Tag: capitalism

Perversity of Super-Rich: Walmart


Walmart Since Walmart and their subsidiaries (including Sam's Club) are public companies, the Waltons (Jim, Alice and S. Robson) are on the Forbes' billionaires list – numbers 20, 21, and 22 at $21 billion each.  That's their holdings in Walmart stock.  Well, let's say there is a few more billions in their private holdings.  Does not matter.  When it comes to bargaining for the Walmart's interests they come as one, so to evaluate their real power we should combine their wealth.  That puts them into competition for the first place on the world-wide list – definitely above Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.  No question – a very power family.

Many people have problems with Walmart for many reasons – they destroy local business, they discriminate, particularly against women (Funny how that class action suit was dismissed by the Supreme Court on account of women being too different to represent a class.  Well, they all have vaginas, don't they?) But you cannot deny the fact that they are the country's largest employer with a steady growth.  Remember my previous New-York-Magazine-Intelligencer-prompted post The New Economic Reality of Unemployment?  2.1 million people – where would they go, if it was not for Walmart?  Of course, most of them make very little money, but it's still more than the government's help.  

Anyway, it's a free country and I love capitalism (not the bastardy, distorted, perverted paper version we have now, but the real demand & supply model).  Then again, if they push out of business your local bakery, there is no way you will ever be able to get the same quality bread in Walmart.  So,  that's kind of sad.  But as long as they compete fairly… 

Well, that's a bit of a problem.  Look, now they are planning on coming to the place that cultivated boutique retailing for decades now, my hometown – New York City.  And there is nothing fair about the way they try to get in.  As a matter of fact, they do it in  the most perverse way  – by buying their way through resistance with charity donations.  According to Eric Benson's Intelligencer report from the last New York Magazine shown here (you can also read it here Big-Box Rolling), since they started campaigning for the location in Brooklyn, they have spent $13 million on charitable giving in New York.  Which small farm-to-table store can compete with that?

And I am sure there are plenty of people who think it's a good thing – "they are helping…"  They are helping themselves to increase those $260 billion of annual revenues – that's what they are doing.  They did not give a penny to those charities before and, I am sure, if someone told  them "No" today, the donations would stop immediately.  How sick is that?  You cannot openly bribe the officials, so you do this?  That's not charity, that perverse marketing, and they shouldn't be allowed to use it as a deduction on their tax return.

Well, what can we do?  They are super-rich.  As I said in my last post, they can do WHATEVER THEY WANT.   

Objectivism, Part 1: Maureen Dowd on Ayn Rand


It does not happen very frequently that you encounter mentioning of Ayn Rand and objectivism twice during your weekend reading of periodicals.  Even though the ideas and ideals of the diminutive woman, who produced such monumental works as Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged seem to be getting renewed attention in the last six years or so, they usually call for multi-page discussions.

Ah, but the first reference came from the master of economic writing – The New York Times Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd in her Atlas Without Angelina piece.

I am a big fan of Maureen Dowd's journalism.  Her subtle sarcasm and amused curiosity mixed with political seriousness and broad intellectualism appeal to me in such a way that, when I read her column, it seems that I chat to a like-minded friend. As someone who has been in pursuit of knowledge in diverse areas of life, I appreciate Ms. Dowd's multi-faceted erudition.  Those who read this blog know that I use every chance to connect cultural and professional themes in my posts.    

In the April 16th column, timed with the release of Atlas Shrugged Part I, Maureen Dowd used her ability to get right down to the core of issues and, in a few beautifully brief stabs gave their due to the Tea Party's confusion, to the perversity of government bailouts and to the degenerative state of our current economic system:    

"capitalism evolved into a vampire casino where you could bet against investments you sold to your clients, and make money off something you didn’t own or that existed only on paper"

Ms. Rand would be utterly terrified by all this.  As someone, who witnessed her farther, a hard-working pharmacist, being stripped of his possessions so that they could be distributed to "those in need," Alisa Rosenbaum (Rand's birth name) had a very personal relationship with ideas of unearned rewards. 

I always found Ms. Rand's philosophy intellectually liberating.  Unlike her faithful acolytes, I don't believe in blind literal acceptance and treat her teachings as a scientific methodology to be sensibly applied – like her notion of Ethical Egoism as a pursuit of self-interest without infringement of others' freedom.

As Tea Party's mis-interpretations show, this is one of the most misunderstood philosophical concepts.  Many people interpret it as refusing to do anything for others. That is not right.  As long as there is a self-interest embedded in the act, it's great to do things that benefit others. 

In my post Why Do I Work So Hard? , I explained that first and foremost I do it because it satisfies my personal work standards – that's my self-interest.  Of course, I have to get paid adequately for my work, but my pay doesn't affect the quality of my work.  And nobody should benefit from my efforts without giving something back to me. 

Real artists create because they cannot live any other way, whether they do or don't sell their work.  But they definitely don't do it for the sake of public.  And it would be most unfair to just take it away from them without any reward and give it to other people, because they arbitrary "need it."  It's as simple as that.  

The idea of absolute truths independent of human perception is a bit more contrived.  It is hard to find a concept that would not mean different thing for different people under different circumstances.  I think about it more in terms of freedom to select moral truths by an individual.  Ayn Rand herself named only one – REASON.   I have three:  LIBERTY  (both personal and economic), LOGIC and MERIT.  And that brings us to the second reference and Part 2.