Slashdot Log In
Wal-mart's Wikipedia War
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Apr 28, 2006 09:27 AM
from the wewwy-inwestingw dept.
from the wewwy-inwestingw dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Whitedust is running an article which claims that lobbyists for Wal-mart have successfully waged a war against a fair viewpoint on Wikipedia's Wal-mart page. From the article: "Although Wikipedia maintains a 'Neutral Point of View' (NPOV) policy, the Wal-mart page is highly biased. Additionally, all criticism has, contrary to policy, practice, and the general opinion of those concerned, been moved to a Debates Over Wal-mart section. Even that page has noticeable resistance to negative points of view about Wal-mart."
Related Stories
[+]
News: The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart 731 comments
Charles Fishman, senior writer for Fast Company magazine has recently published a book entitled The Man Who Said No To Wal-mart. It's an excellent book (Yes, I've read it) that talks about the intersection of making good stuff, the commodization of products, and the changing world that we work in; not exactly high tech, but tech nonetheless.
[+]
Games: Wal-Mart Controls Modern Game Design? 696 comments
An anonymous reader writes "That Wal-Mart smiley face is looking pretty evil now that Allen Varney has explained how much influence they have on virtually every modern game: 'Publisher sales reps inform Wal-Mart buyers of games in development; the games' subjects, titles, artwork and packaging are vetted and sometimes vetoed by Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart tells a top-end publisher it won't carry a certain game, the publisher kills that game. In short, every triple-A game sold at retail in North America is managed start to finish, top to bottom, with the publisher's gaze fixed squarely on Wal-Mart, and no other.'"
[+]
IT: The Founders of Whitedust 50 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Whitedust is running an informative interview with their Founders - Mark Anderson and Mark Hinge. In the interview the two Mark's set out the reasoning behind and the future of Whitedust.net." From the article: "Mark Anderson had been on at me as regards doing what he coined 'HTML Ezine' for a long time - I had been a bit of a purist about it but he finally won me around to his mode of thinking. At the same time there was something that had personally been bugging me since @stake took over hackernews and that was the lack of centralized INFOsec information; people had tried to produce a site along these lines but had either become totally bias, or been maintained badly (lack of updates etc). I saw what I considered a gap in the market and convinced Mark that the topic of any 'HTML Ezine' should be Information Security (something we both knew a fair bit about anyway)."
[+]
Slashback: Walmart and Wiki, Alan Ralsky 119 comments
Slashback, as always, provides updates and clarifications to previous Slashdot stories. Tonight we bring you updates on Australian Smart ID Cards, the security danger that USB memory sticks pose, Wal-Mart's Wikipedia War, Lego Mindstorms, LiveJournal's stance on Ad-Blocking software, and news about 'Spam King' Alan Ralsky. Read on for more.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
This was bound to happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with information sources for a localized wiki like Bloomingpedia [bloomingpedia.org] though is that since it is on a much smaller scale, its easier to obscure facts because there are not as many industry watchdogs paying attention to companies and organizations. You have to get the information by working for the company or accept the information that a company provides on its website or product brouchures.
Re:This was bound to happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
I generally agree with your overall comments, but I do have issue with the statement above. Really, you should say that those "who are interested in a NPOV are outmanned by those with an agenda". Profit is only one aspect and generally implies that it's people like Walmart (and other companies) who are really the "bad guys". In the referenced article, the author even mentions that at one point the Walmart page was highly critical of the company. Fact is, many people (who are not Walmart corp competitors) have various personal interests that are negative towards the company (justified or not). The key is to make sure that the pendulum doesn't swing too far in EITHER direction. If most of the news posted about Walmart is negative (and after all, isn't that the nature of news, if Walmart was humming along not doing anything too bad, then you'd hardly hear anything about them), then does a wiki page that simply accumilates these news articles then also biased towards the negative? Does the NPOV imply that any negative comments should be "evened out" by positive? Sticky issue this, but plese retain a NPOV when it comes to those who would attempt to subvert the wiki concept, it's people/orgs with alterior motives, profit or not.
Parent
Re:This was bound to happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
As the previous poster wrote, neutral reporting doesn't imply any sort of balance. Just do a quick sanity check at the extremes: how would you keep the Wikipedia page on the Nazi regime balanced--by giving equal coverage to their progressive stance on animal rights or their smart fashion sense? Neutral reporting means listing all known and provable facts, and if the final tally of "good" and "bad" doesn't balance, well, that's real life.
Parent
Re:This was bound to happen. (Score:5, Interesting)
Believe it or not, about 20 years ago, PBS refused to air a Canadian documentary about the Soviet Union's deliberate creation of a famine in the 1930's in Ukraine, even though the film won many awards from credible organizations. Their excuse was that the Soviets didn't get to present their viewpoint!
(Ultimately, PBS did run the film, called "Harvest of Despair," but only because William Buckley ran it on his program. Even then, they forced Buckley to include a discussion with a panel of "experts," who bashed the film.)
Parent
Re:This was bound to happen. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:This was bound to happen. (Score:5, Informative)
This is not Wikipedia's definition of NPOV [wikipedia.org]. What you are talking about is more similar to "balance." The idea behind NPOV is to state obvious facts where the facts are known, and to present opinions as opinions. This has nothing to do with "2 sides," and trying to be definitively centrist is in fact against the NPOV policy.
There are plenty of valid criticisms of NPOV. Even many Wikipedians admit that it is an ideal to strive for, not something that can be accomplished entirely. But your strawman is entirely irrelevant to this debate.
Parent
There is ALWAYS bias. (Score:5, Insightful)
However even the facts you choose to present, order presented in, and context can exhibit bias.
Two facts given in the article:
These are two verifiable facts. The facts make Wal-Mart look bad. Now assume we remove the second fact, or move it into a list of stores which have been closed, so that its no longer easily connectable. All the facts are still present, but Wal-Mart in that case comes out looking neutral or good.
There is always bias. Even when sticking to the facts. I think the idea here is that one sides point of view is being systematically repressed by eliminating even the mention of facts and controversy. This is not in the interest of a healthy public debate.
Parent
Re:There is ALWAYS bias. (Score:5, Interesting)
As for myself, I'd give just about anything to get a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the middle of the Silicon Valley area. When I think that strawberries from Watsonville (an hour from here) cost less in Tennessee at a WMSC than they do locally at Albertsons, it becomes immediately obvious how badly the general public is getting screwed by these other chain stores. Hint: there are more Albertsons stores (2500) than WM Supercenters (2000), therefore Albertsons has MORE buying power and should be able to charge LESS for everything. So why do I pay, on average, half again more for groceries than folks at WM Supercenters in similarly expensive metro areas? I'll tell you what it isn't. It isn't the cost of employees. They make up a tiny fraction of the overhead of running a store.
The answer is corporate greed... and on the grand scale, Wal-Mart shows less corporate greed than most other companies. This is why their stock isn't doing much in spite of huge total revenue. They're not perfect, but they're a heck of a lot better than most of the alternatives. When I can buy a COLD soft drink in a vending machine outside a Wal-Mart for about what it costs to buy it in a twelve pack at Albertsons or Target, somebody is getting greedy, and it isn't Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart is a good example of how to run a business, on the whole. Yes, they could be better about benefits, but to their credit, they are steadily working on adding things like clinics to the stores in an effort to reduce their health care costs so that they CAN improve the benefits they offer to their employees without it breaking the bank. And they are already better than most small, non-chain employers; 49% of businesses with under 100 employees don't offer any insurance at all according to a recent government survey.
And FWIW, everyone I've asked who has worked at Wal-Mart said that they had health insurance. Every Single One. Not everyone is eligible, granted, but most of the ineligible are also people who probably should be looking for jobs that require less physical robustness anyway, and thus really shouldn't even attempt to work at Wal-Mart.
So to the critics, spare us the bleeding heart crap. Wal-Mart fills an important public need, driving ludicrous costs down to something more reasonable that everyone can afford, providing good work experience for high school students during the summer, bringing jobs and much-needed supplies to areas where most companies won't even go, etc. They may not be perfect, but without Wal-Mart, living anywhere in the U.S. outside of major metro areas would really, really suck. On the whole the good things that they do for our country FAR outweigh the bad, and IMHO, the Wikipedia article reflects that. It isn't corporate defacement. It is simply showing Wal-Mart without the evtremely negative bias that some people would like to throw into the mix to detract from fairness.
Parent
Re:There is ALWAYS bias. (Score:5, Funny)
[unsupported assertion] [speculation]
[anecdotal evidence] [moral relativity] [faulty logic: more stores does not equal more buying power, more money equals more buying power.] [unsupported assertion]
[unsupported assertion] [faulty logic: price of stock is no indicator of corporate greed or lack thereof] [unsupported assertion] [faulty generalization, not to mention failing to account for other reasons why the price of one item would be kept below market: loss-leader]
[undocumented claims][false reasoning][undocumented claims][incomplete comparison: what are Walmart's numbers? Does the legal requirement have anything to do with it?]
[anecdotal evidence][unsupported assertion combined with generalization]
[ad hominem attack][faulty assumption: will we tolerate anything in the name of lower prices?] [faulty assumption: is Walmart really the only store offering affordable prices?][unsupported assertion][undocumented claim][unsupported assertion][statement of opinion, thankfully labelled as such] [unsupported assertion][unsupported assertion]
Parent
Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
All in all, I can't find any hard evidence to support his claims, and the remaining evidence he presents seems to be nothing more than, "I think this page should be more critical of Wal-Mart, therefore there must be lobbists at work!" While that's a nice sentiment, it doesn't make for a smoking gun.
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Funny)
Adolf Hitler was the fuehrer of Germany, who reformed the German economy in the 1930s. He enjoyed painting and playing with his dog. He married his lifelong sweetheart, Eva Braun, two days prior to his death.
See also: Criticism of Adolf Hitler
Seems fair to me.
I know, I know
Parent
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Interesting)
It depends upon what you call, "fair and balanced".
A news organization's purpose is to inform, not to proffer an opinion. In the area of informing, NPR does better than Fox. For example, more than 60% of Fox News listeners thought the US found WMD's in Iraq, less than 20% of NPR's listeners thought the same. Since Washington has admitted that no WMDs were found, which news organization did a better job of informing its listeners?
Parent
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you mean should be. Traditionally, US media's purpose has been neither; it has been to profit. Fox news is breaking new ground in pushing a particular point of view. I guess it is profitable, too.
Parent
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Funny)
However, since they were highly advanced biological weapons developed with the help of ex-Soviet scientists, we hid the discovery. These bio-weapons are being further developed in the hope that they can later be deployed against the Chinese, the Iranians, the North Koreans and, of course, the French...
Parent
Correlation vs. causation (Score:4, Insightful)
That statement is flawed in that it jumps to the conclusion that correlation implies causation. (The actual study was pretty clear in stating it only found correlation, but of course all the left-wingers went nuts over it mistakenly jumping to the conclusion that it meant causation.)
If you were to ask the Fox and NPR audience if they believed it had been scientifically proven that man is causing global warming, you'd probably find that the Fox viewers are "better informed." It hasn't been scientifically proven that man is causing global warming, but a greater percentage of the NPR audience probably believes it because it's dear to them and their threshold for belief on it is lower. In other words, it's just a correlation due to the political leanings of the two audiences.
If you select a fact on a topic that's widely liked or disliked by the groups, you're going to come up with a bias independent of the quality of the news service. Therefore to test the quality of news services, you need to select facts that are neutral or equally liked to disliked by both audiences.
Parent
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
Following which it immediatelty jumped up in April [usatoday.com].
Or did they report there was a "civil war" in Iraq? One of those is factually true, the other is not.
What do you mean? Someone gets to officialy declare "a civil war"? Or is it based on the amount of armed militias, sectarian gangs, and random thugs blowing things up and killing people by the hundreds? In the first case, no civil war was ever fought, ever as there are no valid, legitimate "sides" to "officialy" declare it, before it starts. If it is the other, a "civil war" is simmering in Iraq.
Which of them makes one "better" informed? I guess it's a matter of opinion.
Not emphasising one, versus the other (which is your whole beef here) does impact the listener's information. However it pales in comparison with simple partisan hackery which places like FOX and much of the corporate media represent. The point is that none of the so called "news" organizations should engage in either. No careful selection of news items to fit an agenda, but far more importantly a severe separation of "news" from "opinion". There are many privileges granted to newsmen in exchange for their supposed allegiance to truth, not to the bottom line. If they are unable to fulfill their part of the bargrain, all their privileges should be revoked and the so-called "news" channels severely penalized by FCC via revoking their licenses and granting the bandwith to real news organizations.
Parent
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Informative)
So NPR ignores positive news in Iraq? Subtle and devious. Of course, I'm sure you checked your fact with a simple web search.
Oh wait...
Rate of New U.S. Deaths Declining in Iraq [npr.org]
Now, I don't mean to be a complete jerk by pointing this out. Just 80 percent jerk. The other 20 percent wants people to actually go and read, listen, or watch the news source before they criticize it.
Informed opinion makes the discussion more interesting, and civil.
Parent
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Informative)
http://65.109.167.118/pipa/pdf/oct03/IraqMedia_Oc
Parent
also wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Providing a particular slant along with the news, if the slant is overwhelming enough to create the vast distortions perpetrated by the likes of Fox News, then said organization isn't really informing, rather, they are misleading.
Afterall, sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken :) You can say it does, pretend it does, demand that it does, get legislation passed that says it does, but it doesn't.
Parent
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3861197.stm [bbc.co.uk]
"But the US military said the agent was so deteriorated it posed no threat."
"But the US military said that while two of the rockets tested positive for sarin, traces of the agent were so small and deteriorated as to be virtually harmless."
How much of a 'MASS' could one hurt with these 'WMDs'? Makes me suspect Minter's book is self-descriptively titled.
Parent
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Informative)
The Walmart page falls victim to this, as well as presenting a set of very positive facts at the top of the "Debates" page to create an anchor point for perceptions skewed toward the positive. Setting such an anchor point goes a huge way to diminish the perceptual impact of any following negative information.
Clearly the people on Walmart's side have a solid understanding of these psychological principles, which doesn't surprise me from a company that employs "greeters" to make themselves feel more friendly. The people at Wikipedia obviously are missing the point if they think NPOV means "just presenting facts".
Avoiding bias entirely is impossible, but the best way to minimize it would be eliminate excessively positive framing on a page intended to highlight debate over negative aspects of the company, and enforcing that a roughly comparable amount of information gets to be presented by both sides.
If the sides can't get along or agree, the arguments can always be broken out into two separate pages, each of which gets to be edited by a contingent of people who clearly fall on one side or the other of the argument, and each gets to select their own set of facts that support their argument (but still attempt to maintain at least a neutral use of language). NPOV or not, I've seen this approach used on other pages, such as some Israeli-Palestinian related pages, where the participants otherwise would just get into non-productive edit-wars.
Parent
Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, that's quite a security expert there! I wonder how much it would cost to hire Whitedust Security to hang out on IRC and make up conspiracy theories about people attacking my network?
How about having an open mind? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying Walmart are saints or anything, but it seems like many people are starting with the assumption that Walmart is bad and then trying to find evidence that supports their prejudice. C'mon. Have an open mind. Maybe Walmart isn't the great satan afterall.
Re:How about having an open mind? (Score:4, Funny)
Wait a minute? Some people consider Wal-Mart to be a "great satan"? I thought SCO was the "great satan". Or was it the Oil Companies?
Now I'm really confused....Maybe I should look up Great Satan [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia. Oh, damn! I LIVE in the Great Satan! Is there some pill or something I can take for that?
Parent
Re:How about having an open mind? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is NOT BIAS to conclude that a thing is true. In this case, Wal-Mart has indeed made a policy of annihilating unions, shutting down entire stores to do so. It has crushed suppliers into a no-win situations. It has dropped wages overall. It has pumped manufacturing overseas. It has passed health care costs onto the taxpayers. These are things that are real. They are not opinions. That the earth orbits the sun, that hemoglobin carries oxygen, that heat in ocean water powers hurricanes, these are not opinions.
"Bias" is not refusing to provide both "points of view" if there is only one justifiable point of view. The "bias" meme has destroyed the news coverage in the U.S., rendering it worthless for sane evaluation of reality. There will always be a well-funded tiny group of businessmen who are willing to provide an instant astroturf group that will provide the "other side" of any economic or political issue, even if they have to invent a set of pseudofacts to spout. As long as the "bias" meme runs its course in the new media, the talking heads will provide both "sides" in a sprightly debate. Since the pro-business side is well funded and quite well manned, they not only create a debate where none is justified, they wear down and exhaust the quite unfunded and unmanned "other side" representing reality.
I heard a little story about Al Gore the other week. After the 2000 election, you may recall that he took a teaching position at Harvard (I think) at the school of journalism. You may also recall he left after a short time. Turns out he was lecturing the students about this very "bias" meme. He told them that it was their journalistic duty to not only to provide different points of view, but to *provide context* about those points of view -- taking a stand about the falsity of an argument. That their job was not to provide a forum for two "sides" to talk, but to question and point out that one side's arguments were actually not true if that was the case -- and this is important, not to provide a forum for false information if the information was indeed false. Apparently the students, all of which have signed on the Goldbergian "Bias" meme, revolted and wouldn't listen, and Gore eventually surrendered and left, defeated by the bias meme.
The thing to take away from that is that even Harvard's school of journalism is graduating a class of fake journalists who won't call a lie a lie, and will go on providing forums for liars to lie, and call themselves non-biased thereby. That's the best of the breed. And they will suck as journalists, and the liars will hold dominion for decades.
Parent
Re:How about having an open mind? (Score:5, Informative)
To be sure, there are a lot of poor, arbitrary, or economically inaccurate accusations hurled at Wal-Mart, the "evil corporation that steals jobs from Americans" (for example). Some people have probably reasoned out their arguments; most haven't. I personally have no problem buying inexpensive Chinese-made goods, or shopping at a store that pays minimum wage, or shopping at a store that hires immigrants. I do have the choice to buy local goods from better-paying mom-and-pop stores, and I exercise that choice often.
One heinous crime committed by Wal-Mart that I can't excuse, though, is property theft. Going by the euphemistic "eminent domain", Wal-Mart frequently colludes with corrupt city administrations to seize land from its legitimate owners and give it to Wal-Mart for stores and parking lots. Wal-Mart slips some thick envelopes under city councillors' doors and promises to generate more property tax revenue, and Bob's-your-uncle, Wal-Mart gets permission to tear down your building and take your property. The whole damn lot of their management should be thrown in jail or worse.
Parent
Re:How about having an open mind? (Score:4, Informative)
Just to nit-pick a bit, I believe you meant illegal immigrants.
Parent
I Don't See It... (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, Wikipedia is not the place to have a diatribe on the goods or evils of any topic, even the much vaunted Wal-Mart. I simply don't see what the complaint is here. Are they disappointed they can't argue about Wal-Mart on Wikipedia? Well Wikipedia isn't the place to do that. That has nothing to do with bowing to presure from Wal-Mart. Chaning a link from "Wal-Mart Corporate Communication Page" to "Wal-Mart Propaganda Site" is not a legitamite edit nor is it NPOV.
Theory and practice (Score:5, Interesting)
But in reality, people who are paid money to do something can spend far more time and effort than those who cotribute out of ego or community spirit. So it is not surprising to me that big entities are throwing a few bucks to their marketing firms to influence the web information flow. And marketing interns don't cost all that much, either: they are typically paid $15/hour and billed at $75. Peanuts compared to real marketing and advertising expenses.
I strongly suspect we are seeing the same thing on the political blogs. Except for those few that have a very large readership that takes self-policing seriouisly (e.g. DailyKos), I suspect that 20-30% of the comments on the key political blogs are being posted by paid agents. And of those comments, many flame-starters and most thread-redirectors are coming from those agents.
I think the "mass mind of humanity" idea ain't gonna work.
sPh
Re:Theory and practice (Score:4, Insightful)
Your vote matters, but it matters as much as everybody else's. It's not supremely important.
Your comment matters, but it matters as much as everybody else's. It's not supremely important.
And this is what the mass mind will look like; a whole lot of people arguing and coming to very rough consensus. It's never going to converge on a set of opinions that exactly match your own.
This may sound obvious when I say it that way, but I'm quite certain a lot of people's disenchantment with participating in these sorts of mass minds (as prototyped by the "body politic" and now popping up everywhere thanks to the Internet) is because they go into it with the idea that they only "win" if the mass mind thinks exactly like them, which rather misses the point entirely. If everybody's not losing a little bit, the system isn't working right. "A good compromise is when all parties are equally unhappy."
One of the things that made me laugh about blogging is that there were a lot of people that were firmly convinced that it was finally going to sweep the world and basically make it hold the "smart" opinions, which by an incredible coincidence just happened to be the opinions these people already held. Here's one of the most egregious examples of that [harvard.edu]. (My personal opinion is that it tends to drag the system away from the parochial opinions of the relatively few gatekeepers in the existing communications media, and drag it back towards the true ideological average of the participants. I leave as an exercise for the reader exactly what that translates to in ideological terms.)
Parent
No contrary opinions, guaranteed (Score:4, Interesting)
Since Wal-Mart is so heavily in bed with China, is it any wonder? They're learning from the pros. Of course they are successful and their business model is indeed efficient. They put a lot of people to work and they offer the average consumer decent prices on all the things they want, from groceries to TVs. Unfortunately, they've taken this beyond the limit of decency.
They would point out the prosperity they bring to areas where they build stores, but they fail to mention the manufacturing jobs they eliminate in this country when they import cheap Chinese merchandise, thereby converting a lot of good-paying jobs into low-paying jobs and sucking money out of the tax base and Social Security.
Their commercials would have you believe that their staff is always friendly, attentive, and knowledgeable, when this is the furthest thing from the truth. I have been to a Wal-Mart in 10 different states and I've yet to find a store that wasn't chaotic, unkempt, and whose staff wasn't lacking decent social skills. I've become so fed up with them that I do not shop there, prefering Target, even when I could save money.
They don't want the truth to come out, to tarnish Sam Walton's reputation with reality. The fact is, these people who fanatically support Wal-Mart are to retail what Scientology is to religon (go ahead Cruise, sue me!). Wal-Mart is best described as the Microsoft of retail outlets, and it shows in the way they handle employee compensation and benefits, not to mention unionization. They are so profit-centric now that they don't care who they crush along the way.
Negative is not necessarily bias (Score:4, Insightful)
Open encyclopedias are prone to bias (Score:4, Insightful)
But as soon as you touch religion, politics, business or other areas where your opinion starts to play a role, you'll have people tugging at both sides of the page, trying to pull it towards their point of view. Wikipedia IS a big platform, after all. People turn to it for information! Imagine: A page, where you can write "what you want" (to some degree, you have to keep it within certain borders), and people will read whatever you write as facts.
Now, don't tell me it ain't tempting.
Maybe the insight we get out of this is not only that companies use pages like wikipedia as a place for their marketing department to develop on. Maybe the insight should also be that we should NEVER EVER rely on only one source for information. No matter how "unbiased" or how "neutral" this source claims to be. Even if the source is indeed genuinely neutral (unlike, say, a certain TV network in the US that claims to be broadcasting news while actually spewing propaganda), their information, or their editors, could be biased.
To be able to really create your own opinion, you need more than one source. Actually, often it's quite informative to listen to propaganda instead of a "neutral" source. As long as you listen to BOTH sides of the propaganda machine.
Naturally (Score:4, Insightful)
The neutrality of article is GREAT! (Score:4, Funny)
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) (also known as 'The Great Satan', or 'Satan-Mart')
Isn't neutral! Thats as neutral view of Wal-Mart as possible!
Citing sources (Score:4, Insightful)
Wal-mart is bad! - Maybe.
Wal-mart treats its employees badly! - Maybe.
Wal-mart has been said to treat its employees badly because the New York Times has written an elaborate article about it with interviews of ex-employees. (link) - Yes. It may or may not be true that Wal-mart treats its employees badly, but there's no discussion about whether the New York Times has stated its opinion on the matter. That's truth, and that's how you can make articles NPOV.
Walmart bashing is really just anti-capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Walmart is nothing but a free company in a capitalist society. Those complaining about Walmart are really complaining about capitalism itself.
Yes, walmart prices some American manufacturers out of business. But that is allowing a switch from manufacturing to service based economy. And, thanks to low prices at places like Walmart, more Americans than ever are able to own a house, and stock that house with Tvs, DVDs, Mp3 players and Cell Phones - even at the salary paid by Walmart!
Yes, Walmart buys Chinese. In fact, it is China's leading trading partner and is giving China a real capitalist change from within - a growing middle class in China is coming up. Millions have benefitted there, and I fail to see how this is a bad thing for anyone.
Yes, Walmart doesn't give the very best health benefits. But it beats having unemployment and medicaid. And if Walmart wasn't providing "low paying" jobs, we'd be paying for them in taxes, instead of collecting tax revenue from them.
I checked the Walmart page and Walmart was called "The great satan" in the first line. Why? Because they decided to sell inexpensive, yet usable goods to a mass market?
I rarely shop there, don't work there, don't own stock - but I'm glad they exist. Because they show, better than anything, the hypocracy of anti-capitalist whiners. You know the type - those who complain that they are entitled to everything the world has to offer, for free from the government.
Walmart has shown that the goverment need not provide every citizen with a DVD player. Instead, Walmart has shown the real way for every American who wants a DVD player to get one - is to make it cheaply and sell it cheap enough.
And that's really why people hate Walmart - it shows that capitalism does what utopian socialism never could.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0451191145/103-4
-Ben
Re:Walmart bashing is really just anti-capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
But, more specifically:
Walmart doesn't give the very best health benefits. But it beats having unemployment and medicaid.
False duality. The choices are not 1. Wal-Mart exists, lots of people have low pay and bad health benefits, and 2. Wal-mart does not exist, those same people are all unemployed. There is also 3. Wal-Mart gives better health benefits.
And if Walmart wasn't providing "low paying" jobs, we'd be paying for them in taxes, instead of collecting tax revenue from them.
Big red flag here: first, you're pretending that the only options are for Wal-Mart to exist in its current form, or not at all. Wal-Mart would still be making piles of money even if it was a little nicer to its employees, and a little more reluctant about large-scale sweatshop labor. Certainly, fixing all of people's complaints about Wal-Mart would seriously damage their business, but this is not an all-or-nothing question.
Second, you pretend that if Wal-Mart didn't exist, the rest of the world would be exactly the same except that everyone who works at Wal-Mart now would be unemployed and living off the state. This completely does not follow. If Wal-Mart didn't exist, things would be different in all kinds of ways -- some other entity or entities would be filling the economic niche that Wal-Mart does now (albeit probably in a different way), thereby providing jobs for many of the same people. It is more or less impossible to say for certain what the overall effect would have been on the economy or people who would have been Wal-Mart employees. You'll notice that when Wal-Mart moves in somewhere, a common effect is for lots of small shops to go out of business, thereby causing unemployment -- so many of the people who end up working at Wal-Mart already had jobs, and your "we would be paying for them anyway" claim is bunk.
Now, I know a lot of people say that these small shops were less efficient and therefore deserved to be put out of business. I disagree strongly, but I won't press the point. I'm just trying to say that you're making a couple of leaps in your argument that don't really follow -- if Wal-Mart didn't exist, it is not at all clear that this would magically increase everyone else's tax burden. Also, people who are "anti-Wal-Mart" aren't typically saying "Wal-Mart should completely vanish from the face of the Earth," they're saying that Wal-Mart is engaging in unacceptable behavior, and should stop. This is very much not the same thing.
I checked the Walmart page and Walmart was called "The great satan" in the first line. Why? Because they decided to sell inexpensive, yet usable goods to a mass market?
Well, no, because the extremists on both ends go too far. This doesn't invalidate the concern that the pro-Wal-Mart extremists (i.e. the people Wal-Mart is paying) are winning.
Because they show, better than anything, the hypocracy of anti-capitalist whiners. You know the type - those who complain that they are entitled to everything the world has to offer, for free from the government.
This seems like something I'd see in a troll comment, and is a complete straw-man... opposing Wal-Mart's business practices is not the same as saying I should have everything for free from the government. I find a lot of Wal-Mart's behavior (treatment of employees, manipulation of eminent domain via kickbacks, heavily anti-competitive behavior) extremely ethically troubling. What does this have to do with the government, or what I should receive from them? This is entirely a
Parent
For Christs Sake (Score:4, Insightful)
PBS Wal-Mart Documentary (Score:5, Informative)
If some would have their way, there wouldn't be this level of high quality documentaries on corporate America. Watch it while it's still available.
Re:...a metaphor for Wikipedia... (Score:5, Informative)
Their Doctor Who [wikipedia.org] section is absolutely awesome, with details back to the early sixties. Similarly, their music and dance genre sections are also good.
If you are looking at hot-button issues you can expect bias. The only difference here is that the corporate bias shows through compared to personal bias from external sources. If you accept that anything that you read has bias and account for that then you won't have nearly as many problems.
Parent
Re:Seems Fair to Me (Score:5, Informative)
Except one of the Big Rules at Wikipedia is "Thou shalt not edit thy own article."
Parent
Re:Seems Fair to Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Troll? Dunno. Don't ever underestimate a person's ability to be uninformed. My stepfather is a lifetime Democrat and retired union blue collar worker. He'll drive 70 miles one-way in a rural area to a WalMart for the selection and prices. As far as I can tell, he doesn't spend a lot of time connecting the stuff on the shelves with teenage Asians working in factory conditions he wouldn't have tolerated.
Parent
Re:Seems Fair to Me (Score:5, Insightful)
> Walmart isn't about fair competition. It is about monopolistic bullying. They can and do anything they want.
We've all heard the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none"... Did you know that it pretty well describes Wal-Mart?
Sure they've often got many lower prices than competing stores and because of their bulk buying power can command even lower prices from manufacturers... that doesn't mean that they can do it all though.
I cannot speak for you... but when I end up going into Wal-Mart looking for something I usually end up being quite disappointed because I am looking for something very specific and they do not have it. Where do I find it? A specialty store.
Believe it or not that isn't very uncommon. While a grocery store stocks plenty of general food if you are looking for a specific cut of steak for instance, likely you'll have to go to a specialty butcher to get it instead.
Why is such a thing so surprising or so bad? Wal-Mart's inability to compete fully across the board leave huge opportunities for skilled people and companies to fill in those niches.
BTW... care to define 'fair competition' for the class?
Parent
Re:Seems Fair to Me (Score:5, Informative)
Here's one article about it.. [alternet.org]
and another.. [willthomas.net]
I don't shop at Wal-mart anymore because saving a buck is not more important to me than encouraging slave labor.
Aero
Parent
Re:Seems Fair to Me (Score:4, Insightful)
They force their plans on somebody? How can they do that? Either politicians force their plans on somebody (that's not really new, is it?), or Wal-Mart can't do anything, because it's Just A Company. They only have lots of money, but you don't have to sell them anything.
On the definition of organic food, I'd probably agree with you. Mislabeling or selling something as something it isn't should clearly be considered fraud, not more and not less.
Parent
Re:Seems Fair to Me (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. You Fox News-types have been insisting for a decade now that anybody who doesn't deep throat huge corporations on demand is a "socialist".
Socialists advocate workers' ownership of farms, factories, and mines.
Regulating businesses is not socialism. Unionizing is not socialism (who brought down European communism? Oh, that's right, the Polish Labor Union). Pointing out corporate misdeeds is not socialism. Taxing corporate profits is not socialism.
Socialism is only workers' ownership of farms, factories, and mines. I know you like to paint everyone to the left of Ayn Rand as a socialist, but saying it doesn't make it so.
Parent
Re:Lost my respect with 9/11 article (Score:5, Insightful)
So? A lot of the available evidence points to a possible conspiracy within the government. Wikipedia is supposed to have a Neutral Point of View (NPOV). That includes highlighting theories and evidence that you don't agree with. Since when did you have a right to scrub the entry "clean" for the rest of us. Where do you get off deleting opposing points of view?
9/11 is messy business. Give us the facts, give us the evidence, give us theories (both mainstream and alternative) and let us -- the reader -- decide. That fact that your deletions/modifications were overturned indicates to me that the system was working.
Parent