Chris, I agree with your observation that people don't think very consequentialist here. However, there is also something to be said for a solid application of common sense.
Yes, the obvious economic argument is that Walmart is under no obligation to hire employees, and any employee is free to leave whenever, so they should be allowed to treat them any way they want. The underlying assumptions here are that the (job) market is efficient so that no single company can influence it, people can get new jobs instantly, people can rationally decide whether to switch jobs on the fly, etc. etc. Of course these assumptions are not correct. For example, if a company becomes successful by beating all competition, say by driving costs lower than anyone else can, and then one day the company fires all employees and packs up and leaves there is going to be a very real hit to the economy. There certainly is not going to be an identical company performing the same service there the next day. In the case of Walmart, they are one of the largest companies in the world. It would be extremely unrealistic to assume that if they don't pay their employees enough, everyone could just go and leave and it would be the same as if Walmart had never existed. The larger a company you are, the better a bargaining position you have, and the more capable you are of driving down wages to make a higher profit.
The point I'm trying to get across here is this: The reason many people object to Walmart's policies is because their moral intuitions tell them that there is something wrong when a company doesn't pay its employees enough for them to feed themselves. Yes, a lot of it boils down to "Companies Boo, people Jay!". No, it isn't very consequentialist. But you should probably not ignore that moral intuition, because a good helping of common sense is usually better than an overly simplistic economic argument based on unrealistic assumptions. At least in my experience.
If possible, I would like to hear the reason for the downvoting of the above post. Specifically, whether the reason is:
1) It discusses politics (in response to an article about politics?)
2) The reasoning is fallacious
3) It was written by me
4) People don't like silly examples
5) It sounds vaguely leftish
6) The point I made is so obvious that it's redundant
7) people prefer to have their politics debates one-sided
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.