[Vision2020] Free Market Economics

[Jeff Harkins]

Sorry Mr. or Ms. Shoup (I don't know your gender 
and don't want to be too familiar) but you need 
to avail yourself of a good dose of Keynesian economics.

And you have not come close to describing or 
demonstrating an understanding of the WalMart business model.

For a primer, I suggest " The World Is Flat" by Thomas Friedman.

For advanced reading, look at some classics 
economics work by Milton Friedman "Price Theory" 
and Paul Samuelson.  I also suggest that you 
peruse the early works by Peter Drucker (not an 
economist) and the works by Michael 
Porter.  Porter has a couple of books that may be 
very helpful in helping you understand the 
WalMart successes.  Please look for Competitive 
Advantage: Creating and Systaining Competitive 
Advantage (New York: Free Press, 1985 and 
Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing 
Industries and Competitors (New York: Free Press, 1980).

I am confident that you will find the knowledge very enlightening.

Cheers,

At 04:48 PM 1/26/2006, you wrote:
> > You are right about my confidence in a free market. Perhaps you could give
> > me a few examples where an inferior business beat out a superior one.
>
>Let me use a poker analogy. If I had a trillion dollars, played poker
>for a living, and won every poker game I played by going "all in" on
>every hand, would I be the best poker player that ever lived? Hint:
>no, I would not.
>
>This is Wal*Mart's business model: saturate the market, make
>monopsonic agreements with suppliers, and run as thin a margin as
>possible in new stores until all the other business goes under. Is
>this a good business strategy? Yes. Does it contribute to market
>efficiency -- which is generally how a "superior business" is
>understood to work? No. It does not.
>
>-- ACS
>
>_____________________________________________________
>  List services made available by First Step Internet,
>  serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>                http://www.fsr.net
>           mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
>¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20060126/2d780e4e/attachment.htm