Not sure if it's my idea that is wrong, or just my way of presenting it. So here is a longer version:
We observe that some people are employed by a company that effectively pays them less than most people consider an acceptable wage. Some say it's less than living wage, but that's probably an exaggeration. Let's just say that the wage is considered so low that this fact offends many people, and for the purpose of this comment let's just call it "unacceptable" without providing an exact definition of what precisely that means. (The basic intuition is that we object against a specific amount of money being paid to a person living in a specific location, regardless of which specific company would pay the money, if the work is equivalent.)
Some people conclude that the company is "evil". Which I would translate as a moral obligation to stop doing such things, and either pay the employees an acceptable wage, or fire them. Other people conclude that the company is doing morally okay, because some people simply don't create enough value that would translate to an acceptable wage without a state subsidy. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to make both of these people agree on one specific answer; not merely about whether Walmart should but even about whether it could pay those people acceptable wages.
Instead of just expressing my allegiance to one of these tribes, I propose solving the problem experimentally.
If it is possible to employ the same people and give them higher wages than Walmart does, then do it. Actually, Walmart succeeds to do it while creating profit and big salaries for its management -- so if you would run the company without the explicit goal of creating a profit and big salaries for the management, you could use that extra money to improve the situation of your employees compared with the employees of Walmart. If you succeed to execute this project well, it could lead to Walmart going out of market, which (if you consider Walmart evil) would be a good thing to do. (I am not trying to solve all the society's problems here, neither from socialist nor libertarian viewpoint, just to improve one specific situation.)
On the other hand, if it is not possible to employ those people without using the same methods Walmart does (if your project predictably fails), then your only possible conclusions about Walmart's behaviour is either that it is okay, or that Walmart should fire those employees; because they don't have other choices.
I would prefer to see this resolved experimentally, instead of writing clever arguments on the internet. I can imagine both results, for example depending on which subset of the current Walmart's employees one would employ. I consider one of the results more likely, but I would prefer to have experimental data instead of a smart and mostly uninformed opinion.
this fact offends many people
That's a rather interesting criterion.
By the way of comparison, let me point out that not baptizing your children also offends many people (because from their point of view you have just pushed your child into the pits of hell). Or, for another example, polyamory offends many people, too. So?
I would prefer to see this resolved experimentally
Um, and who's going to do it? And how would that work-- you'll set up a company which functions much like Wal-Mart? That will be pretty expensive and I am not sure you can do this --...
Note: Originally posted in Discussion, edited to take comments there into account.
Yes, politics, boo hiss. In my defense, the topic of this post cuts across usual tribal affiliations (I write it as a liberal criticizing other liberals), and has a couple strong tie-ins with main LessWrong topics:
The issue is this: recently, I've seen a meme going around to the effect that companies like Walmart that have a large number of employees on government benefits are the "real welfare queens" or somesuch, and with the implied message that all companies have a moral obligation to pay their employees enough that they don't need government benefits. (I say mention Walmart because it's the most frequently mentioned villain in this meme, but others, like McDonalds, get mentioned.)
My initial awareness of this meme came from it being all over my Facebook feed, but when I went to Google to track down examples, I found it coming out of the mouths of some fairly prominent congresscritters. For example Alan Grayson:
Or Bernie Sanders:
Now here's why this is weird: consider Grayson's claim that each Walmart employee costs the taxpayers on average $1,000. In what sense is that true? If Walmart fired those employees, it wouldn't save the taxpayers money: if anything, it would increase the strain on public services. Conversely, it's unlikely that cutting benefits would force Walmart to pay higher wages: if anything, it would make people more desperate and willing to work for low wages. (Cf. this this excellent critique of the anti-Walmart meme).
Or consider Sanders' claim that it would be better to raise the minimum wage and spend less on government benefits. He emphasizes that Walmart could take a hit in profits to pay its employees more. It's unclear to what degree that's true (see again previous link), and unclear if there's a practical way for the government to force Walmart to do that, but ignore those issues, it's worth pointing out that you could also just raise taxes on rich people generally to increase benefits for low-wage workers. The idea seems to be that morally, Walmart employees should be primarily Walmart's moral responsibility, and not so much the moral responsibility of the (the more well-off segment of) the population in general.
But the idea that employing someone gives you a general responsibility for their welfare (beyond, say, not tricking them into working for less pay or under worse conditions than you initially promised) is also very odd. It suggests that if you want to be virtuous, you should avoid hiring people, so as to keep your hands clean and avoid the moral contagion that comes with employing low wage workers. Yet such a policy doesn't actually help the people who might want jobs from you. This is not to deny that, plausibly, wealthy onwers of Walmart stock have a moral responsibility to the poor. What's implausible is that non-Walmart stock owners have significantly less responsibility to the poor.
This meme also worries me because I lean towards thinking that the minimum wage isn't a terrible policy but we'd be better off replacing it with guaranteed basic income (or an otherwise more lavish welfare state). And guaranteed basic income could be a really important policy to have as more and more jobs are replaced by automation (again see gwern if that seems crazy to you). I worry that this anti-Walmart meme could lead to an odd left-wing resistance to GBI/more lavish welfare state, since the policy would be branded as a subsidy to Walmart.