There is no easy way, but this is a US company, yet we aren't going to set any restrictions on the damage they may do here. It's these things. These everyday things that create terrorists. It's not as if we are dealing smack, but the money from those goods isn't going to go back into the local economy, not at the same percentage as if it were locally owned. We don't know about how many and what kind of jobs they'll create. *shakes head* These are the things that are bigger than the bottom line. I don't know.
[ September 12, 2004, 01:56 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
*sigh* I despise Walmart for this very reason
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
Did you know that in some translations, the third horseman of the apocalypse wears a blue vest?
Posted by sarcasticmuppet (Member # 5035) on :
*sigh*
Walmart doesn't "kill local family-owned enterprises and erode a lifestyle dating back centuries". Consumers do. They are not forced to shop at Walmart, and, like I've said many many *many* times before, Walmart doesn't have everything. If you can't compete as a Walmart Substitute, you can compete as something else that Walmart can't provide.
[ September 12, 2004, 02:30 AM: Message edited by: sarcasticmuppet ]
Posted by Phanto (Member # 5897) on :
Yeah...
It's a choice to go shopping there...
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
I'm just curious, do you think Wal-Mart cares if any particular store is profitable in the short term or do they just want to make Wal-Mart so prevalent that 20 or 30 years down the line they will own the world? Because wouldn't these Mexican citizens just boycott the Wal-Mart?
Posted by vwiggin (Member # 926) on :
quote:"I support the store, it will save me time and money," said Camilo Olivas, a father of four who works for the federal electricity commission in Teotihuacan.
He drives 10 minutes every two weeks to shop at a Wal-Mart store in another town to find low prices.
Wow, a whole 10 minutes. I can see why another closer category killer is needed.
quote:Amid rising controversy, Mexico's government this month said a small pre-Hispanic altar was found buried at the construction site. Plans call for preserving the small structure under plexiglass in what will be the store's parking lot.
How lovely.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:They are not forced to shop at Walmart, and, like I've said many many *many* times before, Walmart doesn't have everything. If you can't compete as a Walmart Substitute, you can compete as something else that Walmart can't provide.
It's an issue of scale. Wal-Mart can afford to charge a lower price and lose money on some items, killing any Wal-Mart substitute, because it'll make the money on foot-traffic bringing customers to pay for other items. The store will take up a country mile and wipe out a healthy swath of businesses, I just don't know if that's a bad thing. It won't be Unionized so those new jobs maybe the only jobs in town and pay horribly.
NFL: No, Wal-Mart is just trying to get a foothole in. They can lose money on the store for a decade, just so they can be more easily open fifty more.
[ September 12, 2004, 02:45 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:There is no easy way, but this is a US company, yet we aren't going to set any restrictions on the damage they may do here.
I'd probably oppose the store if I lived there, but it seems like the height of condescension for the the U.S. to interefere with local land use regulation. There's just too many factors impossible for us to consider.
What form would this restriction take?
Dagonee
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Dragonee, It's the same reason we hold the states responsible for producing terrorism, the same with drug cartels. There is a sense where it's the states producing these bad goods is responsibility.
And ethos of respect to the indigenous culture, and a decent respect for the labor employed, beyond what is simply permitted by the government.
[ September 12, 2004, 12:45 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
quote: Dragonee, It's the same reason we hold the states responsible for producing terrorism, the same with drug cartels. There is a sense where it's the state's responsiblity.
So we should bow down to the minority, simply because they might commit crimes because they are upset?
If the majority did not want walmart to come in...they would not make money. In addition, the mexican government wants them there.
If people want to shop at walmart, why should the government stop them? Personally, I almost never go to walmart, it is to big and crowded with people for me. However, there are times when I need a bunch of different types of things at once, and I go to walmart so I don't have to shop around at 10 different stores in one day.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Wal-Mart doesn't subsidize stores which lose money. Each individual store is treated as a separate business inregards to profits&losses. A new store either starts producing profits very quickly (for a "new business") or it gets shut down very quickly.
Nor does Wal-Mart use loss-leaders to attract customers in the same manner as other stores. It will match prices on the competition's loss-leaders, but Wal-Mart's large purchasing power and aggressive bargaining with its suppliers ensures that it gets the lowest price on the items it stocks. Because of its low costs, usually Wal-Mart isn't actually losing money on individual items that other stores are selling as loss leaders, they're just not making a profit on it. And if there is a loss, it's often the item's supplier who is eating that loss in hopes of more-profitable deals with Wal-Mart in the future. And Wal-Mart never loses as much money per loss-leader sale as its competition, so it can afford to sit back and watch its competition bleed itself out of business.
Wal-Mart in Mexico is just a symptom of NAFTA effects unforeseen by most Mexican politicians, citizens, and businesses. A NAFTA selling point was the assumption that a lot of US manufacturing would move down to Mexico for the cheaper labor when trade barriers were removed: creating more employment and better paying jobs for Mexicans; which in turn would create a wealthier Mexican economy leading to higher profits for most existing businesses and better pay for workers. The unplanned-for side-effect was that it also allowed US businesses to sell imports from other nonNAFTA nations into Mexico. So Mexican workers and businesses are now facing competition within Mexico not only from the US and Canada, but also from China and other nations which have even lower labor/etc costs than Mexico.
Wal-Mart stores will make healthy profits in Mexico for the same reason it makes them in the US: Reliance on the cheapest manufacturors abroad (exporting jobs out of NAFTA nations) to obtain lowest prices on items it stocks; Threat of making its purchases overseas in bargaining with its NAFTA-region suppliers to obtain even lower prices; Negotiation with local communities to ensure that Walmart receives the most favorable tax/zoning/etc treatment of any business within that community; with the threat that if locals don't grant such treatment, one of its closely neighboring communities will. And employment practices which will ensure the lowest labor costs within the community by barely remaining on the legal side of labor law. In Wal-Mart's case, "legal side" meaning by any means in which it could be "plausibly" argued in court before the best jury money can buy that Wal-Mart executives weren't provably guilty of deliberately&intentionally breaking the law.
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