The Business of America is Business

Zachary C. Courser of the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia has written a lengthy (26 pages) and very well-documented paper demonstrating that "contemporary attacks on Wal-Mart are echoes of the same unjustified charges leveled at retail innovators for over a century."

Over at BusinessBits I found a review of the new documentary about Wal-Mart. Below is an excerpt from the first paragraph. Funny how frequently Michael Moore's name is invoked in these articles. Here, however, its not done in a positive way.

I had an opportunity to check out the new documentary. Michael Moore really raised the bar as far as documentary standards are concerned because this one was hardly engaging, barely interesting, and poorly put together.

Seattle-based MumboJumbo's two posts make one thing perfectly clear- the man is no fan of Wal-Mart. The titles say it all: Wal-Mart caters to the Worst in Us and Effective Marketing = Irresponsible Behavior. Not surprisingly Hillbilly White Trash of Asheville, NC sees things very differently. Linking to Byron York's recent NRO article (see below), HWT sums it up this way: "...nothing made by the hand of man is perfect and, on balance, Wal-Mart does a great deal more good than harm in the world. After all, no one is forced to work there or shop there."
Amen, brother Bill! Amen.
While Byron York's Panic in a Small Town puts the current spate of anti-Wal-Mart initiatives, including the aforementioned documentary, into context, the anti-Fox News site "News Hounds" takes Neil Cavuto, host of Fox's "Cavuto on Business", to task for failing to do so. According to the hounds, Cavuto over- emphasizes Wal-Mart's positive economic impacts, i.e. the creation of a large consumer surplus, and ignores its allegedly illegal business practices. Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post has a better grasp of Wal-Mart's contribution to consumer surplus than anything I have seen in any other major newspaper. The title of his article, "Progressive Wal-mart. Really" suggests that he knows full well that the WaPo's progressive readers will very scoff at the notion that the words progressive and Wal-Mart belong in the same sentence, let alone the same sentence in a WaPo editorial. [Below the Beltway has an excellent summary of and commentary on Mallaby's article.]

Zero Boss and The Modern Guy hold very low opinions of Wal-mart's Black Friday shoppers.
So does Wal-mart employee Variable System Rebel who rants about what it was like to deal with "stupid customers" over the Black Friday shopathon. Warning: undignified language alert!

Christopher Hayes' review of the Wal-Mart documentary betrays a stunning lack of understanding about the determinants of firm performance and the most fundamental concepts of management. He could not have it more backwards when he says: "There’s little secret to Wal-Mart’s success. The company will simply do whatever it takes to keep workers from organizing." This is precisely the kind of thing I have come to expect from "In These Times", a magazine whose founding mission is to “identify and clarify the struggles against corporate power now multiplying in American society.”

Finally, over at Alternet where "the mix is the message" and MoveOn.org is one of the most prominent advertisers, the circle is completed. That is to say, we see how Greenwald's documentary is being put to use by organizations who already have long standing grievances against Wal-Mart. That's a shame because while some- maybe many- of their concerns are legitimate, they bring disrepute upon themselves by hitching their wagons to such partisan hit piece.

Also on this blog:

The Political Dimensions of the War on Wal-Mart and Five Forces Analysis of Wal-Mart and The Economic Impact of Wal-Mart and The Empire Strikes Back or the entire Wal-Mart series

Technorati: black friday and wal-mart and walmart

Linked at: The Political Teen and Don Surber