Economics

Shopping at Wal-Mart

This entry was posted in Business US Capitalism Economics Health Care Libertarianism on by

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.

Acceptable Search?

This entry was posted in Constitution Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Economics Technology on by

I have no objection to private use of GPS technology to track company vehicles, for geocaching, tracking your teenager’s driving, backtracking your hiking trail, etc., as long as everyone know whats happening. Unmonitored use by law enforcement employees is not acceptable:

When Robert Moran drove back to his law offices in Rome, N.Y., after a plane trip to Arizona in July 2003, he had no idea that a silent stowaway was aboard his vehicle: a secret GPS bug implanted without a court order by state police.
Police suspected the lawyer of ties to a local Hells Angels Motorcycle Club that was selling methamphetamine, and they feared undercover officers would not be able to infiltrate the notoriously tight-knit group, which has hazing rituals that involve criminal activities. So investigators stuck a GPS, or Global Positioning System, bug on Moran’s car, watched his movements, and arrested him on drug charges a month later.
A federal judge in New York ruled last week that police did not need court authorization when tracking Moran from afar. “Law enforcement personnel could have conducted a visual surveillance of the vehicle as it traveled on the public highways,” U.S. District Judge David Hurd wrote. “Moran had no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts of his vehicle on a public roadway.”
Well, I say BS to Judge Hurd.
Why shouldn’t I or Moran have an expectation of privacy? Especially from public employees. And even more importantly as we move through public spaces which we must do to carry on the basic activities of being human.
Given the rapidly changing tools available to capture information about individuals or groups it is time to expand our view of what is considered acceptable search and surveillance practices. If law enforcement folks are not in hot pursuit of someone who just committed a legitimate1 crime then they should be required to have probable cause approved by an independent judiciary before they are allowed to investigate, let alone surveil, any individual or group for any reason. This should apply whether that individual or group is acting in traditionally private spaces or in what are considered public spaces.
1For the purpose of this post I ignore the question of whether methamphetamine sales is a legitimate crime.
Via Declan McCullagh.

Grand Rounds

This entry was posted in Drug Laws Economics Education Government Libertarianism Regulation Taxation on by

isemmelweis finds the health care industry to be the lone victem of special interest corporate-government collusion:

In all other economic sectors free people drive production, and good things happen quickly. In response to the Atkins craze, sodas and even beer cut out the carbs to meet the wants of a fit society. But in healthcare, rather than serve ordinary citizens, producers court the people in power: big insurers, government officials, and academics.
….
So who�s navigating this ship? While it may be enormous fun for managers, officials, and scholars to control how sick people get medicine, it would be much better if free people chose for themselves.
Yes, it should be much better but isemmelweis is mistaken to think that this problem is restricted to health care, e.g., consider communications and the FCC, agriculture, and education to name just a few areas. We would live in a much healthier world, physically and economically, if this phenomenon did not permeate both the American and the world economy.
There is a lot of interesting reading from the medical blogosphere at Chronicles of a Medical Madhouse which is hosting Grand Rounds XV.

Why not Plastic Dollar Bills?

This entry was posted in Economics on by

According to this Slate article 23 countries currently use plastic instead of paper currency:

Notes circulating in tropical climates wear even more quickly. I lived in India for several years and had more than one rupee bill literally disintegrate in my hands.
This explains why Mexico and 22 other nations have switched from paper to plastic money for at least some denominations. Plastic bills last longer and are more difficult to counterfeit than paper bills. They are less likely to trip up ATMs, and they carry fewer germs. Plastic bills look and feel like “real” money, though they are a bit slicker to the touch.
On a bill for bill basis plastic money costs more but its longer life makes it cost effective. I’d be fine with plastic bills.
Rob, at Say Anything, seconds James Joyner’s suggestion that we go all the way by eliminating cash:
It strikes me, though, that a better solution would be to simply switch to the “plastic” currency we have all become accustomed to: credit and debit cards. A purely electronic system would seem to have all of the advantages of polymer bills with none of the disadvantages.
I don’t doubt that some year down the road this might happen. For now, though, I say no.
Over a year ago I switched back to cash for all my face to face purchases and am a happier person: transactions happen more quickly (except at the gas stations), the banks don’t get a cut of every purchase, and an unknown number of databases to not get another entry linked to my name.
Fix these things and I might change my mind.

The Threat to Freedom

This entry was posted in Capitalism Constitution Economics Government Libertarianism US Politics on by

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.