In Wal-Mart We Trust

Co-blogger Steve's research on the role of Wal-Mart in the post-Katrina period has been the subject of several media articles and interviews.  Here is an excerpt from the most recent article in the National Post regarding the actions of Wal-Mart:

This benevolent improvisation contradicts everything we have been taught about Wal-Mart by labour unions and the "small-is-beautiful" left. We are told that the company thinks of its store management as a collection of cheap, brainwash-able replacement parts; that its homogenizing culture makes it incapable of serving local communities; that a sparrow cannot fall in Wal-Mart parking lot without orders from Arkansas; that the chain puts profits over people. The actual view of the company, verifiable from its disaster-response procedures, is that you can't make profits without people living in healthy communities. And it's not alone: As Horwitz points out, other big-box companies such as Home Depot and Lowe's set aside the short-term balance sheet when Katrina hit and acted to save homes and lives, handing out millions of dollars' worth of inventory for free.

And from the conclusion of the article:

Aside from the public vs. private issue, Horwitz suggests, decentralized disaster relief is likely to be more timely and appropriate than the centralized kind, which explains why the U.S. Coast Guard performed so much better during the disaster than FEMA. The Coast Guard, like all marine forces, necessarily leaves a great deal of authority in the hands of individual commanders, and like Wal-Mart, it benefited during and after the hurricane from having plenty of personnel who were familiar with the Gulf Coast geography and economy.

Be sure to read the entire study and please join me in congratulating Steve in his success.

Comments

[Steve Horwitz]

Thanks Chris. What's great about that piece is also this bit:

"No one who is familiar with economic thought since the Second World War will be surprised at this. Scholars such as F. A. von Hayek, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock have taught us that it is really nothing more than a terminological error to label governments "public" and corporations "private" when it is the latter that often have the strongest incentives to respond to social needs."

Can't ask for a more knowledgeable print media column that that, esp. in one of the two big Canadian dailies.

[matthew mueller]

It is nice to see Dr. Horwitz receive the media attention that he clearly deserves. I have tremendous respect for your work and research in Austrian economics.

[liberty]

And its great that private business can get its moment too. A lot of talk about how FEMA failed, but little about who actually helped. A few words about the Red Cross and so forth, but not a whisper about folks like Wal-Mart (the shop I love to love).

So, thanks. Good work.

[Earthceuticals]

Yes congrats on the work. And kudos go out to Wal-Mart which has shown again and again that these folks always do more than they need to. How many of the mom and pop stores could could have helped... had they wanted to do so? And I am not s sure anybody failed the people of New Orleans. It was a huge amount of water. We are seeing the same now in the midwest. Yet we don't see the same outcries that anybody is failing anyone. I think everybody who should have helped with Katrina did what they could... and we are learning alot of people did way more than they needed to.