Capitalism

Shopping at Wal-Mart

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I don’t and the reason has nothing to do with the wages Wal-Mart pays its employees:

Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, last June redesigned its wage structure to boost salaries for some workers amid criticism by labor unions and other opponents of the retailer’s expansion that Wal-Mart pays workers less than local prevailing wages….
Unions including the United Food & Commercial Workers have said Wal-Mart pays its workers less than those at other supermarkets and doesn’t provide adequate health-care benefits.
The few times I have been in a Wal-Mart I found the stores unattractive, unfriendly, not particularly well priced, and nothing about the shopping experience incented me to make this chain a destination when I go shopping. I do admit to having many convenient, friendly, well stocked, clean, reasonably priced alternatives to the nearest Wal-Mart.
Working as a retail clerk at Wal-Mart is like working at McDonalds and a 1000 other low rent jobs: it is a starter job, a stop gap job, a second family income job. I’ve had to start at the bottom more than once with low wage, no or low benifit jobs to pay the rent. You do it, you do a good job, and you move on as quickly as you can to jobs that better satisfy your particular needs. As long as Wal-Mart has a ready supply of qualified folks who want the jobs, however briefly, at the offered wage there is no reason for them to change their practices and, really, no reason for others to complain. Oh, and, if I were a woman I damned well wouldn’t plan to spend very long working at a business known to discriminate against women…in fact, why even apply for a job there?
Via this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists and Mad Anthony.

The Threat to Freedom

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Lew Rockwell gets it close to right:

What is the most pressing and urgent threat to freedom that we face in our time? It is not from the left. If anything, the left has been solid on civil liberties and has been crucial in drawing attention to the lies and abuses of the Bush administration. No, today, the clear and present danger to freedom comes from the right side of the ideological spectrum, those people who are pleased to preserve most of free enterprise but favor top-down management of society, culture, family, and school, and seek to use a messianic and belligerent nationalism to impose their vision of politics on the world.
The bit he misses is that these folks are not interested in free enterprise and like much of the rest of their rhetoric think doublespeak. When they say free enterprise or free market you should interpret it as we have found another way to protect our corporate sponsers from the market.
Via Stephen Horowitz at Power and Liberty.

Wine and Commerce

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Lynn Kiesling is a bit unhappy with Justice Souter. Her words to him: with all due respect, sir, bite me.
I second this.
The case argued before the Supremes yesterday has to do with interstate sale of wine, the commerce clause, and the 21st amendment. In the grand scheme of things this is pretty important stuff . Lynn’s post has links to additional informative material.
I do, though, hate to see so many bright folks wasting energy on issues that should not even be up for discussion. A much more interesting and valuable constitutional amendment than some of the others that have been floated recently would be something like:

federal, state and local governments may not interfere with commerce between or amongst individuals and associations of individuals. Federal, state, and local governments may provide services for the adjudication of disputes related to fraud, theft, or contractual disagreement. Adjudicants may, by mutual agreement, use alternate dispute resolution services.

And strike the commerce clause, the 21st amendment and anything else gets in the way of me, Lynn, or anyone else making consensual exchanges of whatever we want to exchange domestically or internationally.

Federalism?

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Jonah Goldberg thinks federalism is a good thing and rues the apparent abandonment of the concept by bush and other conservatives:

The virtue of a federalist, republican form of government is that the more you push these decisions down to the level where people actually have to live with their consequences, the more likely it is they will be a) involved and interested in the decision-making process, and b) happy with the result. Federalism is also morally superior because it requires the consent of the governed at the most basic level.
Goldberg, though, believes the “most basic level” is the individual state when, in fact, state level legislation exhibits the same problems as federal legislation, e.g., it can not properly take into account the local1 context and, as above, legislators at all levels are disconnected from the consequences of their decisions, their feedback loops are broken, the have likely been captured by moneyed interests, and their citizens are poorly served.
It is time for us, the citizens, to eliminate the federal, state, and, perhaps, city monopolies on creating law and implement federalism carried to a more appropriate level, a polycentric government structure.
Via Running Scared.
1At the level where human interactions take place.

Raich v Ashcroft

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This is what you should be paying attention to today! Drug War Rant has a detailed guide on the issues and links to the supporting documents.
Though I do not have high expectations that the Supremes will do the right thing Lawrence v Texas does give me a bit of hope. Heck, maybe they will go just a bit extreme and just whack Commerce Clause legislation back to its foundations: the feds only business in regulating interstate commerce is to make sure the states do not establish laws that discriminate against the citizens of other states.