The local people simply have to continue buying from the local merchants.
If you agree then there is no problem. Nothing will change.
If they prefer to buy elsewhere, but you think that is wrong, you must force them to buy locally.
That's a problem.
Maybe if you pay $60 instead of $260 for a VCR, that will leave you $200 to pursue "quality of life". The fact that the local guy gives $10 of the extra $200 to the symphony orchestra doesn't attract me to his store to pay $260.
But, why do you assume Walmart means an automatic decline in quality of life!
I don't remember saying that the market does anything more than set prices. Nor have I said that it increases the general welfare. I have likened it to machines, or new techniques of production.
It makes a larger pie. If it is allowed, it continually produces better quality at lower prices. It does this by being a reflection of consumer desires and we are all consumers. It's highly efficient.
But the market doesn't distribute the pie justly because part of the economy is not controlled by the market, something Ricardo was close to discovering - but he didn't quite get there.
I'm not a neo-Classical adherent. In fact I'm highly critical of much they do. They may be "squalid, amoral, materialistic" but maybe they don't want to force people to shop where they don't want to.
Or, don't you think that is amoral - or perhaps it's flat-out immoral to coerce people - to force them to obey your preferences..
Harry
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Tom wrote:
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I've pondered your argument for years, and in watching the course of my own community, conclude that the demise of the local merchants has cost the community dearly. The fact that I may be able to purchase a VCR for less than $60 is poor compensation for the decline in the overall quality of life. Wal-Mart may be a highly efficient retail organization, but it wires all its revenue to Bentonville, Arkansas, every evening and pays minimum wage. Try to get a contribution for the local symphony orchestra from Wal-Mart. Pah!
Further, as one who has in the past been responsible for raising money for cultural and artistic organizations in our metro area, there is no question that getting a contribution from the Gap or Borders is possible, but the amount of time and trouble one must spend going through the obstacles deliberately placed in the way makes it a marginal exercise at best. Most of the time, you don't even contact an office for corporate contributions; you go to the public relations or advertising office.
Your faith in the market is touching, but it seems to be more akin to a religious conviction than a proven scientific theory. I haven't seen anything in the economic literature, from Smith to Von Mises to Becker that makes a convincing case that the market system *by itself* does anything more than set prices on commodities. It is efficient in that respect. But so is the guillotine, at least from the standpoint of the executioner. David Ricardo, one of the most honest of economists in my opinion, made short shrift of the argument that a free market increases the general welfare.
As Ray has written far more eloquently than myself, the squalid, amoral, materialistic world of the economist and the real world of human aspirations intersect only slightly. Ovid's amusing account of Midas in the *Metamorphoses* is highly instructive. After the popular story about the golden touch, Ovid continues with Midas's life. At one point Midas is appointed a juror in a music-making contest between the gods Pan and Apollo. Midas is the only juror that would give the award to the rude pipes of Pan rather than the refined harp of Apollo, and for that Apollo causes donkey ears to grow on him. Midas covers his head the rest of his life.
Midas would have made a good neoclassical economist. He equated everything with gold. He even turned his daughter into gold, thus making her into a commodity. [Turning the daughter into gold isn't part of Ovid, but it has become a part of the story subsequently.] Even after he repented of his ill-advised wish and had the transformation reversed, his tastes, coursened by years of dwelling exclusively upon wealth, was unable to appreciate high art and preferred crudity.
Tom Lowe
****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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