Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

The anti-Walmart meme is a confusing one: the people complaining about Walmart openly admit they don't shop or work there, nor would they ever acknowledge to ever even being in one, but the whole idea of Walmart has their indignation-meter pegged. Apparently, they know-better-than the people who actually like Walmart, and because paternalism is their stock-n-trade, they must save those people from themselves: obviously Walmart-haters are socialists. I never used to shop at Walmart but I make it a point to be for whatever the thugs are against, so now I'm a loyal Walmart shopper, among other places that make the customer the center of their business model.

Walmart is extremely well managed, it has a great return policy that engenders loyalty, it's clean, organized, ubiquitous, innovative, shows backbone against Political Correctness, and customers feel assured that the prices are very good if not the best, so average people feel comfortable shopping at Walmart. What's not to like? Well, lack of pretensions mostly. Stores that sell prestige, which is what many socialists aspire to, have a difficult time competing with Walmart: not enough people are willing to pay the status premium. Plus, Walmart is ambitious, which means competitors have to be ambitious too: another thing that conflicts with the leisure nirvana socialists are after. Also, a lot of the so-called “labor movement” depends on rent-seeking, the PC word for extortion, to keep wages artificially high, hours short, effort minimal, and resentment against owners turned up full-blast. Walmart is anathema to their plans.

Walmart is simply the brick-n-mortar battleground of ideology: liberty in the form of customer first verses socialism as determined by people-who-know-better-n-me.