Hooray for Wal-Mart
By Callimachus | Related entries in Corporate Business, Hurricane KatrinaNever thought I’d write those words.
Wal-Mart is intimately associated with the fall of New Orleans as a community. Scenes of the looting of a Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District were among the first images the outside world saw of the breakdown of civil order in the stricken city. Later came the story of Wal-Marts in the city stripped of their entire stocks of guns by residents — whether looting bandits or those seeking protection from them or both. Finally, as the city went to full meltdown mode, came images of the police themselves looting Wal-Marts.
Yet Wal-Mart has been at the forefront of the corporate relief effort in the wake of the hurricane.
At 8 a.m. on Wednesday, as New Orleans filled with water, Wal-Mart chief executive H. Lee Scott Jr. called an emergency meeting of his top lieutenants and warned them he did not want a “measured response” to the hurricane.
“I want us to respond in a way appropriate to our size and the impact we can have,” he said, according to an executive who attended the meeting. At the time, Wal-Mart had pledged $2 million to the relief efforts. “Should it be $10 million?” Scott asked.
Over the next few days, Wal-Mart’s response to Katrina — an unrivaled $20 million in cash donations, 1,500 truckloads of free merchandise, food for 100,000 meals and the promise of a job for every one of its displaced workers — has turned the chain into an unexpected lifeline for much of the Southeast and earned it near-universal praise at a time when the company is struggling to burnish its image.
It’s put to shame the government, on every level except the military.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 7th, 2005 and is filed under Corporate Business, Hurricane Katrina. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 8th, 2005 at 11:39 am
I’ve been very proud of Wal-mart the last two weeks. Maybe they should be running the disaster relief efforts…
September 8th, 2005 at 12:39 pm
That’s why most conservatives believe in in the private sector, there isn’t all the posturing and red tape bullshit that goes on, you know, the lies and smears against the people in the other political party….. it reall makes me so angry that we can’t be Americans first – screw party affiliation and get something done, but then politics immediately begins with the posturing to further personal careers…. just sickening!! that’s why I don’t have much faith in a ‘commission’ to investigate this. We both know that it will just be politicians trying to spin everything that comes out of it their way, and some of the spin are downright lies!!!!
The private sector, being smaller than the Federal government, can get things accomplished so much better for multiple reasons. In this case, the Wal-Mart stores have warehouses spread out all over the country (several in every urban area) and that are constantly stocked and refilled which makes it logical for the private sector to provide resources in a disaster.
September 8th, 2005 at 2:07 pm
I hate to introduce obscure science fiction novels at a time of national crisis, but so much of this reminds me of the future world portrayed in Neal Stephenson’s “Snowcrash.”
The government is gone, replaced by large corporations, including one very much like Wal-Mart. People purchase memberships in them and largely sort themselves out according to the sort of class-based “tribes” that have been discussed in relation to the New Orleans survivors.
The thing is, even in the dark vision of Stephenson’s cyberpunk novel, some of these corporations, when well-run, were worthy and efficient protectors of their members.
September 8th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
“The government is gone, replaced by large corporations, including one very much like Wal-Mart. People purchase memberships in them and largely sort themselves out according to the sort of class-based “tribesâ€Â? that have been discussed in relation to the New Orleans survivors.”
A few months ago this kind of arrangement was the topic of discussion over at Samizdata. I made the comment, which interested no one BTW, that we didn’t need to engage in some thought experiment, there were lots of real-life examples to study. “Benevolent protective associations” otherwise known as “”Triads” are the Chinese version of this. They sound good in theory, but the fly in the ointment is that the “customers” do not have any real option as to who they choose to protect them. The triad protecting hs no reason to let them or their fees go, and the triad has a monopoly on the effective use of violence. What you end up with is a non-territorial form of feudalism, and it can get very bloody and chaotic very fast. In other words, the market model can’t be made to apply.
September 8th, 2005 at 5:47 pm
Corporations are good supporters (and sometimes equally good subverters) of democracy, but they should never actually “become” the government. That’s putting moral decisions in the hands of amoral entities.
And as we all know by now, the bottom line always wins out.
September 9th, 2005 at 2:22 am
Despite what libertarians say, some government functions can never be privatized nor would you want those functions to be privatized (would Blackwater do a better job if left to their own devices?).
And I hate to sound cynical, but this could be some PR move by Wal-mart also, but nonetheless, kudos to W-M.