It looks like this one has been flying around for a long time, but I just received an email that joked that Wal-Mart execs be given a shot at running the government given the financial failures of Social Security to Freddie/Fannie and so on. I know this is just tongue and cheek, but when you argue that "government" is this dumb, lumbering, inefficient, beastly and wasteful creature, you miss the chance to make the larger point about corporatism.
Wal-Mart is exactly what happens when government is fused at the hip with the biggest corporations, something Hayek warned us about decades ago in Road to Serfdom.
So Wal-Mart should run the government huh? Silly rabbit, they and others like them effectively do! But they are smart enough business people not to take the actual reigns and to not have you and me, the milk cows, pay for all these so called “failures” that make their business so successful.
This all reminds me of the expression, works as spec'ed.
Where would those "free market" cowboys in Bentonville be when you take away:
1.) Trillions in Medicare to keep their pharmacies pushing pills
2.) An executive decision to weaponize food in the early 70’s which lead to a decade’s long glut of corn-based processed goodies they can sell less than real value
3.) Cheap labor in Asia due to years of government oppression by regimes with favorite nation status
4.) Trillions in Defense budget and petrodollar warfare to subsidize their global warehouse on wheels
5.) Billions of tax payer subsidized under-employment benefits for workers who turned to government programs for health care
6.) A revolving door from board room to lobbyists to executive government agencies which shape policies in their favor
7.) Federal government subsidized housing market (in cohoots with the Fed cartel's policy of ZIRP) causing overbuild out into the exurbs which gave them plenty of new corners to build on
I bet you can easily think of more.
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