Coyote Blog

I just finished watching the PBS series on the Vietnam War and found the experience powerful and educational.  My only disappointment was that every soldier they interviewed and followed through the war ended up in the anti-war movement (or in the case of one POW, his wife did).  I agree with their perspective, and see the whole war as a giant waste, but unlike most people on campus nowadays, I like hearing from people with points of view that are different than mine.  I get nervous just having my expectations reinforced.  Surely there are veterans who thought the war was winnable and the US largely honorable -- I know some of these folks -- but we really do not get to hear their voices very often.   But with this proviso, the series was terrific.

One of the most important -- and hardest -- lessons of business is to think at the margin.  Perhaps the toughest corollary to this is: Sunk costs are sunk.  I don't care how much we have already spent on that factory -- that money is gone -- if it is going to take another $100 million to finish, are the benefits of the factory worth that $100 million? If not let's stop work on it no matter how much has already been spent.   I have worked to teach this to my wife.  I don't care how much the tickets for the show on Sunday night cost -- that money is gone -- isthe enjoyment we expect to get from the show worth the remaining costs we face (getting in the car, fighting for parking, etc)?

Transit projects thrive on the sunk cost fallacy.  Agencies explicitly try to get some money, spend it, and then claim the rest of the money has to be spent because we have already "invested so much".  Here is an example:

But what is really amazing is that Chicago embarked on building a $320 million downtown station for the project without even a plan for the rest of the line -- no design, no route, no land acquisition, no appropriation, no cost estimate, nothing.  There are currently tracks running near the station to the airport, but there are no passing sidings on these tracks, making it impossible for express and local trains to share the same track.  The express service idea would either require an extensive rebuilding of the entire current line using signaling and switching technologies that may not (according to Daley himself) even exist, or it requires an entirely new line cut through some of the densest urban environments in the country.  Even this critical decision on basic approach was not made before they started construction on the station, and in fact still has not been made.

Though the article does not mention it, this strikes me as a typical commuter rail strategy -- make some kind of toe-in-the-water investment on a less-than-critical-mass part of the system, and then use that as leverage with voters to approve funding so that the original investment will not be orphaned.

It amazes me that no politician in California has shut down the insane California high speed rail project, but I will bet you any amount of money that when they do the rail agency will be screaming that it can't be shut down because they have already spent billions of dollars and shutting them down would waste all that money.  Sorry, but that money has already been wasted, the point is to avoid all the additional money that will be wasted going forward.

The government decision-making around the Vietnam War seemed like nothing so much as a series of sunk cost fallacies.  We can't give up now, not after so many brave men have already died!  That last sentence could be the title of about half the episodes.   But sunk costs shouldn't matter in a go-forward decision -- but they do matter to ego and prestige.  Politicians talk about things like "the nation's honor" but what really matters at its heart is their own ego and perception.  Abandoning sunk costs, for the real humans making decisions (whether Presidents or CEOs) is about confessing past errors of judgment.  Its a hard thing to do, so hard a lot of extra people had to die in Vietnam before it could happen.  I can't find a transcript but Kissinger had some amazing quotes in Episode 9 that pretty baldly outline this problem.

Obama Secretary of State John Kerry, in his famous Winter Solider remarks to Congress about the Vietnam War:

... it seems the Government of this country is more concerned with the legality of where men sleep than it is with the legality of where they drop bombs.

Obama Spokeman Jay Carney, today:

these [drone] strikes are legal, they are ethical, and they are wise

Remember, Jay Carney is talking about the President's claimed right to bomb US citizens, as well as anyone else he thinks (but can't necessarily prove in a court) might kind of sort of have something to do with a terrorist group.  And civilian casualties, so much a part of Kerry's concerns back in the 1970's?  They are just asking for it.

Anyway, I have not had a chance to digest the Administration's white paper on targeted killing (I can't even believe I am writing that phrase -- our Constitution specifically banned bills of attainder but now the executive claims the ability to kill at whim).  Jacob Sullum has some thoughts at the link.  I will write more if and when I have a chance to read it, but I am sure I will find it horrifying.

I have a hard time seeing how anyone can deny that drafted soldiers are slaves of the state.  They are giving their time and labor only under compulsion, and while they may be better off than ante-bellum slaves in that they may eventually get freed after their term is over, to some extent they may be worse off as their time in servitude is a) more dangerous and b) involves taking morally more questionable actions (e.g. killing people).

I have assumed that those who supported the draft either were arguing that that threats in wartime justified this awful step or they were statists that already saw all the rest of us as slaves anyway.

However, Bryan Caplan had a useful observation on this:

It's tempting to dismiss all this as doublethink, but after many years of reflection I think I finally figured out what most people are thinking.  Namely: They implicitly regard slavery not as mere involuntary servitude, but as low-status involuntary servitude.  Since most of us honor, respect, and even adore all our soldiers, conscripts have high status - and therefore can't be slaves.  From this point of view, saying "conscription is slavery" isn't righteously standing up for the rights of conscripts; it's wickedly denying them their high status.  Sigh.

This rings true to me, but offers another avenue for those of us who oppose the draft -- the draft reduces the perceived status of those who serve voluntarily, something I certainly think happened in the Vietnam War.  In a way, it is reminiscent of how the existence of affirmative action tends to undermine the perceived accomplishments of successful minorities.

After my earlier post on Walmart, I got to thinking about a number of Walmart-related topics.  My brain is a bit too fried on Friday night to organize these thoughts too much, so here they are, roughly following my stream of consciousness:

Exxon may have finally handed off the Great Satan title

The socialists of this country (who now generally call themselves progressives but its pretty much the same thing) usually need a company they can focus their attention on.  In the 1960's, this was probably General Motors, though defense contractors in the Vietnam War made a run at the title.  After the oil embargo of 1972, that title clearly moved to Exxon. I remember in one month in the early 1970's, the head of Exxon got called into Congress twice in a few weeks, once to combat the urban myth that oil companies were greedily holding oil off the market to drive up prices, and once to explain to Congress why they were greedily trying to expand oil production in Alaska.  My family and many of my friends worked for large oil companies, and we had several friends who were injured by letter bombs from domestic leftist terrorists (though the media did not call them terrorists then).

Exxon held the great Satan title for a long time.  It probably could have shed the title with low oil prices in the 80's, but the stupidity of the Valdez mess in the mid-80's and the vociferous opposition to the politically correct Kyoto accords in the mid-90's help them retain the title for a record number of years.

Finally, however, it appears that a new contender is at hand.  Walmart, so recently the most admired corporation in America, has become the new socialist whipping boy and lawsuit magnet.  Just search for Walmart in Google and you will get pages and pages of Wal-mart bashing sites.  Its kind of an amazing story how the former blue collar low-price hero of the working man trying to make ends meet has suddenly become a class enemy.  However, coming from a family that had many members who worked for Exxon, it comes as some relief to pass the Great Sata title on.

I wish everyone at Walmart could make $100,000 per year

In this, I am exactly in the same boat as Walmart detractors.  I would love for everyone at Walmart to make a ton of money.  Whether this is realistic is another story.

In America, people take jobs voluntarily

I would generally class this as a blinding glimpse of the obvious, but it appears that it has to be said.  And, if you accept that people are operating in their own rational self-interest (by the way, this is not a given -- many on the left do not think the average American is smart enough to make decisions for themself and that they need smart technocrats to look after them).  Anyway, were was I?  Oh yes, if you accept that people operate in their own rational self-interest, then by definition the job for Walmart employees is their best option, and any other option is worse.

This is the logical fallacy of those who attack Walmart (or offshore companies) for paying too low of wages.  Their concern is that these wages are lower than they, as an outside obviously smarter than everyone else observer, think they should be.  The reality is that these wages are higher than that employee's other options, and therefore is an improvement over that job not existing at all.  Note this story I told in an earlier post:

Progressives do not like American factories appearing in third world
countries, paying locals wages progressives feel are too low, and
disrupting agrarian economies with which progressives were more
comfortable.  But these changes are all the sum of actions by
individuals, so it is illustrative to think about what is going on in
these countries at the individual level. 

One morning, a rice farmer in southeast Asia might face a choice.
He can continue a life of brutal, back-breaking labor from dawn to dusk
for what is essentially subsistence earnings.  He can continue to see a
large number of his children die young from malnutrition and disease.
He can continue a lifestyle so static, so devoid of opportunity for
advancement, that it is nearly identical to the life led by his
ancestors in the same spot a thousand years ago.

Or, he can go to the local Nike factory, work long hours (but
certainly no longer than he worked in the field) for low pay (but
certainly more than he was making subsistence farming) and take a shot
at changing his life.  And you know what, many men (and women) in his
position choose the Nike factory.  And progressives hate this.  They
distrust this choice.  They distrust the change.  And, at its heart,
that is what opposition to globalization is all about - a deep seated
conservatism that distrusts the decision-making of individuals and
fears change, change that ironically might finally pull people out of
untold generations of utter poverty.  (update:  good post in the Mises blog on Taco Bell and wages here)

It's Wages vs. Prices, not Wages vs. Profits

In aggregate, because they have so many stores, Walmart makes about $10 billion a year in pre-tax net income.  Which is a lot.  But when looked at as a percentage of sales, it is pathetic.  Given its nearly $300 billion in sales, this is about a 3.5% return on sales, which while not unusual for retailers, in the grand scheme of American business is pathetically low.  I would have to shut down my business tomorrow if I only made 3.5% of sales -- I couldn't support the investments I have to make.

Its illuminating to compare this to all those small family owned boutique
businesses that Walmart supposedly shuts down.  So here is a little
example.  Lets say that the alternative to Walmart in Smallsville, USA would be a series of boutique stores, like
the mythical Nan's Clothing Shop.  Lets
say Nan does $250,000 a year in sales,which
would actually make her shop more successful than average, particularly for smaller town mid-America.  If Nan had to live with Walmart's profit margin of 3.5%, she would end up with an annual profit of  ... $8,750.   And, if Nan is working full-time trying to make the store work, and assuming 2300 hours a year, which is probably low for a small business person, she would be making a whopping  $3.80 an hour running her store, such that she would be much better off (leaving out the personal satisfaction of running your own business) working for Walmart at the average wage there of $6.50 an hour. 

While socialists and progressives are programmed in the deepest recesses of their DNA to blame everything on profit, the wage savings Walmart may get are not going to profit.  Their profit margins are low, in fact lower than most of the smaller stores they are replacing.  If there is a wage trade-off going on, it is between lower wages and lower prices to consumers.  Which obviously makes socialist demagoguery a bit less compelling, since it means that in some sense consumers and not Walmart are to blame if wages are too low, since presumably it is consumers who make the choice to switch from the higher cost traditional boutique alternatives to Walmart.

Walmart detractors have one good point - Walmart gets far too much preferential tax treatment

I don't know why it is, but Walmart is a magnet for taxpayer subsidies.  Not only does the government love to hand out tax breaks to Walmart, it local governments go so far as to use eminent domain to put together land parcels for them.  If I was a local retailer and had my tax money used to subsidize a new competitor, or worse got my land siezed to hand over to Walmart, I would be pissed off too.

I have not really studied Walmart's tactics in this, but my sense is that they have gotten good at getting neighboring communities competing with each other.  This is a crock and a waste of taxpayer money, and nearly as bad as subsidizing sports teams.  I have a long post on the sad practice of subsidizing business relocations here.

A final thought on the most unpublicized economic miracle of the last century

Since many of Walmart's attackers focus on their treatment of women, in part due to numerous accusations of discrimination in pay and promotions, it led me to a final thought about a great economic miracle that occurred in this country in the last decades of the 20th century.

Check this data out, from the BLS:

• In 1968, the unemployment rate was 3.8%.  22.9 million women were employed in non-farm jobs, accounting for 34% of the work force.
• In 2000, the unemployment rate was 4.0%.  62.7 million women were employed in the work force, accounting for 48% of the total
• In these years, the number of women employed increased every single year.  Even in the recession years of 1981-1983 when employment of men dropped by 2.5 million, women gained 400,000 jobs

This is phenomenal.  After years of being stay-at-home moms or whatever, women in America decided it was time to go to work.  This was roughly the equivalent of having 40,000,000 immigrants show up on our shores one day looking for work.  And you know what? The American economy found jobs for all of them, despite oil embargos and stagflation and wars and "outsourcing".

I would love to see women at Walmart making more money, and some day they probably will.  Even so, though, the fact that so many have found work there is a miracle unto itself. Remember that the alternative to a $6.50 job at Walmart if the left is successful in eliminating these jobs is probably not new $15.00 jobs - it is no job at all.  Just ask the French.  Also see my recent post on the minimum wage.

Update:  This is some pretty smart PR by Wal-Mart to deflect the sprawl argument often used against it.  By the way, I challenge someone to define sprawl adequately for me in the context it is used by people who are decrying it.