Challenge Assumptions # 6
Hey Folks,
Columnist Kathleen Parker is at it again. This time she isn't as bad as usual; she does give a little hell to Wal-Mart - probably because her information comes from a book written by "a friend and former editor" (The Wal-Mart Effect - by Charles Fishman).
But she does show her ignorance or ill-advised assumptions by writing: "Fishman argues that critics are wrong when they say that Wal-Mart puts little people out of business. We (consumers) put little people out of business, he says. We vote with our wallets, and we're the ones who choose Wal-Mart over local stores. Wal-Mart, in that sense, is the ultimate model of democracy."
Well, if people who are hard-pressed by low-paying jobs, incredible medical bills, and – as W might say - “putting food and clothes on their families” feel it necessary to buy sweatshop items at Wal-Mart to save a buck, it seems like a pretty big stretch to assume they are VOTING for anything, much less for the elimination of long-standing local enterprises run by their friends or neighbors!
They are unable to vote against their situation – there are few if any candidates standing up for them; they have few options. Suggesting that folks are voting for Wal-Mart by spending their degraded resources there is like calling the company store of the Peabody Coal Co.the ultimate model of miners’ democratic choice.
Parker writes on:
“Wal-Mart not only changes the way we buy, but the way we think,” Fishman says. If Wal-Mart charges $5 per pound for salmon, then shoppers wonder why a restaurant charges $15. We expect salmon to cost only $5. Or a microwave to cost only $39. The Wal-Mart effect first changes our expectations, then changes the quality of merchandise, which is cheap, because it isn’t always well- or ethically made.
Take salmon. Wal-Mart, which buys all its salmon from Chile, sells more than anyone else in the country and undersells all other retailers by at least $2 per pound. That’s a lot of market power, which prompts Fishman to ask, "Does it matter that salmon for $4.84 a pound leaves a layer of toxic sludge on the ocean bottoms of the Pacific fjords of southern Chile? "
Salmon in Chile are raised in packed underwater pens – as many as 1 million fish per farm – and fed prophylactic antibiotics to prevent disease. Here’s a fact you’d rather not know: A million salmon produce the same amount of waste as 65,000 people. Combine that waste with unconsumed food and antibiotic residue, and you’ve got a toxic seabed.
Does it matter?
Only if consumers say it does, says Fishman. Wal-Mart listens to ‘voters.’ If shoppers say they won’t buy salmon until Wal-Mart insists on higher standards from suppliers, then Wal-Mart will make those demands. Incentive is the engine that drives the company that promises low prices – ‘always.’ “
Well, have YOU ever bought salmon? Anywhere? If so, has the place you bought it ever offered information as to what it was being offered for elsewhere, by other stores? Much less, has it offered you information as to the environmental, sociological, or any other sort of ramifications following from its price per pound?
If not, then how could you be said to be “voting” on anything? Your actions might have some clearly demonstrable effect, but indicting YOU as a result of that effect is as sensible as arresting insane people for crimes of which they are unaware.
The answer to Parker’s question is pretty simple: "No, it DOESN’T matter." No one here has heard of all that shit at the bottom of a deep sea off the coast of a country far, far away, where they speak some “stupid” language we can’t understand. And now that Parker has mentioned it, we still don’t care. That’s way too far removed from me and from my taking care of mine while working more for less to give it much thought. No, the decision is a foregone conclusion. It DOESN’T matter!!!
The people who “vote” by spending what little money they are able to earn at the place that has the lowest prices - because they screw their workers harder than anyone else in the world - are coerced into their actions. Their behavior is all that anyone could rationally expect; so when Parker asks, “What kind of country are we going to be?” it is a rhetorical question, answered before it is asked; if, indeed, Parker is correct in asserting that “It is a worthy question that consumers will have to answer. “
Officially, in a democracy VOTERS “answer.” If in reality consumers, rather than elected and informed representatives, “answer,” the result has been determined for some time. We'll get by in the short term, but in the long run, we're fucked!
Big time.
Challenge assumptions!
- Uke Man
Columnist Kathleen Parker is at it again. This time she isn't as bad as usual; she does give a little hell to Wal-Mart - probably because her information comes from a book written by "a friend and former editor" (The Wal-Mart Effect - by Charles Fishman).
But she does show her ignorance or ill-advised assumptions by writing: "Fishman argues that critics are wrong when they say that Wal-Mart puts little people out of business. We (consumers) put little people out of business, he says. We vote with our wallets, and we're the ones who choose Wal-Mart over local stores. Wal-Mart, in that sense, is the ultimate model of democracy."
Well, if people who are hard-pressed by low-paying jobs, incredible medical bills, and – as W might say - “putting food and clothes on their families” feel it necessary to buy sweatshop items at Wal-Mart to save a buck, it seems like a pretty big stretch to assume they are VOTING for anything, much less for the elimination of long-standing local enterprises run by their friends or neighbors!
They are unable to vote against their situation – there are few if any candidates standing up for them; they have few options. Suggesting that folks are voting for Wal-Mart by spending their degraded resources there is like calling the company store of the Peabody Coal Co.the ultimate model of miners’ democratic choice.
Parker writes on:
“Wal-Mart not only changes the way we buy, but the way we think,” Fishman says. If Wal-Mart charges $5 per pound for salmon, then shoppers wonder why a restaurant charges $15. We expect salmon to cost only $5. Or a microwave to cost only $39. The Wal-Mart effect first changes our expectations, then changes the quality of merchandise, which is cheap, because it isn’t always well- or ethically made.
Take salmon. Wal-Mart, which buys all its salmon from Chile, sells more than anyone else in the country and undersells all other retailers by at least $2 per pound. That’s a lot of market power, which prompts Fishman to ask, "Does it matter that salmon for $4.84 a pound leaves a layer of toxic sludge on the ocean bottoms of the Pacific fjords of southern Chile? "
Salmon in Chile are raised in packed underwater pens – as many as 1 million fish per farm – and fed prophylactic antibiotics to prevent disease. Here’s a fact you’d rather not know: A million salmon produce the same amount of waste as 65,000 people. Combine that waste with unconsumed food and antibiotic residue, and you’ve got a toxic seabed.
Does it matter?
Only if consumers say it does, says Fishman. Wal-Mart listens to ‘voters.’ If shoppers say they won’t buy salmon until Wal-Mart insists on higher standards from suppliers, then Wal-Mart will make those demands. Incentive is the engine that drives the company that promises low prices – ‘always.’ “
Well, have YOU ever bought salmon? Anywhere? If so, has the place you bought it ever offered information as to what it was being offered for elsewhere, by other stores? Much less, has it offered you information as to the environmental, sociological, or any other sort of ramifications following from its price per pound?
If not, then how could you be said to be “voting” on anything? Your actions might have some clearly demonstrable effect, but indicting YOU as a result of that effect is as sensible as arresting insane people for crimes of which they are unaware.
The answer to Parker’s question is pretty simple: "No, it DOESN’T matter." No one here has heard of all that shit at the bottom of a deep sea off the coast of a country far, far away, where they speak some “stupid” language we can’t understand. And now that Parker has mentioned it, we still don’t care. That’s way too far removed from me and from my taking care of mine while working more for less to give it much thought. No, the decision is a foregone conclusion. It DOESN’T matter!!!
The people who “vote” by spending what little money they are able to earn at the place that has the lowest prices - because they screw their workers harder than anyone else in the world - are coerced into their actions. Their behavior is all that anyone could rationally expect; so when Parker asks, “What kind of country are we going to be?” it is a rhetorical question, answered before it is asked; if, indeed, Parker is correct in asserting that “It is a worthy question that consumers will have to answer. “
Officially, in a democracy VOTERS “answer.” If in reality consumers, rather than elected and informed representatives, “answer,” the result has been determined for some time. We'll get by in the short term, but in the long run, we're fucked!
Big time.
Challenge assumptions!
- Uke Man
1 Comments:
Thanks Tom -
...and that is why hell will freeze over before I shop at the REAL Weapon of Mass destruction !
Phyll
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