Walmart Takes on Amazon for Web Dominance

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

WalMart makes profits from the deaths of their low-wage 'employees'. Any other concern means nothing in the face of such rampant and sickening profiteering.

I'm guessing you're sitting in a warm and comfortable home stuffed with expensive trinkets, with an expensive car parked in the driveway, with plenty of food in the fridge, and broadcasting your ideas to the whole world via technology that would seem magic 100 years ago - all thanks to this system of "rampant and sickening profiteering". I wonder what people who do not have to suffer this "rampant and sickening profiteering" would have to say about it. Such a shame you'd have to go all the way to North Korea to ask them, or better still, to some tribe of cave-dwellers in the Amazon jungle. No doubt they would be aghast, unless of course they were busy starving to death.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by meraxes

I'm guessing you're sitting in a warm and comfortable home stuffed with expensive trinkets, with an expensive car parked in the driveway, with plenty of food in the fridge, and broadcasting your ideas to the whole world via technology that would seem magic 100 years ago - all thanks to this system of "rampant and sickening profiteering". I wonder what people who do not have to suffer this "rampant and sickening profiteering" would have to say about it. Such a shame you'd have to go all the way to North Korea to ask them, or better still, to some tribe of cave-dwellers in the Amazon jungle. No doubt they would be aghast, unless of course they were busy starving to death.

You sir ARE HILARIOUS. All that could make your comment complete would be "Goddamn Commies". You bring nothing to the table, but here's what I put on the table - dead peasant insurance. Look it up, look up what it means, then tag on 'Wal Mart' or you know, 'Citibank' on the end and then come back and have a real discussion about capitalism, greed, corporate culture, hegenomy and all the rest.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

WalMart makes profits from the deaths of their low-wage 'employees'.

Cite.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Cite.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/4/124346/6066

http://www.wvbusinesslitigationblog....-class-action/

http://news.findlaw.com/andrews/bf/d...13walmart.html

Need anymore, I got plenty

[DawnFalcon]

No, a judgement, not simply lawsuits. I'm also not seeing the issue with life insurance policies at no cost to the employees*, although since it was banned someone obvious did, and there's no suggestion that they continued the practice after it was banned. It was far from uncommon, why single out wal-mart for a practice which ended nearly a decade ago? Oh, and they did tell their employees and gave them an opt-out, unlike many other companies practising it.

As your third link makes clear, WalMart thought there were tax benefits in it, nothing sinister.

(*Health and safety regs being enforced, of course...)

There's plenty to point out about WalMart which is far more legitimately an issue...

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

You sir ARE HILARIOUS. All that could make your comment complete would be "Goddamn Commies". You bring nothing to the table, but here's what I put on the table - dead peasant insurance.

As someone who comes from a former communist country, I think the comment would be apt, if not necessarily in good taste. As for your "dead peasant insurance", you need to realize that in a free country no-one owes you a living, and no-one holds a gun to your head forcing you to work for Walmart. Expecting a company to treat you any better than the law and market conditions necessitate is childish manipulative whining. If you don't like the working conditions, leave. If Walmart's broken the law, it will pay for it. If it hasn't, you're free to call for a change in the law. But you can't expect companies and individuals to comply with you own personal code of right and wrong.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

where've you been?

TAos New Mexico
Santa Fe New Mexico
Boulder Colorado
Gig Harbor Washington

*IF* you read my response, you'll see I was saying it's illegal to keep Walmart out while letting other big box stores (e.g. Target, KMart) in. The cities you cited either failed to keep Walmart out (Walmart - www.walmart.com, 926 Paseo Del Pueblo Sur, Taos - (575) 758-1136) ( Walmart - www.walmart.com, 3251 Cerrillos Rd, Santa Fe - (505) 474-4727) or have, as far as I can tell, kept out all big box stores. The latter is legal-zoning requests based on store size, etc. But *not* based on who the store is. That is what I said was illegal-and I stand by that.

(BTW, as I said in an earlier reply, it's quite possible that cities have passed laws specifically barring Walmart, by name. Although those laws might not have been challenged yet, I firmly believe they will be struck down when they are. Blocking an entire industry/type of business can legally be done. Blocking a specific business cannot. Um, except possibly due to criminal record of the business owners. And I'm not aware of any criminal convictions of Walmart. (I wouldn't be surprised if there were some of members of the Walton family, but unless you can charge Walmart under RICO or something, I'm not sure that would be relevant.)

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

*IF* you read my response, you'll see I was saying it's illegal to keep Walmart out while letting other big box stores....

I don't know about the legalities, but it is fairly common for organizations and even municipalities to take actions that specifically target Walmart, and do not apply these to other big-box stores. E.g. New York City has kept Walmart out, while other stores like K-Mart, Target and Ikea are allowed or sometimes encouraged to build stores. There's probably more people trying to stop Ikea from using the Verdana font than there are organizing to block the store from building in their communities....



As to "dead peasant insurance," it makes some sense on an executive level, since the death of a top executive can have significant impacts and costs. As to rank-and-file, I'd view it as acceptable only with the employee's explicit consent (and preferably opt-in instead of opt-out) -- which apparently has been required by law since 2006. And even with rank and file, it can make some sense as the company can incur many costs when a low-level employee dies.

However a) clearly Walmart is not alone in this practice, thus we cannot regard them as "exceptionally evil" in this matter; b) moral culpability should be distributed, and placed as much (if not more) on the insurers than on the companies. After all, despite the reforms in 2006 requiring notification and consent, COLI allegedly still constitutes 20% of life insurance policies, and up to 25% of Fortune 500 companies supposedly use them.

If anything, it sounds more like a windfall for the insurance companies. After all, someone has to pay for the policies, and if every company with a COLI arrangement was generating profits as a result, the insurance companies would lose money, and either charge more, restrict, or cancel the policies.

Granted there are reasons to be squeamish about "profiting off of death." But if that's your concern, then do you propose nationalizing all life insurance, funeral parlors, estate law firms, hospice care, coffin makers et al in order to push everything related to death out of the market place...?

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Granted there are reasons to be squeamish about "profiting off of death."

Well logically Walmart could only be accused of "profiting off death" if it took out life insurance for its staff and then killed them off one by one with rat poison to collect the insurance payment. That's the only way to make money on insurance. As it is, Walmart receives the tax breaks it's after no matter whether the employee lives or dies, so it's not the insurance payouts and not someone's death that the company profits from. It (like all its competitors) is merely making use of a legal loophole (one of many hundreds) to ease the tax burden, to no detriment whatsoever for its employees. It might actually be passing on some of these tax breaks to its employees or customers. But details like that are of no interest to the bleeding hearts, there's too many acres of moral high ground to be claimed by blathering on about "dead peasants".

[Madam Broshkina]

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/...nce/P64954.asp

Hundreds of companies -- including Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney and Winn-Dixie -- have purchased this insurance on more than 6 million rank-and-file workers.

[Madam Broshkina]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Has anyone ever found a good book or magazine in the book section of a physical Wal-Mart? Their offerings are bland exponentiated.

Does walmart.com practice censorship with their online offerings as they do with the merchandise in their physical stores?

Does Walmart practice censorship?

[fugazied]

I don't think the walmart strategy involves the closing part. It's undercut the competition, force them out of business then raise prices. Common strategy in a capitalist system, nothing wrong with it, the smaller business need to value add.

I hope the local bookstore will adapt, but I don't hold high hopes for them. I'm not sure if independent retailers have any organisation which represents them. Ideally they would have a federation which can bargain on their behalf with publishers re: ebook pricing and infrastructure. Surely there must be something, anyone work in the book industry? Since walmarts power comes from massive sales, the independents would need to band together to keep prices competitive I imagine.

[Patricia]

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[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Madam Broshkina

Does Walmart practice censorship?

They...buy selectively, outside music. For example, they won't stock AO games. Is this censorship? Well, perhaps, but not really an actionable or malicious kind.

For music? Yea, they've demanded changes before they'll stock stuff.

[Falbe Publishing]

This topic has seen a lot of discussion of Walmart's famous ability to put local businesses out of business. Although that happens sometimes, Walmart has caused its greatest destruction on the U.S. manufacturing sector. Once Walmart achieved massive market share, it started as a retailer to dictate prices to its suppliers. Make it cheaper Walmart commanded or you won't be in our stores. Many suppliers complied and complied until they had to move their factories to China. Walmart (and to a lesser extent other big retailers) has contributed substantially to eliminating manufacturing jobs. This is a much bigger problem than people losing jobs on a small scale throughout communities where smaller retailers went under. Manufacturing used to employ many people and at a living wage. Many of those better jobs are gone from the U.S. and the cheap prices at Walmart are derived from cheaply made goods from overseas, predominately China. The effect has been lower quality of products and lower wages in the U.S. Yes, Walmart has some cheap prices, and everyone gets exactly what they pay for, which is junk made by people earning very little.

For more clarity and specific details about this, please reference the link to the Frontline episode about Walmart.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...ce=videosearch