I have two problems with this story.
First is its title. Walmart has consistently promoted, and benefited from, neofascist interventionism for quite a long time. Switching from one form of neofascism to another – shifting the government’s mode of intervention from slightly more indirect to slightly more direct – is not “selling out,” and so describing it pays Walmart’s past self an undeserved compliment.
Second, in any case the switch is not as recent as the phrase “after years of strenuous opposition” implies, since Walmart had already started pushing for greater government involvement in health care two and a half years ago. (CHT Peter Suderman.)
LRC does many great works for the freedom movement. They still have some unfortunate, and occasionally weird, hitches in their getalong. Prominent among those is a lingering, naive, and most un-Rothbardian love for big corporations.
Well, that and a frankly cracked love of monarchy…
Thanks for the hat tip, Roderick, but that post was written by my colleague Peter Suderman.
Oops. Fixed — thanks.
Man, I am not looking forward to this healthcare folly our overlords have in store for us. I’m hoping for the country to go bankrupt before my health is claimed by age. Maybe out of the darkness will come a great light. Hope springs eternal. :/
What are you talking about?! Wal-Mart is our greatest exemplar of totally unfettered free market capitalism…;)
It’s certainly “buying in”, rather than selling out. A very similar situation occured about a year ago when Mattel lobbied for a ban in lead in childrens’ toy products, after a child swallowed a lead toy and all these busy-body parents started cater-whaling to have lead banned in toys.
The result was that thousands of small mom-n-pop toy manufacturers went under, including many in my home state of Minnesota. It should be less than surprising that a Mattel lobbyist worked for Amy Klobuchar’s campaign, and Klobuchar was one of the chief politicians pushing the ban.