Gail Heriot posted this on Instapundit. The comment thread there so far is a shining example of sheer ignorance and bad faith attacks on Arkansas Republicans. I don't care to create a Disqus account to comment there, so I thought I might say something useful here, even if it is by no means a complete answer.
Walmart is headquartered in Bentonville, AR, and is a chunk of the state economy. Whenever the Republican dominated legislature takes up conservative legislation to which the woke rulers of the Walmart empire object, Walmart implicitly threatens to take their money somewhere else.
I'm not saying the Republican politicians are right or wrong to take this into account. I'm just saying it's part of the political calculus there.
6 comments:
I mean, you are allowed to say: they are absolutely wrong to take corrupt considerations into account. We don't expect any better from politicians, but the moral concerns are clear enough. We just have come to accept that we are governed by corrupt, immoral people.
Personally, I think calling Walmart on it would be the best course in the long run. If they are bluffing, good. If they mean it and move, then you know and don't have to weigh it every time a decision like this comes up.
That said, what if you were the representative for Bentonville and you knew if Walmart packed up that a couple thousand of your constituents could lose their jobs? And that would have follow-on effects in restaurants, etc. More small businesses would close, more jobs would be lost from that, etc. The economic cost to your constituents would be significant. And that doesn't factor in the tax losses for government budgets.
Even though I disagree, I can understand the hesitation. If a representative thinks his job is to help out his constituents, it might be hard to see how causing increased unemployment, killing some small businesses, and reducing tax income would be helping.
If a representative thinks his job is to help out his constituents, it might be hard to see....
Certainly true. However, the representative needs to understand where in time his duty to help his constituents lies: in the short term at the expense of greater good in the long term, or in that long term and the greater good.
Too, especially in the short term, crisis means opportunity. The vacuum left were Walmart actually to take its marbles and go sulk somewhere else would be a tremendous opportunity. Helping constituents isn't a matter of doing something and calling it a day. It's a matter of planning for consequences and the consequences to those consequences, and then doing.
Of course, getting a politician--or many business managers--to plan past the end of today is not easy.
Eric Hines
I agree about the longer term.
What opportunity do you see were Walmart to leave?
What opportunity do you see were Walmart to leave?
What did Walmart displace when it grew so large there? That's the first niche. Other niches include those mom-and-pops banding together to form economically large enough replacement establishments just as distributed as the Walmart facilities, and the same for the other businesses that grew up to supply the secondary conveniences. And the opportunity for other, already large, entities to come in now that they no longer have to compete with Walmart.
Or move away from that paradigm altogether and do other things entirely different from Walmart and its secondaries.
Still other things you or I don't think of because we don't have that crisis to clarify our thinking.
Eric Hines
I see your point, but I think their best bet would be to bring in some other large company. The area is built up as a shipping hub, and Walmart has funded parks, museums, etc., so executives don't mind too much living there, I suppose. Of course, if the company that moves in is big enough to replace Walmart HQ, what are the chances they won't be just as woke?
The main problem, as I see it, is that until Walmart could in some way be replaced there would be a drastic reduction in money being spent in the economy. As Walmart HQ stops buying stuff there and a bunch of former employees stop spending money, and a bunch of supporting companies move away, the demand for goods and services would fall dramatically.
The remaining businesses could band together to mitigate this to a point, as you say. But I think it would be a significant economic loss until they could find some replacement(s) to come in, or until enough workers moved away to achieve a sustainable ratio of jobs and workers.
Even so, calling Walmart on it is still the best course, I think. Sometimes you take a hit when you do the right thing, and you just have to cope with the consequences as well as you can.
I also think there's a reasonable chance that Walmart is bluffing. It would cost them a lot of money to move as well, and they have it good in Bentonville.
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