The barest minimums should be required from enormous centralized power. This is what our founders had in mind. They knew that the larger we make the levers of power, the more corrupt the movers of those levers become.

Wal-Mart is like many other surviving, organic economic actors: its true purpose is to thrive and grow, and it is limited in that effort primarily by external factors. Of course we might compare it to other large successful corporations, but I would also compare it to the military-industrial complex, the drug war, the welfare/entitlements system, industrial and public-sector unions, the Catholic Church, etc. The actions of these organic actors only incidentally contribute to their stated purposes (and are often seen to fail when measured against those purposes), but are ruthlessly evolved for the sustenance and growth of the actor itself.

That’s great for actors whose actions remain entirely in the private sector. In that case, customers’ free choices are the ultimate external check on the organic actor. As one can guess, I’m quite suspicious of entrepreneurship that crosses the public/private barrier. I take the quoted chain-mail to advocate Wal-Mart execs in public service because they are felt to be better at these tasks than the incumbent “economy fixers”. I disagree, because I see ruthlessly inexorable mission creep and marketing-driven manufactured consent as a _defect_ of 20th-century governance, as salutary as these phenomena may have been on the private side.

Remember, we non-lobbying taxpayers are the flightless birds of this island ecosystem. Let’s not introduce yet _more_ effective predators. Keep the pigs and rats of private enterprise on the mainland, please. That might allow us to address the government predations we already face.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/bigwalmart.asp

This is one of the few chain emails that, while not technically accurate, is not misleading.