Just kidding.  hahaha.  I have good friends who are Republican and I guess I was once myself.  But my real questions is about WalMart.  It is sort of a political question:

Is WalMart evil?  I don't shop at WalMart and my only knowledge of them is from a classic Harvard Business Review article explaining their dominant competencies.  Now, I keep hearing all these things about them in the media -- not very good things I might add.  

Rico

Opps, sorry about that.

Walmart isn't evil, they just offer a service to the public that people want.
As long as the public shop there and want the "service", they will continue to do business in the way they do.

They remind me alot of GE. When I was working for them it was all about the margin. Meet your margin or work somewhere else.
Don't worry about customer relations, or customer service, just make the buck.

Sorry, got off on a tangent, anyway, if we don't like the way they do business, don't shop there.

Just my opinion...
B

they make goods cheap for everybody, make hundreds of thousands of shareholders wealthy, of course they are evil.  I would rather shop at the overpriced neighborhood store but I'm forced to shop at Walmart.  we need to take down any businesses that are sucessful and distribute the wealth to the lazy and crackheads.

I have trouble calling Hitler, or Sadam Hussein, evil.  Because we just have our cultural differences and misunderstandings, that's all.  But Walmart, now that's evil.  

Did you happen to hear the interview on Tavis Smiley with corporate executives from Wal-Mart? I was very disappointed in Mr. Smiley, because he allowed that evil corporation to attempt to defend all their wonderous actions time and time again.

Successful companies will over take less successful businesses.  There is always, in this changing world, a sense of dislocation and change.  Pan Am was evil to Penn Central, yet both are long gone.

If our part of the business world were to just stand still, then the remainder of the competitive world would just fill the new void.  We would be left behind.

Embrace change, it is our future.  

PS I rarely have been in a Walmart.

But I have seen much worse over my lifetime.  Fortunately companies often do a lot of good while burnishing their public image.

Don't get me wrong..
I don't agree with Walmarts business practices, but, as  long as people shop there they won't change.
BTW, I don't shop at Walmart or Sam's Clubs.


B

The unfortunate thing is their practice of bullying vendors to sell them certain products at or near a loss in order to take other products from the vendor. A fine example is the jar of pickles that was too large for anyone to eat yet people bought them for the price offered. It was a money loser for the vendor (I can not remember if it was Vlasic or someone else) but Walmart refused to take any of their other products without the deal on the pickles. It  created a large market share for the vendor, but they were actually loosing money.

Do they continue to loose money or do they take a chance of loosing the market share and not give any products to Walmart? The latter would of course be Walmarts choice because they will not purchase ANYTHING from them without the mega deal on the pickles.

This has been documented and there are other companies that went public about Walmarts buying practices shortly after the illegal alien worker issue they had. Most of Walmarts vendors remain quiet for fear of loosing the bulk sales from Walmart at nearly non existant profits.

I drove by a Walmart recently and the parking lot was not nearly as full as it normally is. I have not been in a Walmart in over a year and prefer to research quality products and purchase them either directly from the manufacturer or from a local distributor, such as the local hardware store or plumbing supply warehouse, or to fulfill my passion, from the local speed shop.

In a sentence, Walmart pays it's employees a low wage, it pays and treats it's vendors poorly and from what I understand, the level of customer service is dropping and can now be compared to any other large corporation that has NO respect for people.

Wal-Mart has achieved a level of dominance that gives it lots of negotiating leverage, in labor markets, and in the market for wholesale goods.  As a vendor of either goods or labor, you are free to not sell to Wal-Mart if they don't pay you what you feel that your goods or services are worth.  Of course, Wal-Mart DOES offer you access to MORE consumers than all of your other choices, so you have to decide.

If you think that there are other channels that give you access to consumers whereby you can realize more money for your goods, go sell them there.   If your labor is worth more than Wal-Mart will pay you, market your services there, and see if your belief was in fact correct.

Frankly, there are channels for commodities, and channels for specialized goods.   Wal-Mart is an extremely efficient channel for commodities, and I buy lots of them there.  But, sometimes, Costco is better.  And if Costco pays more than Wal-Mart to the wholesaler, or the laborer, and can still sell to the consumer for less, Costco will win and Wal-Mart will lose.   This is the way that the competitive market works.

And, BTW, for specialized goods, where the retailer needs to add more value, both Wal-Mart and Costco will lose, and someone who can properly add that needed value to the consumer will succeed.  Example:  If I want a good bicycle, I am going to get it from Bike Warehouse, and not Wal-Mart nor Costco.  Because Bike Warehouse knows how to custom fit a bike to the buyer, and how to customize the equipment (gearing, saddle, handlebars, pedals, etc.), and knows what the better, more differentiated equipment is , so that I get more superior use from it than I could from buying an off the shelf bike from Costco or Wal-Mart.

That is the way the world works.  It's very Darwinian.  And right now, Wal-Mart is doing very well in their particular niches.  They do LESS well when they extend themselves into niches that they don't have as much to offer the consumer.  End of story.

They are giving this corporation an enormous amount of power over their lives.  Self-preservation makes me steer clear of Walmart.  I'll spend a little more and buy at Costco.  Yes, they are also a soulless entity, but they may provide a some counter-balance to Walmart's power within which I might preserve some freedom.  

In this society, people have to play off government power against corporate power, and corporate power against corporate power to win and preserve some of their freedom.  We've all got to be Machiavellis here.  

Merely having power doesn't make something evil.  But if you have no power, anything that has power over you may as well be evil, as any slave knows.

/Zin

Having communism fail so abjectly did not fix the problems of capitalism-- chief among them is the continual creation of a surplus of labor, which is not too bad, unless creation of new labor outlets lag behind.  

I have no problem "embracing change." In fact, I think you shouldn't just embrace it, but f**k it, if it's consensual, and even take it anal if it will go there.  

It's embracing poverty and slavery that I find obscene.

/Zin

Not all of them - in fact, I suspect only a few of them. Karl Rove is an evil man.

Most Republicans I know aren't evil - they're scared. They've been conditioned to fear change, to fear that someone somewhere wants to take what they have away from them. They are afraid of people who don't look, act and think like them. They fear immigrants, foreigners, and most of all they fear the poor. That's why Bush and his pupppeteers work so hard to put out the message of fear - they're all out to get you, they hate you because you're free, they want you poor and ignorant like they are.

Vote for anybody but Bush - go ahead, show 'em you're not afraid any more.