Cobb

Regarding your son's piece: very nice. He plugged into all the things that are psychically important. And you'll notice, he said nothing about Walmart.

In my eyes, Cobb, and to merge this this other post of yours, the reduction of places to shop and the triumphalism of megastores is something akin to "obeying king's or queen's rules". The workers work for too low a wage; the products are largely assembled with oppressed labor elsewhere. Cheap products are only good for those who have money to spend.

I believe that shopping is not a fundamental, but civilized human activity. The alternative is, of course, growing and picking your own cotton, cleaning it, spinning it, weaving it and dyeing it. You can then cut it into patterns and sew your own clothes which your children will promptly wear out in less than a cotton season. And that's just clothing, we haven't talked about food or shelter. I've read enough about the times when people had to do this, John Brown in particular (Russell Banks’ Cloudsplitter) to reasonably assume that given the alternative of providing all of these things (most likely via your 8 working children) that most people will choose to work in a factory and shop.

I set a bottom line of civilized subsistence at the point where families can afford to let their children go to school. That may well be below what we in the US consider the poverty line, but it’s a hell of a lot better than many people in the world can get. My bottom line for bourgie brotherhood is at the point where individuals buy clothes with some sense of fashion – they let their clothes speak about them.

Let us remember our neighbors’ real position. Those people who live in concrete houses or in the bush are ready to work and their lives are no less valuable than anyone else’s. The Wal-Martification of the globe is a step forward for the poor and destitute and a step backward for those of us who have benefited from the head bashing days before child labor laws and the 40 hour workweek. If I haven’t said it before clearly enough, understand it now. Nobody who works according to US labor law, broadly interpreted, has any complaint of substance in comparison to those of the third world.

I think it stretches credibility to assert that any significant fraction of the products American consumers purchase from other countries is the product of pressed labor or slavery. Certainly much attention is do prison labor products from China, but I am, based upon my sense of international labor standards, willing to allow that to go to 5% of imports. If 95% of our imports are slavery free, we get an A, so long as we press for reform. The only way to do that is to enrich countries by increasing trade and creating the same kind of prosperity that ultimately takes market share away from Wal-Mart and towards more upscale retailers, a bourgie consumer choice.

Again, the only way to beat Wal-Mart is to pay more. Shop at Whole Foods, do you?