After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Americans were quick to give much of the credit to the economic system of the West. The centralization and monopolization of the Soviet regime, so the thinking went, had stifled enterprise, choked creativity, and stripped wealth from vital systems. The magic formula? Democracy combined with open and competitive markets. It may seem strange then that an array of American thinkers have in recent years come to the defense of perhaps the most awesome manifestation of command-and-control economics in the two decades since Boris Yeltsin climbed atop that tank -- the giant retailer Walmart. And that what they most admire about Walmart is precisely the ruthless ways in which this goliath wields its power.
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The technical term for the sort of power Walmart exercises is monopsony. This power is created when one company captures enough control over an entire market to dictate terms to its suppliers. The basic argument of these thinkers -- which include columnist Thomas Friedman and the economist Jason Furman -- is that Walmart's immense "buying power" enables the company to drive down prices and impose efficiencies on the economy. Furman, now the Obama administration's deputy director of the National Economic Council, once wrote that the benefits of Walmart's power were "enormous."
In his column for Foreign Policy ("Give Sam Walton the Nobel Prize," May/June 2013), Charles Kenny not only joins this club, he does his comrades one better. According to Kenny, Walmart's dictatorship over suppliers yields such grand benefits for the poor that we should export the company's autocratic ways to the developing nations of the world. Kenny wraps his argument in lightness and cheek, even suggesting that Sam Walton, Walmart's long dead founder, deserves a Nobel Prize. But given Walmart's real and growing political sway in America and around the world, Kenny's essay raises two interlinked questions that are deadly serious: Is such a radical departure from traditional market structures and market-based competition really the best way to develop the economies of poorer nations? And is such a model still the best way -- if it ever was a good way -- to run and develop the American economy? And, for that matter, our American democracy?
The first question is all but impossible to answer, at least here in Washington where Kenny and I both work. Although Kenny himself is entirely willing to assume the Leopoldian burden of prescribing what's best for the peoples of Ouagadougou and Chichicastenango, we have no way to tell for sure whether the citizens of the world's less-well-off nations would in fact decide that Walmart's command-and-control model is right for them.
What we do have are pretty strong indications that at least some people do not in fact view Walmart's power as an unalloyed good.
Take India, one of Walmart's main targets for expansion. Governments at both the central and state level have long resisted the company's efforts to set up giant retail centers, due mainly to fears that Walmart will drive legions of smaller retailers and suppliers into bankruptcy. Many Indians even see Walmart as a danger to the country's sovereignty; the activist Kisan Baburao Hazare has said that Walmart will "enslave" India in much the same way as the British East India Company did. Some Indians were also upset that Hillary Clinton lobbied for the company on a trip to India in 2012, and early this year officials in New Delhi opened an investigation into what they say is illegal lobbying by the company.
The story is much the same in South Africa. When Walmart made a play to buy a local retailer, the South African government worked hard to keep the goliath out, fearing the company would drive down wages and replace local products with goods sourced from Chinese suppliers. South African authorities stopped only after Walmart threatened to call for backup from the World Trade Organization and, by implication, the Obama administration.
The second question is easier. America is home to some 4,500 Walmart stores, located in every state in the union. The company sells upwards of 40 percent of many individual consumer items in America, and in more than 30 metropolitan areas in America it controls half or more of the grocery business. As a nation this gives us ample experience to assess whether Walmart's use of monopsony power really has benefited the poor and middle class, especially in the decades since the company grew to be a true national power.
The evidence is damning.
Take Walmart's effects on jobs and wages. Just as the company's massive scale allows it to dictate prices for some goods, the fact that the company employs upwards of 1.4 million people gives it the power to drive down wages -- through the same power of monopsony -- in at least some of America's local labor markets. Worse is the company's ability to distort how its suppliers treat their workers. As groups like the United Food and Commercial Workers have shown, when Walmart applies pressure on its suppliers to lower margins, it also takes money from the people who work for those suppliers.
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