is wal-mart actually not the devil?

yesterday i was on the phone with my mom when she said, "your dad just got home from super wal-mart." i said, "let me talk to him." and proceeded to list all the reasons why wal-mart is the devil. we finally got to the point where he promised never to shop at wal-mart except when he needed to buy this chemical for his fish tank which only wal-mart has, he says.

but could it be that wal-mart is not the devil? the point is taken up by a couple of folks today.

they make a good point. key passage from New Yorker writer Caitlin Flanagan:

Sara, you have mentioned Wal-Mart in two posts; you seem eager to talk about it. All right, let's. Every rich person I know hates Wal-Mart. Every poor person I know loves it. They love the cheap milk, the heavily discounted toys, the DVD players they can buy for $30. In fact, in some poor communities, Wal-Mart has actually raised the standard of living by lowering prices so dramatically. Don't get me wrong: Barbara's excellent book has given me a burning hatred of Wal-Mart, and the first-rate reporting that both the LA Times and the New York Times have done on the company has only burnished that hatred. But it's easy for me to hate Wal-Mart: I wouldn't shop there even if they treated their workers well; it's not my kind of place. I can wax endlessly about the worker exploitation that produced the $30 DVD player—but then I already have a DVD player. If my children needed milk and my money was tight, I'd be there in a heartbeat. So it's a more complex issue, I think, than a lot of people give it credit for.

true, wal-mart is cheap and, as we see on their lovely t.v. ads, it helps working families with kids save more of each paycheck. the csmonitor also notes that "A Los Angeles economist recently opined that the city's bid to ban Wal-Mart Supercenters would keep much-needed tax revenue out of the coffers and a low-cost shopping option out of poor neighborhoods."

but there's another passage in that article that reveals exactly why wal-mart is so evil, and not just wal-mart, but big business in general, and not just big business, but the way we understand its purpose:

"Those are complaints that should be directed toward government," [economist Richard] Hastings says. "It is not the purpose of Wal-Mart to provide 'public goods' like clean air and clean water, and make sure that everyone has a well-paying job." Whether healthcare should be the responsibility of industry or government, he says, "is an argument that needs to take place, [but] Wal-Mart [should] not be put at the center of that argument."

in other words, it's not business's business to serve the people. its purpose is simply to make money. this is a pretty fucked-up statement when you think about the fact that america's first corporations were established through state charter, and only existed as long as they continued to serve the good of the community. when you think about business as something that first improves the lives of workers and consumers and second ensures the livelihood of the businessperson, then you can't accept the statement that it's not wal-mart's responsibility to make sure that even its own employees have a well-paying job.

when you think about business that way, then something like this makes some sense. pipe dreamy as it may have been, the basic idea is right: the way we define productivity has changed, and it's time to change it back.