October 24, 2004

Sam Walton Did Not Sell His Soul to the Devil

Someone recently remarked to me that they were scared of Wal-mart because it has grown so fast. They told me that Wal-mart is the fastest growing company in the world right now. They said they were scared because if it gets too big it will have too much pull in our government.

First of all, the growth item. The person I was talking to is no expert in business and I have not done any financial analysis on Wal-mart, but I have to question that assertion. A start up business may have one customer. If they get 5 customers, they've grown in that aspect 500%. Small businesses have a much higher growth rate in proportion to businesses like Wal-mart. If we're talking about net earnings or something that that, then I can see how that's possible. But that's not how growth is typically measured.

I didn't want to talk about that though.

I want to talk about this idea that businesses should be kept small because they may gain too much clout in government. My rebuttal to this person was, "That is a problem of government, not one of business." But he would treat it like it's a problem of business. As if Wal-mart has no need to be so big.

Ummm... Hi. It's business. Not charity. It's not some enterprise in altruism. It's a business. It operates by trade.

That people actually fear big business because of its influence on government is a sign that people do not understand their rights, our government, or business.

The Constitution was written to restrict the powers of the government and assure the citizenry of its rights. If business can some how buy our rights away from us, it can be safely said that the people running our government are not observing the Constitution.

Obviously, I can understand the outrage there.

But that's not a problem with business. From a political perspective, the size of a business it irrelevant. It's simply not important how rich people are just so long as no one tries to deny them their riches by force or fraud.

But for some reason this young Conservative (Yes. He describes himself as 'VERY right-wing' and a Republican) sees it as a problem with the business.

I hope his way of thinking does not catch on.

Posted by Flibbertigibbet at October 24, 2004 05:13 PM
Comments

Well, people like him, and many other people like him don’t see the government as fallible. They see the people running it as fallible. The people seeking to exploit it clearly are. So when a business or a business man seeks to influence the government with money, they can only conclude that it is a corrupt man, business, or politician.

None of these individuals would dare to consider that if government kept out of the way of business, business would keep out of the way of government.

Posted by: Matt Chancellor at October 24, 2004 06:34 PM

He does have a point though. If some calamity befell retail sales WalMart would likely get a few billion dollars from the government, just like the airlines recently did. Once again though, this is a mistake of the government and not the business.

Posted by: Jim at October 26, 2004 03:48 PM

Just another slavemonger. If he had his way, I'm sure he would have used slaves to make his millions. This is typical of most corporate, right-wing, conservative republicans.

Posted by: dD at January 1, 2005 12:47 PM

dD, you don't know anything about Sam Walton except that he's rich and yet you think it acceptable to cast aspersions on his character. Then, you've decided to take it a step further and make the same statement about a broad group of people.

Here's a change of pace for you: I'll judge you as an individual based on the sum of all my knowledge about you. You're an idiot and a fool.

Posted by: Flibby at January 2, 2005 06:22 PM
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