In many ways it resembles money: it is a currency in which all processes in nature must be paid for. Just as money can come in dollars, pesos, yen, rubles or liras, so energy can come in many forms--electricity, heat, light, sound, chemical, nuclear.
Even though the subject of both things are different, the only thing being said to be the same is the actual relationship, which is still comparable. Hence, this is not a strawman, but an analogy. For clarification:
http://www.cuyamaca.edu/bruce.thompson/Fallacies/falseanalogy.asp
Some analogies are not false. Indeed, it could be argued that analogical reasoning is at the very foundation of all formal, rational thought. It is analogy that allows us to generalize from specific instances to general forms or abstract principles. For example, the form
All M are P.
S is M.
S is P.
is merely a statement of what argument "All men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, so Socrates is mortal," has in common with other arguments that also subsume a case under a general rule. If we were unable to reason by analogy, we would be unable to tease this general form out of the many arguments that follow this pattern. Formal reasoning is based on our ability to recognize relevant similarities.
Are you hoping that if you rely on enough ad hominem attacks, it will magically make your easily disproven statements true?
I mean, for fuck's sake, the entire basis of your rant is:
So the situation goes:
Vlasic tried to raised their contractually obligated priced by almost 20%, and Walmart refused to accept the cost.
Young lies that Walmart threatened them, while Hunn confirms Walmart merely said if they refused to provide a product others would.
Vlasic knew others could and would provide the good to Walmart.
The relationship was decided to be too important for Vlasic to unilaterally break, so the CEO refused to let Vlasic break a contractual obligation.
I'm sorry, but where the hell is a single unethical thing in there? Your entire position is predicated on the idea it's evil for Walmart to not let Vlasic make Walmart its bitch, when Walmart has other people willing to do what Vlasic does for them.
No, I started with the premise that it's unfair to take advantage of desperate people just because they allow you to, if the only reason they allow you to is because of a prisoner's dilemma type situation. Which is my main premise behind justifying the minimum wage, and surprise surprise, that's what this topic is about.
False. You have no information saying that they were contractually obligated to maintain that price.
Again, false. Where does it say or implied that he lied about that?
Right. Just like if one child laborer leaves the workhouse, another will take his place, and the one who left will have a hard time finding a comparable job somewhere else. Again, prisoner's dilemma. The relationship to their employer is too important to break there as well. Doesn't make it right, though, now does it?
Yar asked about whether forcing people to set minimum prices on products was comparable to setting minimum prices on labor. In some cases, it isn't (e.g., predatory pricing, where the seller lowers their price on their own volition). In other cases, it is (e.g., agriculture, as evident by the agricultural industry of the 1930s, and free trade globalization of today, where the seller lowers the price due to the fact that the market collapses, while simultaneously increasing price in order to make up for the difference and driving the price down further in a self-perpuating cycle). What's the difference, for instance, between a chocolate farmer in the rainforest being paid 5 cents per pound per hour, and a child laborer in a workhouse working 5 cents per hour Barbie doll? In both cases, they're being paid for their work. In both cases, their pay is judged by the market value, and their work is judged by the amount produced.
The only difference here is semantic, like those gold farmers on WoW, who insist, "Oh, I'm not selling them GOLD, per se, I'm selling the labor used to farm that gold!" It might make a difference in terms of the "law" (e.g., WoW's intellectual property rights), but not in terms of the actual economics.
Being taken advantage of unecessarily and unfairly. Pretty much the same reasoning used to justify the minimum wage. You might not find that sufficient. Not everyone believes that this motivation for the minimum wage is sufficient either.
Also, for fun: http://www.jibjab.com/originals/originals/jibjab/movieid/122
Look, I like bargains as much as the next guy, but if everyone keeps chanting "cheaper, cheaper, cheaper!", than all those savings are eventually going to have to come from somewhere, and unfortunately, the employees make a pretty easy target. And if the unemployment rate is bad enough, which is will be thanks to constant outsourcing, then it's not hard to imagine that the employees will let them.
With all due respect, this is retarded. Vlasic was "desperate" because they commited to something that wasn't as profitable as their other work. It's entirely and only their fault they commited to a line of action that had less favorable results. You don't get do overs in real life, and that's what your argument against Walmart is bitching about, that they wouldn't let Vlasic have a do over and pick an option that was better for them than for Walmart.
If you knew anything about retail, beyond Walmart = evil, you'd know EVERYTHING about the sale of goods in stores is contractually defined. Producer price, shelf price, shelf location and space, when you can have sales, everything. A store can't move a product over 6 inches without talking with that companies liaison, and you really want to claim there was no contract covering how much Vlasic sold the pickles to Walmart for?
All of one line down, where Hunn says Walmart didn't do anything unethical, merely saying they could find someone else to provide the product if Vlasic wouldn't. When it's a matter o who said what and one of the two "victims" admits that the aggressor said exactly what any company would and should say, then it's beyond credible belief that the company actually said they'd burn down the company and shoot all their dogs like the other victim claimed.
Everything I'm not bothering to quote is retarded beyond my ability to acknowledge. If you really can't see the worlds of difference between Walmart refusing to pay 20% more for a product than they are obligated too, just because the producer would like to be making more money on it, and child fucking labor, then I'm wasting my time talking to you. If you can't have an actual discussion without flying off the handle into insane and useless parallels, then I have better things to do with my time.
Being taken advantage of unecessarily and unfairly. Pretty much the same reasoning used to justify the minimum wage. You might not find that sufficient. Not everyone believes that this motivation for the minimum wage is sufficient either.[/quote]
Again, you have yet to even begin to prove, or hell even provide anything beyond vague hand waving and accusation, that what Walmart did was unnecessary or unfair. They were offered a good, sold it, and then refused to pay more for it just because the producer asked nicely. It's called business, not super happy friends time.
And this has jack all to do with the minimum wage, this is just you ranting about how evil Walmart is. The minimum wage exists because you can't simply get rid of people who aren't succeeding in society, so you have to make sure they can get by. Business can be gotten rid of when they fail, so they neither need nor deserve the same protections we give workers who fail.
Again, false.
"Committed" implies a contract guaranteeing a certain price for a certain duration of time. We have no evidence of the sort. If the local gas station sells gas for $2 tomorow morning, are you going to say that they are "committed" to that price, even when supplies run low and profits go down?
Right. Because prices for goods never go up, ever. There is no such thing as the futures markets either, because the price of produce is always fixed in advanced.
Again, false. He never says that.
Yep. Just like the sort of business we saw before and during the great depression, and the reason why we have farm subsidies and fair trade products today.
This is actually a common argument I hear from libertarians. "Why should businesses be forced to ay someone $5.15 or $7.25 an hour, if they can get their labor for so much less?" And it arguments applying to the price of goods can also be applied to the price of labor because a) labor is a type of good in itself, and b) because labor is one of those things you need to produce goods in the first place! Shocking, I know, but they don't magically appear from the air, as if by magic. As cited in the article above, for instance, one of the reasons we can have cheap pickles is simply because we don't pay migrant workers very much. Is it fair that these people, in America, should have to suffer for your sake?
Again, what's the fundamental difference between paying someone $2 for an hour of work, vs. paying them $2 for a product that takes an hour of work to produce? Or are you naive enough to believe that that as long as the minimum wage is in place, no employer would ever try to find ways to skirt around it, even if forced to in order to stay competitive?
See above. The parallels between the collapse of the industry and the collapse of the labor market is readily evident, given that people are employed within industry to begin with, and given that we fucking saw it happen during the great depression. Destroying industries will destroy jobs. That's one of the reasons we keep them around.
Sure you can. For instance, you can let them starve to death, commit suicide, get into dangerous accidents, get sick, whatever. It's not a matter of "can't", it's more a matter of "probably shouldn't."
Hence, "probably."
The issue is that Walmart controls enough of the market that they begin to get monopoly power in their negotiations. Not doing business with Walmart is very bad for your stock value. Walmart knows that, and they leverage it against you to minimize your profit margins as a company. They force you into bad deals in order to put your products in your stores, leaving you the bare minimum in net profit across your entire product line. Also, as long as they keep growing, they have the additional implied threat that they will squeeze out the other retailers you can choose to do business with, and then will fuck you over for your disobedience. IOW, as competitor stores get eliminated, you have less and less choice except to accept Wal-Mart's terms or shrink your company. They use the price benefits this situation produces to squeeze out more competitors, and the cycle continues. (This is what I hear from my mom, who works for a magazine company.)
Obviously if they were 5% of the market it wouldn't be a problem, and if they had 100% of the market it would be illegal. The problem is that they're in a gray zone in between. In addition, their various big-box approaches do save money for the consumer, and are not based on collusion with other companies so it's hard to nail them for anti-competitive actions. But market mechanisms only work optimally when both supply and demand are competitive and fluid.
It was a typo, I swear!
SNL's Sale-Mart Sketch: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ePEUjX6mcAM
regardless of the sustainability of the pickle price to vlasic, threatening to cease all other business if they don't sell to walmart for what walmart wants is what I would consider un-ethical.
E.g. "give me that shit for free or I won't sell *any* of your stuff in my hugely popular, ubiquitous stores and you can sell your stuff at the mom&pops which I will soon price out of business and you will have *no* market" whee!
I don't however care if walmart legitimately manages to outcompete mom&pop ethically because I will go to whatever store to get goods that make economic sense to me (read:cheap).
Buying from chinese sweatshops and failing to pay workers appropriate health insurance isn't ethical behavior.
It's also not legitimate competition. People who shop at mom and pops are indirectly subsiding those who shop at walmart through their taxes, which in turn cover many of wal-mart's workers through public programs and emergency room care.
(This is just one reason we need a comprehensive universal health care plan. I'm sick of paying taxes that provide a financial incentive for corporations to mistreat their employees.)