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It seems to be me that living in one of the poorest parts of Canada (New Brunswick), that many of the issues that we face here are found in a lot of other very poor substates of countries or treaty organizations. One of the more apparent things in North America is where wages are worst, Walmart and the like are most present. Generally you will not find too many specialty places as they are either too expensive for the area and die from lack of customers or are forced out by a larger company that can sell something similar but cheaper. The problem with government isn't that it cannot create jobs or stimulate the economy but that people elect people who are convinced it cannot and then prove it by sabotaging it in multiple ways. This leaves it stuck dealing with large companies like Walmart depressing wages in areas where a wage increase would really help the standard of living. Thus I sat and thought of why public companies tend to fail to maintain support and keep getting privatized. The most obvious answer is rich people/lack of exposure, but I also think that a large portion is that the perceived benefit is generally not obvious enough for people to acknowledge it. Privatization has demonstrated over and over again to not lower prices or improve efficiency but it such an obvious change that it's easily recognized and thus people grumble about it. Thus a new/old idea must be tried. A public company must run as ruthlessly as Walmart in its pursuit to drive out competition while holding onto the leash publicly. However, without an obvious benefit, the same thing will happen all over again as people will let it get privatized and thus defeat its purpose. Instead the company must basically be Walmart but it must be beholdened to 8 rules that it must not break: 1 - The company must always be trying to turn a profit. 2 - The company will never hire more than is absolutely needed to maintain employee levels relative to work load. 3 - The company will never raise prices from an item's initial sale price. 4 - The company will sell no-name where ever possible. 5 - The company must buy locally when it can. 6 - The Golden Rule as related to customers. 7 - If the company should turn a profit given its current pricing, employee wages, and employee hours, then it must do one of the following: A - Expand its stock or list of services. Maintenance of these services should be such that the profit prior is counter-balanced. Must research what is profitable for a given area. B - If no services exist that would make a profit, but the general store itself sees a lot of demand, hire more people or expand unless it violates rule 2. C - Lower the price of items in the store. This is not a sale but a straight price reduction. D - Raise wages collectively. 8 - The company must benefit the shareholders. The store would have a union that all employees are a member of, including managers. The union will own 51% of the company. The remaining 49% will be divided evenly among all citizens of the state/province/whatever the person lives in thus making them all shareholders. If people shop at the store, it will make more sales. More sales either increases their share price, lowers the price of goods, improves the lives of the employees, or creates more jobs. This makes people working there more interested in the stores well being as it guarantees pay raises based on total performance. As the store does better, begin issuing dividends to shareholders, thus giving the public a direct benefit outside of purchasing. If companies like Walmart begin to collapse under the power of Capitalism, the store should expand to fill the void. This will give people access to cheap goods and services, help keep retail pay up and not cause wage slavery, and allow more people to start other ventures since they'll be saving money on basic needs. If private stores want to sell specialty things and brand name goods, they are more than welcome. This company is in direct competition with basic needs stores and purpose is to drive them out. It is beholden to its shareholders and thus to both the public and its union (since its members are part of the public). You can even hire the same sort of sociopaths that run current retail chains. Just remind them the shareholders are watching and to not break the 8 rules. There would be a point where prices could not go any lower without the distribution costs causing a lost. At that point, it would be within everyone's benefit that people start producing/manufacturing goods closer to home as their sales at this company would allow it to save on distribution. Not like we don't have the technology for factory farms. Maybe you can buy some high power grow lamps from the store? They're super cheap. Probably done a million times, however. But as a person watching a city rot from the inside out, the regular ideas clearly don't work.
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Mar 27, 2015 21:40
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Like most things that you can think of, this already exists and is called a Government-owned corporation If you could find a reliable way to make people buy high quality local products over the cheapest stuff that they can get their hands on you would need no government companies anyway. Private companies would fill that niche in seconds. People and attitudes are the main problem here, not state ownership. Walmart only gives people what they want.
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Mar 27, 2015 22:02
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HBNRW posted:The union will own 51% of the company. It seems like this would create a conflict of interest, as giving the union controlling interest of the corporation would give the union would control management, they'd be negotiating against their own agents. Are the points you put up a flow chart? What happens when they come into conflict? When the store is taking a loss, does the union management vote to cut workers/reduce pay? I can't see union members tolerating that. I have a feeling it would devolve into sort sighted cost cutting as they try to cut corners each quarter so they can raise wages (so the same thing we have now, except with wages instead of stock price).
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Mar 27, 2015 22:18
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Doesn't Costco do a lot of that kind of stuff? We were supposed to get one here, but for some reason the city pretty much said screw you and kind of ran them off. I guess it needs to be said that we have 4 wal-marts and a Sam's club and we are not that big of a city.
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Mar 27, 2015 23:15
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HBNRW posted:3 - The company will never raise prices from an item's initial sale price. "No, this isn't the March 2015 version of 'bread', it's the April 2015 version, that's why we can charge $1 more".
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Mar 27, 2015 23:22
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HBNRW posted:The company will never raise prices from an item's initial sale price. Can you honestly not see why that might be problematic?
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Mar 27, 2015 23:42
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Number 8 is the problem. Shareholder benefit is not necessarily in direct opposition to 7, 5, and 3, but the argument could be made that 7, 5, and 3 interfere with your ability to meet 8.Because current corporate understanding is that unless you are benefiting to the greatest extent possible, you aren't actually benefiting.
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Mar 27, 2015 23:47
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Isn't that basically Winco? It's a grocery store not a general store like Walmart, and I don't know their local buying policy, but they're employee-owned, cheap, and have a store brand. Of course they also sell doritos and poo poo, because turns out people like doritos.
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Mar 27, 2015 23:47
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Also, what's to stop Richie J. Moneybags from buying out everyone's shares? Most people aren't going to give a drat enough to make a noble stand in the spirit of solidarity.
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Mar 27, 2015 23:49
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waitwhatno posted:Like most things that you can think of, this already exists and is called a Government-owned corporation Right, however due to their private nature, they naturally do not want to raise wages unless absolutely necessary. They especially won't do so in a poor area. SirSigmundFreud posted:It seems like this would create a conflict of interest, as giving the union controlling interest of the corporation would give the union would control management, they'd be negotiating against their own agents. There is supposed to be a conflict of interest. That ties back to the Golden Rule. The union owns the majority of the company and the union's, and thus union members, profits are directly tied to the company. The union is thus driven to improve their employees condition. As the remaining shareholders are the public, who are also their primary customer, who they also make up a portion of, they would be more inclined to not raise prices as this would affect them as members of the public. If the public wants their shareprice to rise, they let the price of goods stay put (if we assume wages increase). If they don't care about the shares, they bring the price of goods down. Being a union, you can (if only attempting too) democratize the management structure. Sort of like forced profit sharing with the public. In the event that the possibility of wages requiring to go down for any reason, being a union this would be communicated to all members and put to a vote. But at the same time, if you're at the point where you need to cut wages then something else is going on. Either the price of importing just jumped or Walmart just tried to undercut the company. But, again, this hurts Walmart since they're not union and their actions affect their employees worse than what the union may do to its. blackguy32 posted:Doesn't Costco do a lot of that kind of stuff? We were supposed to get one here, but for some reason the city pretty much said screw you and kind of ran them off. I guess it needs to be said that we have 4 wal-marts and a Sam's club and we are not that big of a city. Costco is one of the few companies that genuinely gets it. If more companies actually had their ethics then this type of discussion wouldn't be needed. computer parts posted:"No, this isn't the March 2015 version of 'bread', it's the April 2015 version, that's why we can charge $1 more". Well let's assume people are stupid enough to fall for that. If the company cannot turn a profit or it must lower prices (supposing it chooses neither of the other options of rule 7), even if you raised the price of bread by a dollar with this scheme, if people buy the bread such that it begins to turn a profit it must lower the price of bread. All you've done is made the bread at the start of the month $1 more than what the bread towards the end of the month is worth. Since bread here in my city is about $3 a loaf, if we bought enough bread to bring the price down such that raising it a dollar at the start of the month still made it cheaper than when it was originally priced, I would say that was a net win. If you've made the bread now too expensive to sell compared to other stores, then you're an idiot and shouldn't run a business. Remember, this isn't some socialist command economy. This company is in competition with private competitors directly on the open market. It's just that it has internal rules the govern how it expands rather than the normal corporate culture. Cicero posted:leftist_business_sense.txt Yes. But as long as wages are not increasing while the price of things like food, heat, power, clothes, etc increase, people will purchase less of them or cheaper/crappier versions of them. A massive reason why people are leaving NB in droves is because they lack purchasing power while the cost of living increases. By creating a pricing freeze, you either allow the wages to catch up. If distribution costs go up, then that's a good que that local production needs to step up so you're not shipping it in from other parts of the country. Since this company will try for local sources on all things, as per the buy locally rule, it stimulate more ventures in areas that normally aren't traveled. Now is a good time to do so since the technology is pretty cheap for a lot of things. A store like this tied to a indoor factory farm would drive food costs down a ton. paranoid randroid posted:Number 8 is the problem. Shareholder benefit is not necessarily in direct opposition to 7, 5, and 3, but the argument could be made that 7, 5, and 3 interfere with your ability to meet 8.Because current corporate understanding is that unless you are benefiting to the greatest extent possible, you aren't actually benefiting. This goes back to what I stated earlier. It is designed with an inherent state of internal conflict between making shareholders as much money as possible while making things as cheap as possible to undercut competition. It cannot do anything that will actively cause it to lose money (go negative), and wants to turn profits. However, it is constantly reigned back in, given a small handicap, then let loose again. Because the public is the shareholder, and since the company must make the shareholders money, and since the shareholders are the customers, it has a few ways of doing this. One is make poo poo cheaper. If your shareholders are your customers, any money they save buying from you than from Loblaws or other grocery chain benefits the company and thus the shareholders. Or you use the profits to pay out dividends to the public. Either way, the point is to give the shareholders more money to spend back into the economy. paranoid randroid posted:Also, what's to stop Richie J. Moneybags from buying out everyone's shares? Most people aren't going to give a drat enough to make a noble stand in the spirit of solidarity. I would assume governments that liked money. If people are getting rebates without you actually doing anything and all you have to do is guarantee that everyone gets a least a piece of the pie, I don't think that's a hard sell. Look at Alaska. Despite how red that state can be, I doubt it was a hard sell over the oil cheques. "Hey, do you want $1000? We got, like, all this oil...". Or institute a law that dictates no share from this company can be traded, only created or destroyed as the population dies, leaves, immigrates, or is born. Shares get paid out after death to next of kin. If people voted for a higher share price, the family gets a tiny boost. If they wanted to keep prices low, then this isn't even noticeable. I would put the arguement like this to the averge Joe: "If you buy from this store that has everything that Walmart has but slightly less expensive, we'll give you a rebate on your taxes. The more people who buy from here, the more you get back. Or we if you want, we can make the prices cheaper. Up to you." "Why?" "Because you own a piece of it." "Oh. And it has everything that Walmart has?" "Yes." "And if people buy stuff from it, I get a rebate?" "Yes." "Ok. I like money."
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Mar 28, 2015 01:28
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HBNRW posted:The store would have a union that all employees are a member of, including managers. The union will own 51% of the company. What's the point of this union then? You've just come up with an incredibly stupid model for a co-operative business. This is half-baked drivel.
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Mar 28, 2015 03:54
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Reading this makes my head hurt. Can't you just say a 51% employee-owned co-op discount retail store focused on utilizing local products? Or is there more to that?
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Mar 28, 2015 06:12
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Price controls pretty much always end in disaster, op. It's why Venezuela is having to trade oil for toilet paper.
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Mar 28, 2015 08:24
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Why not just have the government spend more on social welfare and food stamps instead of trying to make an anti-walmart? Or raise minimum wage to a living wage? Or have a minimum income?
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Mar 28, 2015 08:30
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Smudgie Buggler posted:What's the point of this union then? You've just come up with an incredibly stupid model for a co-operative business. This is half-baked drivel. The reason why it's a union is because I can't elect my boss when the management is not. If you set up management as part of the union, you give employees at the bottom better control over the people who get put into position of power within the company. Half the reason why companies today have lovely customer service is because they draw their upper management from people who crave power but have no accountability to anyone but themselves and their bosses. A lot of these people have no true understanding of how their policies gently caress with people, they just see numbers on a page. They treat middle management and anyone below them as figures on a sheet. If you made them accountable to the voting union, you'd be less likely to see these people since anyone close to them will know they're assholes. Even if they lie and bullshit to get elected, people are more likely to see it in the way the company does its business and treats customers (which they would also be a part of )and would be more vocal and direct about grievances. Part of the reason why businesses union bust is because they can get idiots on board with stupid ideas like Right-to-Work. This forces this company to run its employees through a union structure rather than the often mismanaged corporate one and lessens the chances of wage stagnation and corruption. Jolly Green Giant posted:Reading this makes my head hurt. Can't you just say a 51% employee-owned co-op discount retail store focused on utilizing local products? Or is there more to that? Ok. Sure. That's basically it. However, the point isn't the fact that it's a coop. It's the method by which it governs itself that is different. It's a coop that is as aggressive as Walmart that is publicly owned and targets poor areas. Walmart which has no desire to raise wages on its own and constantly petitions governments in poor areas to not raise wages, they create cesspools of wage stagnation that basically guarantees everyone buys their crap but never make enough money to buy from somewhere else. This Anti-Walmart has a built in mechanism that forces either lower prices or wage increases as part of its regular operation. Since it's publicly owned, if it does well, the public gets a piece. This is easily recognizable. Just like how people who bitched about Obamacare are the first to bitch if anyone tries to take it from them. The second they see the benefit, they'll drop private retail chains. Why would you go to Walmart if there's another one across the street that will be cheaper? Why would I work at Walmart when the Coop pays better? Once more people in the area have extra income, they can start investing that money in specialty stores that this Coop could be mandated not to touch while it focuses on basic needs and tries to raise the standard of living that Walmart and Dollarstores do not. Typical Pubbie posted:Price controls pretty much always end in disaster, op. It's why Venezuela is having to trade oil for toilet paper. And if you have watched the other actions being taken place you will realise that Venezuela is not very good at looking at history books. Similar to the Thai military situation. History doesn't repeat but it does rhyme. Right now, food costs too much to be viable and until someone convinces everyone to start growing vegetables and livestock in their yards to make the demand plummet, that's how it's going to stay. If we want poor people to stop relying on fast food and to start eating healthy, we need to make it more accessible. As long as wages do not increase and governments reject welfare, this will not happen. Three major costs of food production are logistics, maintenance, and waste. The technology now exists that we can cut the transportation and upkeep costs of things we'd have to ship from other locations in more localized urban centers. If you don't believe that, I have a grow op I would like to sell you. If this store focused on purchasing from these local produce grow ops, they'll start hiring more people to feed the Anti-Walmart with goods that it can then undercut Walmart who is still shipping them in. If Walmart also starts purchasing locally to compete, then we have yet another net benefit to the economy. The main goal is to increase demand and thus create jobs. Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Why not just have the government spend more on social welfare and food stamps instead of trying to make an anti-walmart? Because we had those things? And then in a generation a few assholes convinced a bunch of idiots that these things were bad and they tore them down in the name of competition and efficiency? The common meme is that publicly owned companies cannot compete with private industry. Either they become redundant, inefficient, or money sinks. This is often because they are run by the people the elected people put in power (the ones who don't like public industry) and never had these public ventures's benefits in mind. This is a company that specially takes all the lessons learned from that era and stitches it onto the retail beast. Like Walmart, it will seek to stiffle competition by being better at what it does. Even if we get it all back, until we teach the next generation not to gently caress it up, history will repeat. The main benefit of Capitalism is that it endorses and enforces competition. The free market will weed out companies that fail and the best will rise to the top. One of the main benefits of this is that Capitalism allows for the movement of goods at great speeds, all fueled by money. The problem with true command economies is that demand is a function of what is neeeded now. The market has internal mechanisms that allow it to do this own its own and constantly, while the other has to constantly check to see what is need and then respond. It cannot respond faster than the market. The main negative of Capitalism is that once market share is saturated, the only option is to eat your neighbor. You must increase customer share if you wish to increase your profits. This inevitably creates monopolies that must either be broken by governments or else they will price gouge everyone like Air Canada. Once a company gets big enough that its pricing is enough to draw customers, it doesn't really have to give a poo poo about them. Prices will basically constantly go up and the retail giant just has to be slightly cheaper than the normal going rate. Since they're the largest employer in an general area, they get to dictate wages because "they'll leave if you push them." The Anti-Walmart still thinks that way but is intentionally handicapped and forced to stop periodically. It cannot stagnate its wages, prices, hours but it must expand. The only way to expand is to increase demand. If you cannot lower your wages, then you must find another means to out-compete your competition. Costco does this by having a very good employee culture and a huge selection of bulk goods. It's their niche. However that alone cannot destroy Walmart. The only options to increase customer share then is to either: A - Start offering things that people would immediately need (this is a basic needs store) that other stores do not offer. If this store is the first, it gets to set pricing. Since its customers are also its shareholders, they can have a more direct input into what services they want. Walmart would be forced to watch market forces. If it's a good idea, they'll copy it. But it won't matter. B - Lower your prices. If I sell everything that Walmart does but I sell it for a dollar less, people will go to me. This would force Walmart to either do the same, or whine about it. As long as quality does not decrease, the Anti-Walmart will always try to undercut anyone else. C - Expand. If you have driven out large retail chains from an area, then you fill that void. People will go to you if you're the monopoly. But they'll definitely go to you if your monopoly saves them money. And that is how you beat Capitalists who insist that a publicly run company can't out compete private industry. You cannot say that it doesn't focus on making a profit, for that is one of its core tenants. It naturally raises employee standard of living and thus infuses more money back into the economy. It lowers prices for the poor and encourages people in general to shop there to increase savings. Prices will always hit a point of distribution cost, but even then you're saving money on mark-ups. Since the company is public rather than private, the fact that it isn't actually making money is ok. Its aim is to be intentionally revenue neutral such that it constantly craves profit but must constantly use that profit for something beneficial instead of sitting in a CEOs bank account and not stimulating anything other than interest rates. Walmart has the money to basically fix every neighborhood it exists in but has no intention too as that neighborhood being broken is what makes it money. The Anti-Walmart offers the same low prices, but a higher standard of living and gives you money back as shareholders. So all those blue collar dumbasses who vote conservative/liberal parties can be given something as evidence that directly helps them and thus they'll be more inclined to defend it rather than relinquish near public share control. Since the union owns 51%, there would never be a threat of the company being out of the hands of its employees unless they vote otherwise. But if there is one thing I have learned, once people in a union make a sufficient amount of money, that mentality becomes harder to sell. Also, again, being a publicly owned company, the government can mandate that no shares can be sold. Stretch Marx fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Mar 28, 2015 |
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Mar 28, 2015 17:05
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I'm certainly in favor of economic democracy, and I think that a part crown corporation/part union-owned coop is far from the worst idea anyone's come up with. The main thing, before going into any specifics, is that this sort of enterprise would only become feasible in a situation in which most people would likely already support full communism, rendering it redundant.
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Mar 28, 2015 19:30
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Sidakafitz posted:I'm certainly in favor of economic democracy, and I think that a part crown corporation/part union-owned coop is far from the worst idea anyone's come up with. I agree, it is redundant. That's the point. The places where this would benefit the most are places where communism benefits the most. We, unfortunately, live in a world where socialism in a lot of places is considered either a bad word or automatically associated with corruption or waste. This comes to basically the same end, however the only thing socialist about it is the fact it's owned by a union and that the public is its shareholders. Otherwise, it's just as capitalistic as any other retail outlet. That plausible deniability and demonstration of its better business acumen (why would so many people shop there if it wasn't better? If shopping there makes things cheaper and better, why wouldn't you shop there too?) makes it easier to defend against free market libertarians and the like. "Do you hate the free market? It has said that Walmart's business model is inferior to Anti-Walmart. The customer is always right. By trying to stop Anti-Walmart, you're just interfering in the market. That doesn't sound very libertarian." Stretch Marx fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Mar 28, 2015 |
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Mar 28, 2015 19:56
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HBNRW posted:I agree, it is redundant. That's the point. The places where this would benefit the most are places where communism benefits the most. We, unfortunately, live in a world where socialism in a lot of places is considered either a bad word or automatically associated with corruption or waste. This comes to basically the same end, however the only thing socialist about it is the fact it's owned by a union and that the public is its shareholders. Otherwise, it's just as capitalistic as any other retail outlet. That plausible deniability and demonstration of its better business acumen (why would so many people shop there if it wasn't better? If shopping there makes things cheaper and better, why wouldn't you shop there too?) makes it easier to defend against free market libertarians and the like. "Do you hate the free market? It has said that Walmart's business model is inferior to Anti-Walmart. The customer is always right. By trying to stop Anti-Walmart, you're just interfering in the market. That doesn't sound very libertarian." Except you're assuming that it actually would succeed. It doesn't actually have advantages over Walmart. You say it can listen to the shareholders, but there's nothing special about that. Walmart is already able to listen to people. And undercutting only works if you assume Anti's economies of scale are better (doubtful). Otherwise, you lose money.
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Mar 28, 2015 20:34
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MarsDragon posted:Isn't that basically Winco? It's a grocery store not a general store like Walmart, and I don't know their local buying policy, but they're employee-owned, cheap, and have a store brand. Of course they also sell doritos and poo poo, because turns out people like doritos. They also buy local fairly often, Oregon produces a fair amount of stuff. Winco seems fine, and more or less shows that a company can be worker owned without it falling apart. I don't think just turning every Walmart into a Winco would solve everything though (it may help though).
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Mar 28, 2015 21:06
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Why is "buying local" good again? Everywhere is local to somone.
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Mar 28, 2015 22:54
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asdf32 posted:Why is "buying local" good again? Everywhere is local to somone. Normally Walmart will, if it can get cookies and cakes 10% cheaper from the city 200 miles away, buy those instead even if the baker 3 blocks away makes better cookies and cakes, and sell them cheaper too at least until the baker goes out of business. A business forced to buy local when possible prevents that type of socioeconomic loss to some extent.
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Mar 29, 2015 00:20
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Ignatius M. Meen posted:Normally Walmart will, if it can get cookies and cakes 10% cheaper from the city 200 miles away, buy those instead even if the baker 3 blocks away makes better cookies and cakes, and sell them cheaper too at least until the baker goes out of business. A business forced to buy local when possible prevents that type of socioeconomic loss to some extent. What about the socioeconomic loss to the city baker that would've happened otherwise?
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Mar 29, 2015 00:39
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I kinda like this idea of having as little diversity as possible in production. For dystopian sci-fi.
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Mar 29, 2015 00:53
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asdf32 posted:Why is "buying local" good again? Everywhere is local to somone. Alternatively it's just liberal fygm I guess
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Mar 29, 2015 01:00
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Series DD Funding posted:What about the socioeconomic loss to the city baker that would've happened otherwise? Someone in a city of 500,000 people has potentially lots more opportunities (bigger normal customer base, more businesses to sell to) to make up that difference or at least not lose so much they can't operate anymore than someone in a town of 2,000. It's true that this city baker has the extra complication of likely having to compete with several other bakers and that may cause more total loss on some kind of divine accounting spreadsheet than the opposite, but it's also possible this baker would just have to not buy a summer house if they couldn't get the deal from a store 200 miles away and that's not nearly as ruinous on the face of it.
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Mar 29, 2015 01:05
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Series DD Funding posted:Except you're assuming that it actually would succeed. It doesn't actually have advantages over Walmart. You say it can listen to the shareholders, but there's nothing special about that. Walmart is already able to listen to people. And undercutting only works if you assume Anti's economies of scale are better (doubtful). Otherwise, you lose money. You're forgetting who represents the shareholders in each case. In Walmart's case, it would be only people who own stock. This is anyone who originally had the money to invest for said stock. The only people who benefit by Walmart making money are those people. Anti-Walmart's stock owners are both the union that owns it, and all citizens that live in the state/province (which also includes the union members). This prevents wealth generated from income being funnelled to a select few and instead to all evenly. This promotes an incentive to see that stock value rise. How does a retailing improve it's stock? Through sales. Thus Anti-Walmart must make sales, as doing so will improve its stock price, which is something everyone who lives in the state/province can appreciate. If both Walmart and Anti-Walmart are both selling the exact same things and at the exact same price, why would you go to the one that you didn't partially own? That improves your business and weakens a competitor: in this case Walmart. Walmart, has no advantage if your competitor can give its customers dividends as stock owners. Walmart must then decide to do something about this. If they don't, Anti-Walmart will always sell what it sells and always a little cheaper. Walmart only has a few options: 1 - Petition the government to try and stop it. However, if Anti-Walmart has put enough pressure on Walmart to make Walmart try this, Anti-Walmart is already doing its job. This is just evidence that people prefer it to Walmart. 2 - Match prices. This is of course very difficult as Anti-Walmart will always lower it if it can. 3 - Improve wages and/or quality of their products to combat Anti-Walmart which is mandated never to lower quality. This would be a net win and would still allow Anti-Walmart to fill the poor niche. However, being a publicly owned company, if the public decide they want what Walmart is doing, that's what the Anti-Walmart will start to do. 4 - Leave. If they do, they poison the well. The Anti-Walmart will try to absorb as many people as it can to fill the void. asdf32 posted:Why is "buying local" good again? Everywhere is local to somone. Because it forces local economies to help support it. Part of the problem in poor cities like here in Saint John is that it was heavily dependent on factory work. Then it became cheaper to build ships in Asia and produce food in South America. Now this city is basically the Detroit of Canada. Boarded up buildings and closed factories. By forcing the Anti-Walmart to buy locally, it stimulates demand for those things locally. We have the technology to mass produce a lot of things. One of the biggest costs of produce is logistics. The closer and more local to the Anti-Walmart as we can get, the less it costs the Anti-Walmart to get it to the shelves even if there is a cheaper option outside the city. Since Anti-Walmart never tries to keep markups, it's still cheaper for it to resell these goods than any markup competitors would always put on there. If every city had indoor farms to support their local Anti-Walmart, each Anti-Walmart would buy and support their local agriculture and buy outside their area only at times where the local supply could not meet demand. But if it isn't, that warrants expanding the farming to meet the demand. This is true for any business that wants to sell something. If it's something that you'd find in a Walmart, the Anti-Walmart will try to resell it if people are interested in it. Series DD Funding posted:What about the socioeconomic loss to the city baker that would've happened otherwise? This would help the baker survive. This would keep the baker in this city, instead of moving out of it to start over somewhere else. This keeps that bakery's jobs in this city, which people can then take. This gives those employees money to spend in the area. If we had a manufacturing sector nearby that produced basic things, the fact we wouldn't have to ship them on a boat across the ocean and worry about the retailer marking it up a bunch would make people more likely to purchase those things locally. Even if that manufacturing was robotic, the fact that it would be cheaper to produce the goods forces the Anti-Walmart to start lowering the costs of them when it sells them. If someone locally started a bike shop, it would attempt to resell their bikes. This would prompt the Anti-Walmarts in other nearby cities to also try and get their bikes from this supplier. Stretch Marx fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 01:08
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Effectronica posted:I kinda like this idea of having as little diversity as possible in production. For dystopian sci-fi. There is nothing that says that the Anti-Walmart can't buy stock from other distributors to offer selection. It's just that the Anti-Walmart will try to purchase locally whenever it can.
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Mar 29, 2015 01:25
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HBNRW posted:You're forgetting who represents the shareholders in each case. In Walmart's case, it would be only people who own stock. This is anyone who originally had the money to invest for said stock. The only people who benefit by Walmart making money are those people. Anti-Walmart's stock owners are both the union that owns it, and all citizens that live in the state/province (which also includes the union members). This prevents wealth generated from income being funnelled to a select few and instead to all evenly. This promotes an incentive to see that stock value rise. How does a retailing improve it's stock? Through sales. Thus Anti-Walmart must make sales, as doing so will improve its stock price, which is something everyone who lives in the state/province can appreciate. If both Walmart and Anti-Walmart are both selling the exact same things and at the exact same price, why would you go to the one that you didn't partially own? That improves your business and weakens a competitor: in this case Walmart. Walmart, has no advantage if your competitor can give its customers dividends as stock owners. Stock price is affected by a whole host of things, but in most cases it's from profit, not sales. If Anti is always undercutting Walmart, is it going to be able to turn a profit or even keep things steady? Doubtful. And that's ignoring that you've already made Anti's share untradeable, so there is no price. The only incentive for holding shares is through dividends, and no profit means no dividends. Ignatius M. Meen posted:Someone in a city of 500,000 people has potentially lots more opportunities (bigger normal customer base, more businesses to sell to) to make up that difference or at least not lose so much they can't operate anymore than someone in a town of 2,000. It's true that this city baker has the extra complication of likely having to compete with several other bakers and that may cause more total loss on some kind of divine accounting spreadsheet than the opposite, but it's also possible this baker would just have to not buy a summer house if they couldn't get the deal from a store 200 miles away and that's not nearly as ruinous on the face of it. That's not buy local so much as it is "buy small." Plus, someone who does buy at the lower price instead of locally can use the money for something else. The consumer gets more and another producer benefits as well.
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Mar 29, 2015 01:41
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Series DD Funding posted:Stock price is affected by a whole host of things, but in most cases it's from profit, not sales. If you are not selling things, where is your profit coming from? Your ability to sell your product is a very strong indication of whether your company will survive and thrive. A company that is selling very well but isn't bringing in profit is either: A: selling its goods for too little. This means that demand is such that you could raise prices to take advantage of it. B: expenses are too high. Either the cost for importing/creating a good is more than it's sell price can reliably fetch. This usually means you should be looking into a new product. C: fire someone. If you are paying more for staff that are too redundant, then you need to drop one/some of them. This is the last option someone should do unless it's really obvious. These are all things that can be corrected. quote:If Anti is always undercutting Walmart, is it going to be able to turn a profit or even keep things steady? Doubtful. And that's ignoring that you've already made Anti's share untradeable, so there is no price. The only incentive for holding shares is through dividends, and no profit means no dividends. A share still has value even if a company isn't publicly traded. It is simply a legal document that represents a percentage of a company. If I owned a company worth $1 million and create two shares, theoretically each share is worth half a million. I can give you one of these shares, effectively giving you half of the ownership and entitled to that half a million. As long as that share is legally binding, it has worth. No one does this as it would be very dangerous for obvious reasons. Company's become publicly traded because it allows outside investing. If people are purchasing your stock, there's a good chance people are interested in your product. But this naturally creates the threat of being bought out. If all citizens of the state were entitled to stock, that stock would be valued at the perceived value of the company. Naturally this would be very small if in a state with a high population. Since no one can sell or buy the stock (it merely is created or destroyed as needed to maintain the 49-51 split) the price of the stock will rise and fall based on the number of literal stock created relative to the company's current net worth. How dividends are doled out by real companies is entirely up to the company, usually under some agreement. They don't have to give out money, they could instead reinvest all stock profits back into the company, thus improving the stock price. Since the Anti-Walmart is publicly owned, it can give the government the ability to issue rebates. This is something that people would notice. The Anti-Walmart is always running revenue neutral because any profits are immediately offset in some way. Profit is merely what the Anti-Walmart strives for. Its mandate prevents it from actually getting it. A large portion of the prices at all retailers is markup. This is normal as it's how they make their money. However, if Walmart was selling a spatula for $5, the Anti-Walmart will instead try to sell it for $4. Since the Anti-Walmart cannot raise its prices from their initial sales price, this is as high as it will ever get. If both sell a spatula of equal quality and in equal supply, would you buy the $5 or the $4 spatula? Your next question would be "well it depends on what else I plan on buying." Remember, these are two stores that have basically exactly the same inventory. If you were in a Walmart to get that spatula and needed to get other things to justify it, those things could also be found at the Anti-Walmart. Given that everything besides price is equal, which would you go to? If you knew that if your company did better, its perceived value would rise as sales rise. Why would I support Walmart if the Anti-Walmart has less expensive goods and gives you rebates (even if they're not much)? If Walmart tries to lower the price of its spatulas to $4, then this hurts its profit margin (obviously this would need to be spread out across multiple types of goods). Since the Anti-Walmart has spatulas at the same price as Walmart, but I continue to get rewarded for shopping at the Anti-Walmart, why do I care that the Walmart has $4 spatulas as well now? If each spatula basically costs 50 cents a piece from the distributor Walmart is contracted out to, what does Walmart do? Now if more people immigrate to the state/province and thus cause the stock price to lower; this is ok. If more people enter the province with fresh capital, that's money that they're going to spend in the area they are in. If more people are now buying at the Anti-Walmart, the prices will go down as more of it is purchased, unless local supply can't meet demand. If people leave, the stock price rises, as long as people are buying mostly from the Anti-Walmart for basic needs. Which they most likely will unless Walmart figures out how to undercut the Anti-Walmart and still make a profit and not drive potential employees away. Stretch Marx fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 04:22
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HBNRW posted:3 - The company will never raise prices from an item's initial sale price. So in your world inflation doesn't exist and food prices are stable?
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Mar 29, 2015 05:14
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Arglebargle III posted:So in your world inflation doesn't exist and food prices are stable? Thank you. I've been away from my pc for like two days waiting for someone to ask this.
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Mar 29, 2015 05:47
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Arglebargle III posted:So in your world inflation doesn't exist and food prices are stable?
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Mar 29, 2015 05:48
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This whole idea makes my head hurt, because the internal logic isn't even consistent. OP, if you've got issues with how Walmart does business, start agitating for vertical integration to be considered monopolistic and subject to anti-trust action. That will do more to gently caress up Walmart's business strategy and incentivize local buying than any amount of pie-in-the-sky deeply confused idealism about how a worker-owned business would willingly forgo profit that those same worker/owners could benefit from just because your ideals want them to.
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Mar 29, 2015 16:27
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Sorry for the wall of text. I'm going to try to clarify things. Arglebargle III posted:So in your world inflation doesn't exist and food prices are stable? That's the problem. Because wages are not increasing with inflation, wages that we have now are insufficient to live off of in poor cities. We let every company increase the cost of food, but we do nothing to offset this cost. People lose more and more buying power as inflation increases. Something must be done to force wage increases or people will continue to vacate poor areas for those where their money will go farther. If companies won't do it voluntarily, and governments won't force it because it makes them look "bad for business", then we need a market approach that forces wage increases. One way is to make a company that automatically increases its own wages by its own mandate. If it sells all things equally to its competitors for less, then being a better run business will make yours more attractive than one that treats its employees lovely and sells the same poo poo. It sets a bar that makes all private industry look bad. Since the value of food is completely subjective (considering how much is wasted in developed countries, the cost of having that food wasted each day doesn't help), the easier and cheaper you can make food purchases (and a pricing cap would help), the more money the poor will have to spend on other services. Instead of going "Do I pay rent, or do I eat?" How do you stop rich people from just starting this whole mess again if we try simply another government answer? It happened before the Great Depression; it happened before the Great Recession. It'll happen in the future if we do the same drat thing. I would love a strong government to just come in and slap a company or two around and go "Knock it off." but it won't happen as long as the average Joe is convinced that taxes = bad and private = job creator. The answer has to be something that works within the system but has enough checks and balances that it doesn't go off the rails and just become another Walmart. Because the second it becomes exactly like Walmart, it will fail since Walmart already fills that niche. Liquid Communism posted:This whole idea makes my head hurt, because the internal logic isn't even consistent. OP, if you've got issues with how Walmart does business, start agitating for vertical integration to be considered monopolistic and subject to anti-trust action. You petition your conservative government this and I'll wait for the response. You again, mistakenly, surmise that this isn't trying to make a profit. It is trying to outsell its competitors just like Walmart does. The difference, and I'll say it again, is that profit made is forced to be used internally to the company in one shape or form instead of being funneled to shareholder's bank accounts (of which there are not very many compared to the population of an average city) where it sits and does nothing or being sat on by the company where it does nothing. It does not get invested back into the economy. It just sits and accrues interest. This has been demonstrated to be a very bad thing throughout history. That money needs to start moving again. As long as companies can cut costs without raising wages, they will do so. As long as they can keep personnel down, they will do so. They will add fees to everything and do everything in their power to neither lower the costs of things, increase the wages of their employees, nor purchase anything that isn't being ship in by container across an ocean. The theory and supposed benefit of Capitalism is that if a good is in sufficient demand, someone will try to exploit it. The less suppliers, the more valuable it is. Likewise the opposite is true. If more people attempt to sell this product, they compete with people who are also selling it. Theoretically, in order to increase customer share, you need to do something different than your competitors. One thing is you can offer higher quality for the same price. If everyone else follows suit because people would rather pay the same for higher quality, then that's a net benefit. You could lower the price of the same quality good. This will draw more people to your store. This is how Dollarstores work. Again, if it forces all competitors to lower their prices to match then we have another net benefit. However, because of profit margins, companies always stop this process. There gets to a point where the price of something will never decrease because the store wants to make a return on the product generally equal to a multiplier (I'm selling this good with a mark up that triples the initial wholesale value). Since all stores know there is a point where they can hover around that people will neither choose to go somewhere else or pay more, they all hover at this point. Because why wouldn't you? The price will never go lower than this point until the costs of manufacture and distribution go down, since the retailer will always have a markup. So the question becomes, if the mark up is always going to be there in private retailers, and that markup is the main obstacle for people to purchase things, and the markup will increase along with inflation, and wages are not increasing in poor areas to compensate for said inflation, and shipping is loving expensive sometimes to avoid local retailers, what do you do? 1 - You could petition the government to mandate wage increases. Conservatives harp that this is going to drive away business. Old men and women start to weep. Most of the young people have left the area, so you have to convince mostly boomers and the elderly. Good luck. or 2 - Choose to shop at places that lower their prices. Except no one has a reason too. You could go to a bulk place (if you're lucky to have one), but they're probably not really much cheaper, it's just that you get more control over portion. Target here in Canada just flopped because it promised to be more than just another Zellers, which flopped because it was just another Walmart, then surprised no one by being exactly like Zellers. The prices were exactly the same. If no one has a reason to not go to Walmart, they will probably go there since it has the largest variety in most cases. Because they are literally generally the biggest store. So even retailers now are falling one by one here in Canada because they keep copying each other's ideas but never offer anything different or better. Grocery stores here are hurting because Walmart and other larger chains can now support their own grocery sections. So Grocery stores have to offer newer things, which then get copied by Walmart. Another discount retailer called Giant Tiger (don't ask) is doing the exact same thing, but is able to survive because it picked places that Walmart isn't physically. If Walmart did move to those areas, Giant Tiger would die off too. So how do you overcome this cycle? Specialty stores all fail because no one has enough disposable income to buy more expensive stuff. So they purchase at Walmart because it's almost as good and is something they can afford. So local stores wither and die. The purpose of the Anti-Walmart is that it wants to do literally all these things as well. It will set its prices such that it can. It will do everything that Walmart does. However, it will not be allowed to sit on its profits. Unlike retailers who do nothing to invest into the local economies where they set up shop and make billions yet do nothing to lower prices or increase wages, this company is forced too. First it needs something to initiate being more attractive to purchase at for the poor than Walmart. What are two ways you can attract more poor people to shop here rather than there? One is you give them rebates. If they know they'll make money back from purchasing at place A than place B, given all things else being equal, they would go shop at A. It makes financial sense since free money is free money. But only if it's obvious. This is why mail in rebates, while great for money, generally annoy the poo poo out of people. You could make sure your price is always lower than your competitor by enough to be noticeable. Since the prices at retailers are always mark ups, this just means you make a bit less immediate profit (since you're selling your product for less) for a longer term gain (more people will buy your exact same product if its cheaper). These are both net benefits. If the people who work at this company are owners of the company, they will be more inclined to see it succeed. This is not a new concept. If the people who also own the company are people who may likely shop at the company (because of the above mentioned better prices), then they would naturally want the prices to be as low as they can be, since they would rather save money too. Since the company is publicly owned, the general population would like to see a return on their investment. If your company is selling goods at better prices and more frequency than competitors such that more people are choosing to go to you rather than them, then this is reflected in the perceptive value of the company. This is done all over the place in business. I'm not sure why this is surprising. More people buying = more profit = more speculative value in the company. So let's have an honest look at the probability of someone choosing the Anti-Walmart over Walmart. Again, it has literally everything Walmart has at equal or less expensive for the same quality. As shareholders, the better the company does, the better your dividend is. If all things are equal and you had access to both, which would you prefer? If someone was selling your corn flakes for $4.50 and someone else was selling it for $3.50, along with everything else in the grocery aisle, which would you prefer? Who would you buy your food from? Same for clothes and shoes. Let's say that Anti-Walmart has just began and is equal in every way to Walmart (minus the structural changes to ownership). People are initially enticed by rebates or Anti-Walmart immediately undercuts Walmart as per its mandate. Remember, these prices are still at markup. Anti-Walmart is still making a profit as long as people are buying their things. Again, if all things are equal, people will go where they dollar can be stretched farthest. The Anti-Walmart is now bringing in profit. As per its mandate it must do something with it. Probably it will be initially paying off debt. Again, a public company that can finance itself and pay off its debt looks very good to right wing average Joes. Especially if it saves them money. Currently the Anti-Walmart, with it's more motivated workforce (because they KNOW if the company turns a profit it will eventually be forced to raise wages) and better prices, is now more attractive than Walmart for the same customer base. Walmart must respond in some way but ultimately the Anti-Walmart is mandated to basically always respond to any change by Walmart by stealing their idea and then undercutting it. If Walmart tries to play chicken by intentionally dropping the price of things to severely undercut the Anti-Walmart, the Anti-Walmart will simply match. The fact still remains that as long as people choose to go to the Anti-Walmart, they will always get more back than they would from the regular Walmart. The Anti-Walmart only has to make sure it can pay for its employees and other expenses. It's a publicly owned company. A publicly owned company that is making several million in profit isn't doing anything for the public with that money if it just sits there. The Anti-Walmart's mandate means that if it does turn profits, it finds expenses to fill them. It wants profits, but that's because it really wants to undercut and drive out other retailers to make that profit. Eventually you come to a point, however, where you cannot lower the price of goods or raise wages without going into the red. This is generally due to the cost of manufacturing and logistics. Thus the price will stagnate at this point. If it is sufficiently low, people may not care. Since the Anti-Walmart is mandated to always look for local sources first, this will promote local merchants to sell basic things to it. If the Anti-Walmart can find a source that has cheaper shipping costs locally, it will always choose that vendor over a multinational outside the state because of its mandate. By having the Anti-Walmart focus on basic needs, it will purchase basic versions of local goods and ignore specialty things. Local vendors would be free to sell their goods as per normal knowing:' A - Their basic goods has a customer in the form of the Anti-Walmart who is always going to be there as a customer of last resort. and B - The Anti-Walmart isn't going to compete for these specialty goods since it can be mandated to only sell basic wares, leaving the specialty vendor to offer upgraded services that the Anti-Walmart won't offer. Again, the price of things all contains a markup, the goal is to get that markup as low as possible so that it makes things as cheap as possible to extend people's money farther. Since inflation is a thing, either the price of goods must be artificially lowered or the living wage must be increased. Even if all markups were eliminated, the price of things will increase as long as inflation does. If the Anti-Walmart is driving out other retailers such that it can no longer expand and can no longer lower prices without going into the red, then its only choice to offset its profits is by wage increases, hiring more people, or offering new services. Wage increases increase the buying power of a company's employees. If these employees are also its customers, they will buy more at that company. This increases this company's own internal demand. This increases sales, which in turn increases profits. As more people get hired on, they now re-enter the workforce and are also becoming paying customers. Since they also own a portion of the business they work at, and know that profits where prices are stagnate = wage increases, they will still be motivated to work there over other retailers. People like knowing there is a light at the end of the tunnel instead of just hoping it's not a train and move forward anyway. Eventually it will hit a point where it cannot increase wages, hire more people, lower the cost of goods, or increase sales due to market saturation. In private businesses, this is usually when anti-trust laws kick in to break up a monopoly and enforce competition. As made evident by companies like Air Canada, this isn't always the case and as long as the government sees nothing wrong with it, they'll continue to price gouge. Since the Anti-Walmart is owned by the people who would normally be hurt by a monopoly, they can reign it back in if it goes off track. It must ultimately bow to its shareholders and if your shareholders are your customers, then the customer knows best. As long as the mandate is in place, the Anti-Walmart will basically maintain the status quo. It can't lower prices until manufacturing costs go down, and that won't happen until robotics becomes the absolute norm. Logistics costs will also be a factor as long as there remains gaps between resource collection to refining/manufacturing to distributors to retailers to customers. As these decrease, the cost will decrease as well. As long as the Anti-Walmart is there to help prop up local economies, people will have more money and freedom to invest back into their communities and take more chances starting up new businesses. Just like welfare and food stamps do. Except this is not welfare, it's just an incredibly efficient pricing machine that causes a basically similar affect and can be defended as a market option in the face of people who claim public businesses cannot work. Stretch Marx fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 20:16
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Ultimately the goal is to destroy the meme that public companies are inefficient and wasteful so that raising the wage becomes the correct and obvious answer and not the one you must constantly point to past history and math to prove. One way is to have a company that demonstrates these qualities and use it as an example to smash the myth. It's just like Obamacare. If you demonstrate to people, even ignorant people, the obvious and immediate benefit of a socialist program but don't say socialism at any point, people will generally like it and will defend it. People are stupid and hate labels. However if you mask a system with the correct labels, you can get a conservative to go bite on any socialist program as long as it isn't super obvious. I would love to see a government owned mass retailer that carries all basic services at the cheapest price possible. One that is beholden to both the public and the customer base. There really is no difference now between major retailers in terms of pricing. You basically go to whichever is most convenient. But even then, because of inflation and wage stagnation, prices still suck and need government intervention. However if you go at it with this angle you will always lose the public support, because the public is dumb and knee jerky. The Anti-Walmart is basically this. A single, publicly owned company, that sells all basic goods and tries to force the cheapest costs/pricing and highest workforce/wages possible. It is, however, not directly controlled by the government. It's owned by its union. This gives you clearance to say that the government can't interfere with it only so much as to protect shareholders (ie. the public). There isn't a Conservative alive who would do anything construed as being anti-shareholder and thus anti-business. It will compete just as hard as the others, however it will never be able to sit on its profits. It will always invest into something somewhere to offset said profits. This is a model that a private retailer will not follow but a public one can. Because even if the company isn't making a direct profit (because it's offsetting its profits), as long as it remains revenue neutral it will still be lowering costs, which benefits the public. Who are also its shareholders. Who will want to see more benefits.
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Mar 29, 2015 21:00
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Walmart and every other largish private company would use all their influence to destroy anti-walmart. I am afraid that this plan is unlikely as hell to work. Pundits would be talking about the threat posed by " commie-capitalists". The mere perception that this store is pro-goverment would be enough to make many People refuse to buy there, even it does provide the best and cheapest selection of goods. Never underestimate the power of spite. Some (most?)states would make it illegal for any Company to demand or even recommend it`s employees to be unionized. Banks would find a reason not to extend credit and it would prove extremely hard to get building permissons for new stores. The FBI and local police would probably be constantly on anti-walmart`s rear end to find something incriminating. I can even imagine paying People to falsely claim that they injured themselves in a anti-walmart store. Every false lawsuit that has to be defeated would help exhaust anti-walmart`s limited resources. Your plan is promising in some ways but it depends on the uber-wealthy being too stupid to realize your intentions and the danger anti-walmart would pose to neo-liberalism. Never make that assumption if you want to change the world. Legally or illegally they would find a way to crush anti-walmart.
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Mar 29, 2015 21:46
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HBNRW posted:
Those two things are inherently and directly contradictory with each other. quote:Because we had those things? And then in a generation a few assholes convinced a bunch of idiots that these things were bad and they tore them down in the name of competition and efficiency? That didn't stop them from being privatized. Is your suggestion for a state owned corporation as the solution as oppose to GMI actually based on political feasibility or is it based on a ideological preference for state ran "Socialist" businesses? Typo fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 21:56
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Baudolino posted:Walmart and every other largish private company would use all their influence to destroy anti-walmart. I am afraid that this plan is unlikely as hell to work. Oh I'm very much aware that every moneyed interest would be against this idea. That's why it's a thought experiment. I doubt it would survive unless it started somewhere small and people immediately saw the benefit. Like I said, we thought the same thing for the ACA. The goal is for there to be enough concrete evidence against the spite in much the same way that now we have GOP reps putting stupid poo poo like "Tell us your obamacare horror stories" and then getting flooded with swan songs on the internet. It takes a fundamental shift in thinking to get over the "private is the only way to create jobs". But we can't change that view if we automatically assume no one will change it.  Remember, it has been shown mathematically, fiscally, and ethically better to house the homeless. This action has saved every city that has tried it a lot of money. Yet it is still hard to explain to people why it saves money because they have been convinced that socialism is bad. It has to be something that gives them immediate benefit because they can't think long term. Typo posted:Those two things are inherently and directly contradictory with each other. Gunna have to explain why you think those two things are related enough to contradict themselves. If you only think in terms of profit margins, then no you can't have cheap goods and high wages because you'll stop yourself to maximize your profits. This has been the thinking for centuries and is part of the reason we are in the lovely situation we are in. We need to stop thinking in "how can I get the most out of my customers" and more "how do I steal customers from my competition". One way is improving your employee standards and lowering your prices. Things companies do not do, especially effective monopolies. quote:We had a lot of government owned corporations in the western world a generation or two ago as well. ... Yes? I pointed that out? My point is that this company for all intents and purposes a private company that who's shares are owned collectively. The argument is that private is more efficient. Well what about a company that acts in all regards to that of a private company but who's owners are the public? Would it not follow logically that if Walmart is the best business model for retail (hence everyone is copying it), and people like collective benefits (like oil tax rebates and other tax returns, single payer health care, unions where they're in one, etc), wouldn't it follow that we should be striving for the best of both worlds instead of seeing how we can get both to murder each other? quote:Is your suggestion for a state owned corporation as the solution as oppose to GMI actually based on political feasibility or is it based on a ideological preference for state ran "Socialist" businesses? Mostly 1. If the politically philosophy was more towards regulation of markets instead of this ridiculous free market crap, I would be honestly ok with how the Swiss do things. Lots of small companies offering the same thing, no public option but the government would make sure that no one company (or the industry as a whole) takes advantage of consumers. But for the same reason that I could never trust the government to properly run a socialized business (since history has demonstrated that the second Tories get into power they will destroy it from the inside), I cannot trust the free market to bring down prices on its own (since history has demonstrated if left to its own devices the free market just creates monopolies who stagnate prices), nor our non-Swiss culture to accept strong government intervention (since COMMUNISM *hyperventilates into a bag*). The purpose of the Anti-Walmart is to basically to show that, yes, Capitalism is the best means to get prices stable and improve the distribution of goods. But it will also show that a well managed labour union structure, even on something like retail, will improve the employee conditions there and still help keep prices down. Obviously, this still requires a change in thinking, which is why it's a thought experiment. If the answer was this obvious, they'd already exist and survive. Clearly, they don't survive because the same killers keep picking coops off. But that's because people go "Well that's just the way it is." which is the equivalent to saying "I don't like it, but I don't want to change it either.".
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Mar 30, 2015 03:08
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HBNRW posted:The purpose of the Anti-Walmart is to basically to show that, yes, Capitalism is the best means to get prices stable and improve the distribution of goods. But it will also show that a well managed labour union structure, even on something like retail, will improve the employee conditions there and still help keep prices down. Obviously, this still requires a change in thinking, which is why it's a thought experiment. If the answer was this obvious, they'd already exist and survive. Clearly, they don't survive because the same killers keep picking coops off. But that's because people go "Well that's just the way it is." which is the equivalent to saying "I don't like it, but I don't want to change it either.". How you gonna protect your anti-walmart when wallyworld bribes the local township to eminent domain your outlet and sell it to wallyworld at a firesale price? The world does have an anti-Walmart. Its called CostCo.
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Mar 30, 2015 05:23
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HBNRW posted:Ultimately the goal is to destroy the meme that public companies are inefficient and wasteful so that raising the wage becomes the correct and obvious answer and not the one you must constantly point to past history and math to prove. One way is to have a company that demonstrates these qualities and use it as an example to smash the myth. It's just like Obamacare. If you demonstrate to people, even ignorant people, the obvious and immediate benefit of a socialist program but don't say socialism at any point, people will generally like it and will defend it. People are stupid and hate labels. However if you mask a system with the correct labels, you can get a conservative to go bite on any socialist program as long as it isn't super obvious. You can't be blind enough to have not realized that the reason there is no real difference between retail pricing these days is specifically because Walmart has extorted distributors for the lowest prices possible, to the point that any other retailer purchasing lesser quantities would take a loss due to lack of economies of scale, and ruthlessly undercuts prices until their competition goes out of business based on that leverage. No privately held business 'sits on' their profits. They invest them in company infrastructure, lobbying relevant governmental and regulatory bodies, advertising, and buying off stockholders to artificially increase their share price and thus get better deals from their financial institutions based on perceived value.
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Mar 30, 2015 05:41
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