“Nobody can challenge the fact that the sale of another million dollars to Walmart helps to save the world.”
By coincidence, I was just watching “Food, Inc.” again today.* Here is the pro-Walmart part of that otherwise great movie (and the part featuring my old buddy Rand Waddoups):
The guy from Stonyfield (pictured above in the frozen frame) actually says the title quote to this post about five and a half minutes in. This post explains why he is full of crap:
WalMart is a good example of the type of firm citizens must not tolerate- the type of firm that harms communities, knows of it, and keeps on harming. WalMart has done impressive (and profitable) things to be environmentally sustainable. They donate major capital to causes. They have a variety of detailed CSR programs. It’s all very distracting from WalMart’s employment bete noir, and it’s designed to be. Because focusing on WalMart’s ill will towards its own staff (eg: the unionization antagonism; the broken employment laws; wage structures that drive down entire regions’ income levels) undermines all the other good work it does. Those good works become hollow, cynical, efforts at “social-washing” despite WalMart’s continued endorsement of its parasitic business model. Yes, it’s good that WalMart is donating $2 billion to hunger causes by 2015. But it doesn’t deserve praise; that’s money it OWES, from systematically contributing to creating the poverty, especially among its retail employees.
Why is this argument so hard to understand?
* You can actually watch the whole movie on YouTube now. It is well worth your time if you haven’t seen it.