Bureaucratic Government Meets Bureaucratic Business

     Attorneys are attempting to launch the largest class-action lawsuit in the history of American law. The class? All women that worked for Wal-Mart from 1998 to present (about a million and a half) for discriminatory promotion and hiring practices. I have long asserted that government should keep its business out of our business. Hiring, firing, promoting and raising should be at the discretion of the employer. In a free-market society, things like hiring in preference to race or gender do nothing but ultimately harm the employer anyway. Many think I'm nuts for advocating such a thing as repealing discrimination laws in the workplace. But I'll even go further: The minimum wage is killing our economy and hurting the exact people it was designed to help. As always, bureaucracy creates the exact opposite of the scenario it intends to create. Before everyone starts seeking my head on a platter for advocating the heresy of removing government from this aspect of our lives, please let me explain.

     In college economics class, the professor usually begins by simplifying the economic structure so that it can be readily worked with. This enables us to see the actual effects of this or that cause and makes us more equipped to understand the sitiuation. We will do the same here. Imagine there are only widgets. Everything else is gone or free. Only widgets are sold. Only 3 Companies sell widgets, so there are only 3 companies.

     The first one is Joe's widgets. Joe just bought a new auto-widget processor (everyone's getting them) and needs to hire more people to make more widgets. The only problem is that Joe doesn't like brown people and he doesn't like any women, so he chooses not to hire any. They tell him they will work for less, but to no avail, Joe is having none of it. So he hires all these caucasion males at their higher wage, and widget production increases.

     The second company is Steve's widgets. Steve doesn't have a problem with brown people, but he still won't hire women. Having bought the same auto-widget processor, he needs to hire a bunch of people too, and ends up with all the brown people Joe wouldn't hire. The women are out of luck.

     The third company is a family owned business called Family Widgets. They don't care about anyone's race or gender. Those poor women who couldn't get jobs anywhere else can find safe haven here and Family Widgets gets them at a smaller wage. This makes Family Widgets able to produce the same number of widgets for less money. In doing this, they are naturally able to sell their widgets for less, which eventually puts Joe and Steve in the position to make a choice: Either hire without discrimination or go out of business. If they choose to hire without discrimination, they pass economics 101 and live happily ever after. If they choose to go out of business, they fail, their employees go to work for Family Widgets, and have to endure the "hardship" of having the previously discriminated party in a position of seniority and higher wage.

     As an extension, for those of you that think the truly free market will not work, lets throw another wrench in the works. Everyone seems to think this situation would lead to "slave" wages, monopolies, and all kinds of problems.

     Joe and Steve agree that discrimination is a really bad idea, and continue on in the widget making business. Competition is fierce. One day, one of the employees, Jane, decides that she can make widgets and pay her employees more while keeping the widgets at the same price and goes into the widget business. If she is successful, the others will be forced to pay their employees more or go out of business. If she fails, she either cuts pay or goes back to work for one of the other companies. In a truly free system, the best possible combination of wages, production, and work ethics wins. Only when we begin to legislate morality into this already workable system do we get the frivolous lawsuits and discriminatory practices prevelant in today's society.

     To make matters worse, the government allows companies to exist as corporations. Basically, what this means is that no one is accountable (a corporation is an entity, not a person or people) and they get to spend all the money they can before being taxed (as opposed to you or I, who get taxed on everything we make, not everything that's left after we spend all we can). This gives the corporation an unfair advantage. This government backing is all in the name of "the economy", but it in reality does nothing for the economy. It only further restricts our nation by putting more centralized power in the hands of our government. The corporate entity is how our government controls our businesses without controlling our businesses. Its the closest they can come to a socialist occupation of our business world without everyone crying foul.

     Back to Wal-Mart (no, I haven't forgotten about them). They have used their advantage to extremism. Wal-Mart is the quintessential urban sprawl-maker. "They create jobs!" Sure, they create jobs. They create 2 or 3 jobs for every one they remove from the community in the form of local family owned businesses. And what do they replace those jobs with? Part-time, minimum or near minimum wage pay. So where does all that money go? To buy all that neat stuff they have maybe? Sorry, wrong again. They import virtually all of their products from China for cheap. Way cheap. You see, China is a communist country (the extreme end result of governmental intervention), and the government owns all the businesses. As a result, 8 year-old children get to work for 16 hours per day for 8 or 9 cents an hour (though I've heard the do pay up to about 16 cents in some cases). Wal-Mart uses this "advantage" to acquire vast amounts of product from China at incredibly low prices. So low, in fact, that they can afford to pay to have all that stuff sent all the way to America from China and still charge less than anyone else for it. So where does the money go?

     A large portion of it goes to into the executive coffers. Enormous multiple out of area salaries, perks, that sort of thing. Another big chunk goes to China, a country that hates the US and continues its expansionist agenda, hoping one day to directly oppose the United States on any front they feel they can get away with (economic, technological, militarily), so we get to pay for some of that. Another effect of Wal-Mart is the creation of "urban sprawl". This is simply a matter of centralized business creating centralized population, which is all fine and well for our centralized government, who finds this whole situation just great. Its much easier to control a centralized business than it is for diverse ones. Having all the people in one place makes it easier for the government in other ways too. Centralizing the population makes it easier for the government to centalize itself, thereby amassing more control over the people.

     Again I digress. But the message is a complicated one with many turns. Back to Wal-Mart and the title of this article. The largest class-action in the history of the United States is what it would take to send Wal-Mart to the pearly gates of corporate heaven. While I do not feel that the whining women of Wal-Mart have a case in a truly free society (see above regarding discriminatory employment practices), its nice to see bureaucracy cave in on itself sometimes. It makes me feel like there is hope after all.

     Listening to one of the "conservative" morning talk-radio hosts here in DFW, TX, you would think that our economy would come to a screeching halt if Wal-Mart went bye-bye. What would happen if Wal-Mart was no more? Well, you may have to deal with a (very) small increase in the cost of the goods you now buy there, but that money will stay in your community and fuel your economy instead of corporate coffers and China's communist agendas. Mom and Pop will open up businesses throughout your community and will make a decent wage as opposed to the pittance Wal-Mart offers, and the growth of your economy will fuel better wages and working conditions, not to mention standard of living, for everyone.

     So I say "best of luck Whining Wal-Marters". Get everything you can. Sensible people have been boycotting and trying to stop the urban onslaught of this sprawling economy-sucking monster for years. Turns out all that was needed was time; eventually, the government bureaucracy that created this business bureaucracy would eat its own.



Which begs the question -what will eat the corporation eater?