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Comment by stormbrew | Hacker News Reader

I mean, part of why that is the case is that walmart itself depresses wages. It comes to town, undercuts other businesses, those businesses close, people need jobs, they go to work at walmart (possibly at a loss of income but probably a loss of hours even if not), and then they can't afford to shop anywhere but walmart anymore. And the cycle continues.

It's not like they're doing this in a snidely whiplash scheme-y sort of way but they are still doing it, and they're not unaware of or innocent in the effect they have.

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As someone who makes more than enough money to not have to shop at Walmart, I still shop at Walmart. Even brand name food items will be 20% cheaper than most grocery stores (Aldi's excluded). And meat is just incredibly cheap, $1.78/lb for boneless chicken breast? Yea, I'm gonna keep shopping at Walmart.

Just because I have money to burn doesn't mean I want to burn it overpaying for basic things.

Right, but at some point you have to question why these things are so cheap. What conditions are you helping to perpetuate by buying inexpensive clothes and meat?

Not that you're obligated to spend your money differently than you do. But this speaks to the country's yawning divide between red/blue that some of us choose to spend supporting local economies, buying ethically sourced goods, and generally trying to reduce the negative externalities of our lives. Meanwhile, other people don't want to worry about that, which is fair, but I don't know how culturally sustainable it is for groups to be polarizing at each end of that continuum.

I don’t know, I think the decision to pay workers in literal company scrip had some mustache-twirling behind it.

https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-walmex-idUSN054659132...

I don't think we necessarily disagree here. I think these things are evil. I just don't think they're unique or special in the modern capitalist system. It's all gross.

But I think people get into a cognitive dissonance trap when they try to think of the people who are selling them cheap chicken legs as literally evil, when they can only imagine people doing things like engaging in slavery or wage suppression or whatever as things only people who wake up every morning going "How can I be evil today, I'm bored of tying people to train tracks!"

But nope. That's that guy you met at the last Startup Weekend event doing that. He seemed nice and you had a drink with him. He's a real person with a family and he made his money off diamond mining or selling the work of 8 year olds, and now he's a VC.

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