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Jan. 24, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
42:33
66 Evil Doing Overtime at Wal Mart

Punching back the clock you punch - Is it violent to ask people to work overtime?

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Time Text
Good morning everybody out there in Libertarian land!
How are you?
It's Steph.
It is 8.42am on the 24th of January, 2006.
So, I wanted to chat this morning about a topic that was related to the topic that I was chatting about yesterday, but...
Also, it goes a little bit further, and when I was looking up a couple of things on Rhodes yesterday, and I didn't get very far, because it's not a topic that people get into a great deal, but while I was there, on the Great White Web, Looking for text on roads.
I came across something called why I am NOT a libertarian which was an interesting little document written in a Horrible little mean way, but I thought I would touch on one or two of the points that was in it I'm driving so I didn't get a chance to
I don't have a chance to read it to you directly, but the sort of salient point that was there, I'll sort of talk about, because it's something you'll run into quite a bit, and maybe you have some doubts about it yourself, because it's one of these sort of heart-tweaking topics that people use to keep the reign of evil continuing in the world.
of the reign of evil continuing in the world.
And the topic was this.
Libertarians say that they are against compulsion, and in order to be against compulsion, they say that property rights are, you know, the thing.
You know, that property rights are just the main thing.
And this person was saying, but you can be coerced economically as much as you can be coerced physically.
And he said, oh, if you don't believe me, there's a lawsuit going on at the moment someplace in the States wherein Walmart employees were forced to work overtime
And, you know, if they didn't work overtime, they were going to get fired, and there were some of them who didn't have the money to move, and there weren't any other jobs in town, and therefore they were being forced to work this overtime, you know, as surely as if they were in prison and blah-de-blah-de-blah.
Lord save us from idiots, please.
You know the thing that bugs me the most about these people?
Just the most.
What bugs me the most is, and we run into this daily if we talk with people about libertarian topics, they are slaves to power, they are apologists for brutality, they are quizlings for violence, They are appeasers of state power, and yet they speak as if
They've gone through some sort of theory to arrive at this conclusion.
Now, I don't mean to pick too much on this, you know, unknown guy on the internet who, you know, for all I know, and based on his intellectual ability, if not his writing, he may be around 12, so, you know, I apologize if I'm picking on someone who's picked up their politics from after-school specials on the poor, but It's not just confined to this unknown gentleman, but to everybody.
Like, even the people I was talking yesterday about the roads, right?
This guy's father was, well, we need the state because the roads...
And, you know, they speak as if they've given the subject any thought.
And that's, you know, this is the Socratic... That's the thing that irritated Socrates, too, so I feel like I'm in good company.
But it's like, man!
Just tell me... You know what?
I guess I've never really thought about why we have roads.
I just kind of assumed that we have roads from the government because there was no other way to do it.
But, you know, that may not be the case.
And that's really, I think, what bothers me the most.
That there's no curiosity.
And yet, there's an expression of knowledge.
And that's just such a fundamental intellectual sin that I just have little patience with people who demonstrate it.
I mean, I've been wrong in my life many times, and I've been corrected many times, and I appreciate everybody who has corrected me.
What I really hate is people who say, oh, I know this, and they've never given it a moment's thought, and they don't realize that they've been entirely programmed to come up with this kind of nonsense, right?
I mean, it's no accident that every time anybody's faced with libertarian ideas, they trumpet the same, like, eight things or ten things maximum.
It's because, you know, the whole culture, the state, you know, the state education, I mean, all the stuff you hear, the commercials from the state, the way the politicians talk, every speech, Every campaign ad, all the literature, I mean, it all points at the same thing.
And government is an essential necessity within society because it keeps the peace and does things which nobody else can do, and the free market is fine in a limited way, but at least, I mean, they just don't realize that all they're doing is repeating the propaganda they've been given and calling it thought.
And they have absolutely no question about that.
Like, I mean, I don't know the number of times I've had conversations with people wherein they've said something as silly as, there would be no roads if it wasn't for the government because, you know, private engineers would all vaporize and nobody would have any way of figuring out how to get from A to B. It's just, it's stupid.
It's plain stupidity.
And I have never once, in twenty years of talking to people about these topics, I have never once, okay, once, with my wife, but prior to that, I have never once had anyone say, you know, I think you're right.
I think that, I don't even know why, I just automatically thought that the government had to do it.
Because you're right, obviously there would be a way to do roads without the government.
And, you know, obviously you're right that morality is not something that really works in a universal way, if some people have the right to create roads through violence.
And they never say, I wonder why I thought that?
Like, it automatically came to me.
And it's baffling to me why I would have an opinion about something that I've never really thought about before, and that that opinion would be so much in line with state power, and a kind of moral corruption.
I mean, those weren't my wife's exact words, but, you know, she's like one of the very few people that I... I mean, I'm being generous if I call it a couple of people who have said, huh, well isn't that interesting?
I had an opinion and I don't even know why, and it was a very strong opinion and I was very certain, but obviously I was incorrect, so it's incumbent upon me to sort of figure out why I think this way.
That would be an intellectually Mature and honest and virtuous response and you know, but all these cretins out there all these philistines just parroting away the state propaganda as if they have opinions as if they've thought the matter through and I tell you just I mean if you I'm patient with these people because there's no point having a
Better ideas and just getting angry at people because then you might as well not bother with the better ideas and go along with the flow like everyone else.
But I tell you, in my heart of hearts, I mean, my eyes roll around so far they come back up again the same way.
So anyway, this thing around Walmart, so this gentleman, Mr. Anonymous on the internet, was talking about how this is a form of coercion.
That Walmart, by forcing their employees to work overtime, is coercing them as surely as, you know, a prison guard or, you know, a thief or something like that.
Well, where to begin with how ridiculous this all is?
Now, I don't want to overuse the medical metaphor, so I'll sort of briefly sort of do that one and then I'll switch to a sports metaphor.
So, you're in a small town, and you work at Walmart, and you have no savings, and you have no opportunities, and there are no other jobs in town, and you can't move away, and you have no friends who can help you out, and blahdy blahdy blah.
Well, guess what?
You're hosed!
You're hosed!
And it's not the free market's fault that you're hosed!
It's not your doctor's fault if you don't exercise and eat muffins all day.
You know, weigh 350 pounds and have a heart attack when you're 40.
It's not your doctor's fault.
And you don't go to the doctor belligerently and say, you better fix this.
You know, when you're breaking down his table because you're sitting on it.
You look in the mirror and you say, wow, you know, I really did get into a bad situation here.
And, you know, whose fault is it?
Well, it's my fault.
Now, you know, the one thing that I will say, which is related to what I said yesterday, is that it's not entirely these people's fault that there are no other jobs in town, right?
That's probably 99.9%.
It's the government's fault, right?
And for all the reasons that I talked about yesterday.
So, I just find that's kind of funny, right?
Again, you're just taking this snapshot of somebody's circumstances and not having any clue about how they got there.
And you say, well, maybe these people are too dumb to know their own self-interest, and that's why they never got an education, and that's why they never rose above Walmart, and that's why, what-a, what-a, what-a, right?
They didn't start their own business, or... Oh, okay, well, maybe these people are dumb.
Well, I'll tell you this, they're not too dumb to join a class-action lawsuit against Walmart.
You know, they certainly understand the value of money and incentive and reward enough to want the free money that's ripped off from Walmart by this ridiculous legal system we have.
So, you know, they're absolutely and perfectly and clearly able to figure out their own self-interest and to take action to achieve it.
They just didn't want to earlier, and so they put themselves at the mercy of someone like Walmart, who is, you know, by all accounts a pretty good employer.
And so, let's say that even if this is true, and of course, you know, given the American legal system and the Western legal system, Which is all about plunder and suppression and nothing to do with protecting the citizens.
Even if we accept that this lawsuit claim is true, which is highly doubtful that it is, right?
It's probably just a bunch of people nagging and complaining who are sort of incented by a union or paid by politicians to stir up trouble because they wanted to get Walmart unionized in the worst way, right?
Because, you know, the unions can't get anybody to unionize in the private sector because the capitalists have figured it out and will offer all the concessions people would have got without unions, without having to pay hundreds of dollars a year in union dues to people who fund socialists.
So, you know, the unions are only really expanding in the public sector and they can see that that's not going to last forever, so they're trying desperately to get into the private sector again and nobody wants them.
So it certainly wouldn't shock me at all if these people were all just paid by
Unions to raise this complaint and to cause this must and fuss and get people even more negative about the free market I mean this kind of agitprop propaganda is just absolutely common in every political cause in history you get these kinds of falsehoods But even if we accept that it is true that you know the mean Walmart manager said look I need you to work overtime and these people said no and he said okay well if you don't then I'm gonna have to let you go because you know and I'm just basing this on what the facts of the matter were presented in the
In the article, because, you know, he says, look, I got 15 people lining up for your job.
You know, I got 20 year olds who've got no commitments who are more than happy to work all the overtime that I can give them because they want to get out of this hellhole to some places where they have some opportunity.
So we can only assume that there are lots of people lining up for this recalcitrant workers or group of workers jobs.
Who are more than willing to work the overtime.
And so, what is the Walmart manager supposed to do?
You know, I mean, for instance, I worked in a hardware store when I was a teenager, and, you know, we had to do inventory every now and then, and oh, it was horrible!
I always seemed to get the plumbing and the nuts and bolts section, which was, you know, tricky to count, let's say.
But, you know, you had to do inventory, you know, for a variety of reasons, which we don't get into here, but it wasn't really something that you could just up and postpone if you felt like it.
So, let's just assume that it was for something like inventory, right?
That's generally what overtime in the retail industry is for.
Well, what's the Walmart manager supposed to do?
He can't run a store if he doesn't have an inventory, right?
He can't do inventory during the day.
I mean, we had to do it on a Sunday, back when the stores were closed on Sundays by law, because you couldn't disrupt the stores to that degree.
And of course, you couldn't exactly do inventory with people buying stuff from under you, right?
Because it wouldn't be accurate.
So, let's just say that he can't do it in regular hours, because it just doesn't make any sense, and he has to do it in overtime, and he has to do it, you know, for a number of reasons, some of which I'm sure are legally driven, and some of which are, you know, well, basically you have to figure out what's sold and what, you know, what's moving and what's not moving, and the guy who runs the Walmart store doesn't have any choice about this either.
Like, he has to provide the inventory to his superiors, because that's kind of what they're asking for, right?
I mean, the employees ask for payroll and expect it to be delivered at a certain time, and so it's fairly safe to say that this guy's manager, Earl Romans, wanted inventory at a certain time, and he had to deliver it, otherwise his job would be on the line, and, you know, he probably has the best job in the whole town!
So...
So, you know, what's he supposed to do?
Is he supposed to say to his boss, sorry, I can't get you the... These people don't want to work overtime, and I can't get you the inventory or whatever it is that you need to get from the overtime to you.
Well, of course, that messes up their whole quarterly review at Walmart, the Walmart battle station somewhere in the States, because, you know, they gotta get all the numbers from the stores.
They gotta figure out if this one's worth keeping, if it's not worth keeping, if the price points are right, if the right material is in the right shelves, in the right places, at the right times, and the right prices.
I mean, it's really complicated running retail.
And so, you know, really, what's this guy going to do?
Going to get fired himself because some people don't want to work overtime?
Well, what's that going to do?
Let's say he takes a stand and he says, by golly, I'm not going to fire these people for refusing to work overtime.
What I'm going to do is, I'm going to take the bullet for the team and I'm going to get fired.
Well, that's fine.
You know, there are probably a thousand people who want his job in this Hickville or wherever the hell it is.
And so they move in and, of course, the first thing that they're going to ask whoever wants this guy's job is, would you have a problem firing people for refusing overtime?
And, of course, if a guy says, I'd never do that, he's not going to get the job.
So, you know, within two weeks they're going to have somebody in place there who is going to have no problem firing people for refusing to work overtime.
So, you know, it's not going to do anything to get fired.
I mean, that's a little important when you're looking at your own moral stands, right?
I mean, is it going to change the situation in any material manner?
I mean, plus is it right or wrong?
Sorry, let me start off with the right or wrong, but there are pragmatic elements to it as well.
You know, and I'm simply saying that based on my own experience and logic, which is that I pay my taxes rather than go to jail, although I know that my taxes are going to pretty nefarious purposes by pretty corrupt and immoral people.
I still choose to buy my freedom with four hours of my eight-hour workday.
So, if I knew that not paying my taxes was going to change something, then I would review that in more detail, let's say.
So, what does it mean to say that these people are being economically coerced?
Would they be less economically coerced if they had not had a job to begin with?
Would they be less economically coerced If they had just decided to work the frickin' overtime, and if they really felt, and we'll take sort of the worst case scenario here, right?
If Walmart needed 20 people but only hired 10 and demanded that each one of them work double overtime or they were going to get fired, well, you know, just quit.
And, you know, I know that it's hard.
To just quit, right?
And it's hard to give up something that looks great, you know, based on, it's sort of a principle.
I can tell you sort of a brief story about my encounter with this.
When I sold my company, I stayed on for a little while, didn't like the new management, and I quit.
And I didn't quit to do anything, I just wanted to take a break from working, and from software, and from being an entrepreneur.
And to make a long story short, basically the management were in the process of selling the company to another group, and they sort of begged me not to quit, but I was like, you know, well, I'll talk to this new group and so on, but I don't really feel that we have the same business philosophy, which was the nicest way I could put it at the time.
And so I quit, and then this new company came on board, and they offered me, gosh, $150,000 a year for three days.
A week of labor.
And I ended up not taking the job because I did not like the way that they did business, and I really felt that it was actually a bad business proposition to pay that much for that little labor, which meant that I was going to get involved in, once more, covering up for the incompetencies of my superiors, which, you know, is much more common in modern capitalism.
Then, you know, well, if you work in the public or private sector, it's not too much of a shock for you, right?
What we call the free market at the moment is really ridiculous, right?
I mean, there's so few elements of it left, except in very entrepreneurial software ventures and other kinds of frontier technology ventures.
There's so little left of the free market that we really can't even call it the free market anymore, except on those sort of frontier technology ventures.
So, you just quit, even though it's hard, even though you may be offered a lot.
And what do you do?
Well, you dip into your savings.
What?
You don't have any savings?
Well, that's your choice.
So, what's wrong with that?
I mean, the fact that you end up having to work at Walmart and being unable to quit, Well, that's because you spent your money earlier.
And you enjoyed spending your money earlier, right?
I mean, if you save, I don't know, $500 a month, And you end up with a great retirement fund.
Well, good for you, right?
If I blow my $500 a month and I end up with a pretty meager retirement fund, well, how on earth can I begrudge you going on cruises and going to the Yucatan Peninsula and, you know, going to Madagascar and wherever you want to go, you know, on a moment's dime and buying your birth in the QE2 and all this kind of stuff?
Just go for it, right?
Because that's your payoff for deferring $500 worth of spending pleasure and, you know, high-tech goodies for, you know, 30 years or 40 years.
I mean, I can't begrudge that to you.
I mean, I can, but so what?
I mean, the fact of the matter is that I spent $500 more a month than you did, which I enjoyed.
And there are risks for me.
Right?
The risks for me of spending $500 more a month is that I'm gonna live forever and I'm gonna have to, you know, live in a bachelor apartment and eat Kraft dinner for, you know, 25 or 30 years.
And that's, you know, that's a risk that I take, right?
The risk that you take is that you've deferred all this funzy spending and then you might get struck by lightning or hit by a heart attack when you're 50 and you won't...
You won't get to enjoy your retirement, right?
It goes to those ungrateful grandkids.
Anyway, so... So, I mean, I just don't understand why people have a problem... I mean, I can understand why sort of petty short-sighted people would have, oh, those poor people in this town exit Walmart and so on.
But, you know, they kind of spent their money, right?
And don't give me this that they spent it or they had to rent and feel like... If this is a town where there's no employment, trust me, you know, Walmart is a decent salary.
Because there's just not that demand for the housing, right?
Housing being one of the biggest costs.
And this sort of is something to understand about economics, right?
I mean, again, in the absence of coercion, in the absence of state coercion, you know, everything's equal.
Everything's equal.
Everything is absolutely equal.
And the reason that we know that is just if you look at, well, I want to go and live in San Francisco, because it's a beautiful town, it's in the bay, it's in California, the weather is great.
Well, okay, but like, sure, but buying a house is a trillion dollars, and if I want to rent something, it's like eight billion dollars a minute.
So, that's not an equal choice.
And if I say I want to go live in Crapsville, I don't know, Alabama, to pick a state for no particular reason, then what does that mean?
Well, boy, you know, I can get a house there for like eight cents a month, but, I don't know, I mean, there's bug infestations, and you know, I don't know, like, there's just terrible, there's no work, and if I do get a job, it pays me nine cents a week, right?
Everything is equal, right?
If you want to live in a place with no pollution, then it's going to be more expensive.
Like all things being equal, two towns, one with no pollution and one with some pollution, then the one with no pollution is going to be more expensive, right?
Every choice is equal and it's just a matter of personal preference.
You know, if I wanted to become a lawyer tomorrow, by the time I'm 50 I might make more money, but then I'd have to go through three years of law school and then I have to go through articling 80 hours a week for I don't know how long.
I'd have to start working my way up, and so on.
So, it's just equal.
Every choice is equal, and there's no real reason to believe that one person's choice, again, sans morality, that one person's choice is better than another.
It's absolutely up to everybody's personal preference.
So, the people who worked in Walmart, in this mystery town, it's hard to sort of... I mean, how on earth are they... I mean, they've made their choices, right?
They decided to spend their money, Tell you, they've got cars, right?
I mean, they have to.
You can't live in a small town without a car.
They've got cars.
They've probably got their houses.
They're probably not living on cat food.
They've probably got nice clothes in their closet.
They've probably got a microwave.
They've probably got a television, cable, maybe even a satellite dish.
You never know.
So they've made their choices.
They've decided to spend.
I'm not saying they're blowing their money on booze and chicks.
I'm saying that whatever they have spent their money on above bare subsistence, they have decided to spend that money rather than to save.
Rather than to get an online degree, or go to school, or start their own hair salon, or move to a town with more opportunity, or whatever.
So, they've made that choice.
They've enjoyed spending that money.
And the consequence, of course, is that they have less freedom.
I mean, in the very loosest sense of the word, freedom.
But they have less freedom in an economic sense.
And they will be subjected to, right?
They back themselves into a corner.
You know, face that problem that if Walmart says overtime or we'll fire you, they're going to feel like, well, what choice do I have?
I'm going to be angry, right?
Maybe I'll launch a lawsuit.
But, I mean, there's absolutely no reason for them to feel that way and there's certainly no reason for somebody who is judging the system ethically to have any problem with them.
I mean, I just certainly can't understand.
People might not, might not, sorry, people might not like the consequences of the choices that they make later on, right?
I mean, it's like, the smoker gets lung cancer, he's like, oh man, I shouldn't have smoked, because now I'm dead.
And I can understand that feeling, but there's absolutely no reason to feel that you were gypped, right?
I mean, any more than if you put your dice on the... if you put your chips on the roulette wheel, and you lose, there's no reason to feel you were ripped off.
You rolled your dice, right?
You took your chances.
Yes, I know it's a spinning wheel, not dice, but you know, forgive me for my lack of facility with casino metaphors.
You know, similarly...
Somebody who is unhealthy and overweight and then shows up at a running coach's and said, you know, I have a race in two days.
I want you to help me win it.
Right?
It's like, well, who are you running against?
Well, you know, 18-year-old professional runners or 20-year-old professional runners.
Well, the coach is going to say, I'm sorry, son.
I have absolutely no chance of helping you.
Because if you wanted to win a race, you know, you should have been training for the last five years, right?
You should have been on a strict diet.
You should have been running for three hours a day.
You should have been stretching.
You should have been, you know, drinking your electrolytes and all of this other funky stuff for exercise.
I simply can't help you, right?
I mean, if you want to be an athlete, you have to have certain Obviously, there's some innate skills that you need, but you absolutely are going to have to train and get ready for it and prepare and not be overweight and you can't work miracles overnight, right?
I mean, a lot of things in life that revolve around quality take years of preparation.
I didn't sort of wake up one morning and say, ah, I'm gonna do podcasts and I'm gonna have all this stuff to say.
I mean, it's all the result of, you know, pretty careful preparation until I felt that I was free of error and could begin talking, right?
I mean, it wasn't easy to wait, but you know, I didn't want to put out things that We're going to be false.
I mean, any more than just accidental things, and I think I've got the basics down pretty well, and I'm always open to correction, but I'm not doing things like saying we should, you know, the Iraq war is great, which a couple of years ago I would have been saying.
So...
You know, that's another important thing to remember when you're talking.
Just forget it.
Throw away the snapshot.
The snapshot is irrelevant.
The snapshot is completely irrelevant.
You have to look at the big picture when you're talking about things like violence and power and coercion and morality and blah blah blah.
I mean, you see a picture of Hitler playing with his dog and, you know, assuming he's not in that butch little uniform, you see a picture of Hitler playing with his dog Is he a completely moral person when he's playing with his dog and nice to the children who are around in the Buchtesgarten?
Is he a really great guy when he's asleep because he's not doing anything stone evil?
Well, okay, so he's like, good, good, good, good, good, when he's not, you know, out there ordering the deaths of millions, and then he's bad, bad, bad, bad, bad when he's doing that, and then maybe neutral, neutral, neutral every second that he's asleep, and then good, good, good when he's brushing his teeth, or maybe neutral, and then, you know, when he You know, kisses Eva Brown and tells her she looks pretty, maybe that's nice, he's good, good, and then he goes back.
I mean, you get the point, right?
I mean, it's not like a seismograph of good and evil.
I mean, and it's the same thing is true when you look at a snapshot of somebody's life.
Because, I mean, of course, that's exactly what people who've made bad decisions will want you to believe, right?
They'll want you... They'll want to have all the pleasure... I'm sorry, and in this instance, I apologize.
I'm not talking about bad decisions, right?
They're going to make one set of decisions like, I'm going to spend my money rather than get educated or move out of a town with no opportunity.
They want all the benefits of that decision to spend.
And yet, when they get into trouble because, you know, maybe the Walmart closes down or maybe whatever, right?
This town with 47% unemployment we were talking about yesterday.
Then immediately they're going to want to turn around and have you, you know, blind you to the reality of their choices that led them to where they were.
And that's a natural reaction among sort of amoral, economically going for the big advantage kind of people.
It's completely natural because they want to have their cake and eat it too.
They want the best of both worlds.
And, you know, you only encourage them by giving it to them, right?
I mean, if you want to stop people from being irrational, and you want to stop people from being manipulative, and you want to stop people from making decisions which are counterproductive in the long run, well, you just have to stop funding those bad decisions.
Now, I'm not talking about welfare in general here, and social security, and so on, because, of course, I've been accused, and probably not for the last time, of wanting to throw these people out on their hineys.
And that's not really the case at all, and I'll sort of get into that in another podcast.
But, you know, if you want people to stop drinking alcohol or being alcoholics, then, you know, the first thing that you do is stop covering for them at work.
And you stop lending them money when they run out of money.
And you stop joining them on hellacious weekends in Las Vegas.
And you just do all the things that... You refrain from doing the things that they would want you to do to support them, right?
I mean, that's a sort of basic, simple moral approach, right?
You withdraw your sanction, you stop...
You quit supporting those who are making government bigger, as Harry Brown says.
So, from that standpoint, the people who are in this sort of mystery Walmart town, they are entire idiots.
You know, with the caveat that the government has stripped that town of probably any economic incentive for jobs and so on.
So, I would just say that when it comes time to talking about economic coercion, you know, people have to be kind of precise.
They have to be kind of precise.
They can't just say, well, if you fire someone who doesn't have another job, it's exactly the same as forcing them to X, Y, or Z. It's absolutely not the same.
And if people gave it even a moment's thought, rather than just parroting the socialistic claptrap that we're all programmed with from day zero, I mean, day zero here, of course, because you're born into a socialized hospital.
But, you know, if people just gave it a moment's thought, and nobody's asking them to solve Fermat's last theorem, or nobody's asking them to figure out and re-explain relativity to a four-year-old, none of that is occurring.
All that's occurring is we're asking people to think, you know, for just a moment about what it is that they're saying.
Well, being fired is exactly the same as being forced.
No, it's not.
It's not even remotely the same.
You have no right to a job.
You have no right for other people to provide you with a livelihood.
You have no right to other people's money or time or energy.
You have to give up that notion first and foremost.
First of all, if you're ever going to have a successful romantic relationship, of course, and successful friendships, you have to give up that sense of entitlement.
Otherwise, you'll have no capacity for generosity, negotiation, and compromise.
But in the economic sphere, I have no right to my paycheck whatsoever.
I mean, the only way that I can attain job security is to provide as much value as humanly possible to my employers.
Or, of course, if I'm a business owner, the only way that I can retain good employees is to provide as much value as humanly possible to my employees.
And, you know, that's not secure because I could end up with some irrational boss who just took a hatred to me and, you know, worked to get me fired, or I would probably just quit in that situation.
And so, you know, this idea that...
For one person to decide, sorry, that I don't want to do any more economic transactions with you, to cease acting is not violence.
To cease acting is not violence.
I mean, basically, what's happening with these people at Walmart?
Well, their boss is saying, I am going to stop paying you.
I am ceasing my action of putting money in your paycheck, in your payroll.
So he's just not doing something.
He was doing something, like handing over a pile of cash or whatever, as the money's getting dumped in your bank account every two weeks.
And all he's doing is he's ceasing to do that.
How on earth is that violent?
It boggles my mind how people can come up with this kind of nonsense with a straight face.
It's got nothing to do with violence.
To cease acting.
You know, if I give you $20 a week because I think that you should buy a couple of sodas, and then I decide to stop giving you that money.
I don't know why.
Who knows, right?
You flip me the finger or something.
Well, how is it violent?
Of course, you don't want me to.
You'd rather I continue to give you this money.
And of course, these Walmart employees would rather that Walmart continue to hire them.
Despite the fact that they don't want to work overtime and thus are throwing the entire corporate mechanism into an unproductive and very expensive loop.
And, you know, it just doesn't make any sense.
And the hypocrisy of all of this is just so transparent.
And this is sort of where you can leave this argument with people if they really get hot and bothered about all of this.
It's like, okay, so if people want to keep their jobs at Walmart and if they can't keep their jobs at Walmart despite not wanting to work overtime, they're gonna sue for, you know, lord knows how much money, then obviously they want to make decisions based on what is economically advantageous to them.
Right?
I mean, people have to accept that as a basic fact, right?
It's more economically advantageous for people to continue to have a job at Walmart and not have to work overtime.
Why?
Because they shift the burden of working overtime to other people.
Overtime is just a natural part of almost all jobs that aren't, you know, controlled by these ridiculous state unions.
So, basically, people are saying it is economically advantageous for me.
This is what I would prefer in my economic arrangements.
To be able to work at Walmart without having to work overtime.
Or, you know, without ever having to work overtime when I don't find it advantageous to me specifically at that time.
Whatever, right?
I mean, they may not say I never want to work overtime, but for sure, they're saying that this is my economic advantage.
It's better for me.
Well, I can't really understand why people who work for Walmart should be encouraged and permitted to act to their economic advantage.
And yet, the people who run Walmart are not.
I mean, what sense does that make?
We're all human beings.
You know, ten fingers, ten toes, two arms, two legs.
We're all kind of the same biology.
We're all kind of cut from the same cloth, so to speak.
So why is it that the people who work at Walmart must be free to exercise Their economic advantage, or exercise, to choose actions or have circumstances rendered to them that are to their economic advantage.
So for them to act to maximize their economic advantage is a great thing.
But for the Walmart manager to act to maximize his economic advantage is a bad thing.
Because the basic fact of the matter is that when somebody wants to fire you, you know, ninety nine times out of a hundred, it's not just some jerk who's out to get you.
It's because you're not producing for the company or the employer.
You're not producing more than you're consuming.
Right?
I mean, there are salespeople at our company.
I mean, there was one salesman at our company who was supposed to do two million dollars in a year and he did a hundred and eighty thousand.
Now, based on his pay and his office and his computer and the overhead and the health plan and the benefits package and all of the travel that he had to go through to come up with his fabulous $180,000 and the expense of his payroll, and the overhead and the expense of his payroll, and the overhead is just crazy in businesses, right?
Then, of course, he's going to get fired.
I mean, of course, it's not a subsidy.
And it would be no kindness to keep him on now.
I mean, I'm sure he would prefer it in the short run, but, you know, is it really fair that everybody else loses their job because these guys can't sell the software in a cost-efficient manner?
I mean, I've been working on selling stuff for three months, and I've sold $800,000 worth of software, so I don't have any particular fear about my job.
And that's simply because I'm able to return more economic value than I'm consuming.
And, you know, that's great.
I mean, of course, that's what I always say when I go in for job negotiations, and they say, what's your salary?
I said, well, you know, pay me something fair based on my experience, and don't worry, within six months we'll have another negotiation, and you'll feel comfortable paying me more.
But I'm not going to ask for more up front, because you don't ask for You don't ask for money until you've proven value, right?
I mean, it's the same thing in sales, right?
I don't go to some potential customer and say, Ooh, look at all these great things the software can do.
It's normally $100,000, but I can get it for you for $75,000.
I mean, that's just nonsense, right?
I mean, that's like someone coming up to you and saying, Hey, I got a cousin who does really great kidney transplants, and I can get it to you for half price.
You know what I mean?
What if your kidney's fine?
The guy's just taking up your time for no reason.
So the first thing you do is establish need, and then you prove value, and then, only then, at the very end, do you discuss price.
But anyway, that's sort of a side note that's sort of interesting.
I really have learned a lot about the sales process in the last year or two.
So, for sure, the value that these employees are providing to Walmart is not more than they are consuming.
Right?
Otherwise, they would not be fired.
Right?
So, there's no question that the managers at Walmart are acting to their economic advantage, right?
They're recognizing a basic fact, which is that these people are consuming more than they're producing.
And not just sort of temporarily, but since they're not going to want to work overtime in the future.
If we don't, if we let them out of the system now, then they're never going to want to work overtime.
It's going to, through the internet, it's going to spread to other stores.
All of our other stores are going to demand that they don't have to work overtime.
And why is this store so different?
We're going to have to change all our policies.
And it probably is going to cost them tens of millions of dollars.
And it's going to fester employee resentment to the point where unions can come in, which are going to cost them probably hundreds of millions of dollars.
So, you know, you've got somebody who you're paying, you know, a couple of bucks an hour to, who's giving you grief because, you know, they don't want to work overtime.
And so firing them, you know, it's going to cost you some small amount of money because, you know, you have to rehire and so on.
You have to pay them some sort of severance.
So let's just say it costs you $5,000 to fire this person.
Yet, on the plus, you will get somebody who will work overtime and happily.
You will avoid a long-term labor dispute.
You will avoid, you know, this sort of, we'll create an exception to a rule, right, which you can't have in a sort of chain.
You avoid the problems of employee resentment being festered to come into unions.
So it's sort of hard to say, well, why would, what sane human being would make that decision?
Right?
And I mean, even if the manager did make that decision, oh, I'm going to let these people off overtime, well, he's just going to get fired himself.
And they're going to put someone in who says, you know, we've got a policy.
We've got a chain here.
You have a job because you work for us.
And therefore, we need you to follow these policies.
And if you don't want to, that's no problem.
But you can't work for us.
And no sane human being would ever make that decision.
So, you know, to say that this is some sort of coercion is completely lunatic.
I mean, all Walmart is doing is what all of us do, which is we're calculating our economic advantage and saying, good Lord, there's absolutely no way that I can make this work.
And Walmart didn't want this conflict any more than anybody else did, except maybe the lawyers who the lawsuit is founded on.
But Walmart would have been more than happy if these people had just Worked the overtime, or if there was some magic way to let them out of working the overtime and still get the job done, or some magic way of letting them out of the overtime.
And still making sure that it never spread anywhere else or any of that.
But, you know, there's no magic in this sort of stuff, so there was just no way for them to be able to do it.
So, you know, all they've done is they've said, I simply want to stop working with you.
Right?
In the same way that your wife might walk up to you one day and say, sorry, but I want a divorce.
I mean, it's not quite as catastrophic as a divorce.
But, you know, what are the options?
Do you lock her in the basement and force her to stay married to you?
Well, it's not a marriage either.
Right, so there's simply no way to stop your wife from leaving you if she wants to leave you because marriage is a voluntary relationship and it should be based on mutual advantage.
And if your wife works up to you and says, I don't find being married to you to my advantage anymore, I want to leave.
What are your options?
Well, you can try and lock her in the basement.
You can try and talk her out of it.
You can promise to change.
You can beg and cry.
But, of course, if this has happened five times before and you never do end up changing, she's just going to leave.
And, you know, what are you going to do?
Are you going to force her to stay?
Well, that's exactly the same thing with Walmart.
Your wife is free to leave.
And, of course, if you ask people, are women free to leave relationships that are bad for them, right?
Where they're being abused, let's say.
And people would say, well, of course the women have the right to leave a relationship which is unproductive for them.
It's like, well, then does an employee have the right to leave a relationship which is not beneficial to him?
Yes.
Well, does an employer have the right to leave a relationship that is not beneficial to him?
Well, of course.
And it's not coercive in any situation whatsoever.
So, thanks so much for listening.
I hope you're doing well.
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