> You can hate GM as a model but at least they engineer stuff. You can
> spit upon Microsoft (and every freedom loving person should -
> regularly and with vigor) but at least they make stuff that requires
> an understanding of real things (for example, the x86 CPU
> architecture).
>
> But Wal-Mart as hero?
Pure capitalist SOP, my friend. For capitalists, it matters not a whit how you extract surplus value -- by "making things" or "just selling them." What matters, the sole thing that matters for the pure capitalist, is how much you can extract.
I don't know how many times I've heard the last few days about Wal-Mart playing the role that Ford did back in the 1910s, as the leading US corporation. If a giant corporation either made or sold condoms for shtupping pigs and did it as impressively as Wal-Mart rakes in the dough, it would be on the front cover of The Economist, too.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________ The mass of man[sic]kind is divided into two classes, the Sancho Panzas who have a sense for reality, but no ideals, and the Don Quixotes with a sense for ideals, but mad. -- George Santayana (Interpretations of Poetry annd Religion)