[MD] Ham unlike you I will not create false idols

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Arlo previously]
Of course, I expected your "academic" response in denying the validity of  any
article that disagrees with your worldview.

[Platt]
I love the way you constantly pat yourself on the back for being smarter, wiser
and more discerning than someone who doesn't buy your line about academic
superiority.

[Arlo]
You mean the line about cogent argument being superior to blind faith supported
by distortive and deceptive rhetorical tactics? Yeah, I think the former leads
to better "discerning", while the latter makes one a ideologue. You can scream
that tenacity and reason are equal approaches to understanding the world, but
historically one has proven "better", even if historically the other has been
"more popular". Of course, that's not to say "reason" is the end all of
understanding, just that for making sense of the world it does a better job
that "I believes what I believes and that's that".

[Arlo previously]
Who sponsored the positive ones? Why doesn't that concern you? Oh right,  the
liberal conspiracy thing again.

[Platt]
Nice ducking the question by changing the subject.

[Arlo]
What you're really trying to do, Platt, is to paint the picture that everything
is biased, and so there is nothing wrong with accepting as "true" only those
articles that conform to your personal bias. This is, of course, one of the
long standing historical "reasons" always used to discredit the academy in
favor of propagandistic writing.

This is an attempt, of course, to reduce the fixation of belief to "tenacity"
and "faith", saying that there is nothing greater than these two. Just believe
what you want to believe, and judge everything else as biased.

Sadly, once again you only show how unfamiliar you are with peer review and the
academy. You must think that only "anti-business" bias is regarded well in the
academy, but you're quite mistaken. The same authors that have cogently and
correctly found that Walmart has an overall negative impact on communities, are
the same authors that have found that Starbucks does not. And there have been
publised rebuttals to these, rebuttals that demonstrate inferior reasoning on
both accounts.

Some facts are undeniable, community wages drop when a Walmart opens, and
counties with one or more Walmarts show an inability to recover from poverty
rates statistically significant compared to the rest of the population. 

[Arlo previously]
Can one teach the MOQ without thumping it?

[Platt]
Sure. One can read ZMM and Lila then decide for herself what to take and what to
leave.

[Arlo]
What you appear to be advocating is closing all schools in favor of bookstores.


[Arlo previously]
So people can make informed decisions about what effects their consumer 
choices have.

[Platt] 
You mean you want to convince them to pay a local store $1.25 for a can of 
Campbell's soup  when they can get the same can at Walmart for 89 cents. Lotsa
luck.

[Arlo]
Which is exactly my point. One should be more concerned about the loss of wages,
which will come back and impact the consumer with far greater negative
end-results, than with the 36 cents price differential. This is similar to the
modes of thinking criticized in ZMM, where "immediate gratification" (36 cents)
must be contrased with "long term results" (greater wages in the community mean
more consumer choices, a stronger tax base for road repair, libraries, police
and fire, and schools).

Not to mention that real wealth is generated by manufacturing, not by retail and
hospitality. Walmarts "success" is based on the fact that it has moved it
manufacturing to cheap, overseas countries, so that 36 cents also displaces a
large number of manufacturing jobs here in the U.S.

The National Review, in 2003, published an article "Manufacturing: A crisis
alert", which sided with an NMA study saying, "If the U.S. manufacturing base
continues to shrink at its present rate and the critical mass is lost, the
manufacturing innovation process will shift to other global centers. Once that
happens, a decline in U.S. living standards in the future is inevitable." The
article concludes...

"Dozens of other manufacturing sectors are experiencing the same rapid decline
as electronics, aerospace, and textiles. If these losses are not reversed
quickly, U.S. incomes and living standards will fall correspondingly. ... The
accelerating decline of American manufacturing is largely the consequence of
U.S. trade policies that encourage the shift of factories and jobs to other
nations and pit U.S. workers against penny-wage foreign competitors, operating
subsidized factories in highly protected markets. ... Manufacturing in America
really does matter."

Steven Voigt, writing for Renew America (a strong conservative organization,
check out their banner ads) writes, "The manufacturing jobs we are losing are
the so-called family wage jobs — solid jobs with good benefits and wages that
can support a family. These are the jobs that once made the nuts and bolts for
tanks, steel beams for skyscrapers, and wooden planks for houses. As the chart
below illustrates, no industry sector has been spared."

That 36 cents is false savings, that's the message that should be getting out. 

Arlo