Walton for Nobel Peace Prize?
We live on too thin a margin to pay The New York Times for the "privilege" of reading John Tierney, but this blurb caught our eye:
I don't want to begrudge the Nobel Peace Prize won last week by the Grameen Bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus. But has he done more good than Sam Walton?Sam Walton for a Nobel Peace Prize? Could someone with more resources than sense please subscribe to TimesSelect and let us know if this is Tierney's argument.
Granted, most of the exploitation by Wal-Mart comes from his greedy heirs after Sam's death, but a Nobel?
Too much.
posted by jake at 5:37 AM
2 Comments:
Perhaps you should read an article before offering a critique. Here's a link I found: Walmart/Nobel Peace Prize article.
I found your website searching for this article - perhaps you should have done that - and I haven't read other posts, I hope all opinions aren't as uninformed as this one.
You can still disagree with the principles in the article - wish that Wal-Mart would stop providing jobs for people, but read the article first. Make an informed opinion. Otherwise it just looks like you're not thinking, just repeating opinions of someone else.
A quick glance at the blog sure makes it look like this is the case - certainly I haven't tracked your blog or read all the articles - but I did give you more consideration than you did of the editorial on Wal-Mart.
Thanks for the link, anonymous.
If you had bothered to read my post you would have seen that I admitted up front that I had not read the article, only seen the blurb.
After reading Tierney's complete essay, I still find no convincing evidence that Sam Walton should be given the Nobel Peace Prize. The only mention of Sam Walton is in the lead paragraph.
Most of the article is about how third-world workers can "can lift themselves out of poverty much faster by getting a job in a factory."
Does anyone really believe that Wal-Mart, as a corporation, cares one way or another if their buying a cheap product helps the worker out of poverty? Will Wal-Mart, the corporation go out of its way to make sure the factory worker has a safe work environment?
What happens to the worker when Wal-Mart decides not to buy from a particular factory? Will they make sure the worker is able to provide for his family?
Wal-Mart does not have a very good record of taking care of its own workers, so what make anyone think they care one iota about some worker in Bangladesh, or China?
Regardless of the immediate effect that Wal-Mart, or any corporation for that matter, has on the life of a third-world factory worker, they are not making any decisions based on anything other than corporate profit.
How does that qualify them for a Nobel Peace Prize? How does that qualify Sam Walton for a Nobel Peace Prize?
Post a Comment
<< Home