Monster, Incorporated

I used to be a free market libertarian. I absolutely believed that the market would produce the best products at the best prices for the consumer. I believed that healthy competition would result in workers being paid fair, competitive wages. That, of course, was in the days when the market seemed to be free. Since then, things have changed, as we see here. This is a very long article, and if you are interested in the nuts and bolts of the economics and politics of the thing, you might want to read it all. If not, however much you do read will be an eye-opener. The Case for Breaking Up Wal-Mart. I have long been aware of many of the ways that Wal-Mart is destructive to small business, workers, and communities. Of how it underpays its workers, leaving them to then turn to public assistance in one way or another, so that the taxpayer ends up paying for Wal-Mart to be allowed to under pay its staff. Or how they force suppliers to off shore their manufacturing in order to keep the prices that Wal-Mart pays down, thereby further destroying American labor. Or how once they come into a community, it drives all the small businesses out, and hires their owners and full time staff for part time work at depressed wages. I knew they were bad for mom and pop business, the worker, and local government. What I had never suspected, was that they are dictating culture and reproductive rights.

We should be most disturbed by the fact that Wal-Mart has gathered the power to dictate content, even to the most powerful of its suppliers. Because no longer is the retailer's attention focused only on firms that produce T-shirts, electrical cords, and breakfast cereal. Every day Wal-Mart expands its share of the U.S. markets for magazines, recorded music, films on DVD, and books. This means that every day its tastes, interests, and peculiarities weigh that much more on decisions made in Hollywood studios, in Manhattan publishing houses, and in the editorial offices of newspapers and network news shows.

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...Wal-Mart recently decided to allow each individual pharmacist in the company to choose whether or not to stock the "morning after" pill. Given the degree to which Wal-Mart has rolled up the pharmaceutical business in many towns and regions across the country, this act amounted, for all intents, to a de facto ban on these pills in many communities. This political decision was made and enforced by a private monopoly.

So, since the days when I was a free-market libertarian what has happened? Well, the federal government relaxed regulation and I saw what happens without it. I saw that all the theory in the world doesn't hold a candle to the practice. Communism sounds pretty good, too. Except that people don't operate that way. If all my hard work gets me no more reward than someone who doesn't work hard, and less than someone who needs more, then I stop trying. It sounds good, but it doesn't work. And it's the same for the free market. If unregulated business goes into partnership with the government and laws are passed to favor business over individuals, be those workers, customers, or competitors, well some businesses are going to take advantage of that and then others have to in order to keep their doors open. And the next thing you know, Wal-Mart!