Walmart is discussed across several episodes of The Bob Zadek Show as an example of a large, successful business that uses government to disadvantage competitors. The company is described as having grown from a single store in Bentonville, Arkansas, to the largest retailer in the world, and as a capitalist success story that nonetheless lobbied for mandatory health insurance for workers. In later episodes the company recurs in different roles: as a hypothetical seller of standard marriage contracts, as the subject of a focus group on prices and wages, as a large employer whose wage increases are cited as evidence of a market-enforced minimum wage, and as a business that benefited from pandemic-era lockdown policies.
The health-insurance lobbying example
In a 2011 episode, Bob Zadek called Walmart one of the citadels and one of the American capitalist success stories, noting that it grew from one store in Bentonville, Arkansas, to the largest retailer in the world. He said that about a year earlier, before Obamacare was passed, Walmart was very vocal in encouraging the government to impose minimum health insurance requirements on all workers. Zadek said he asked himself why Walmart was such a cheerleader for government mandating this cost on business, and answered that Walmart was providing that coverage to its employees while many of its competitors were not. On his account, Walmart’s reasoning was that one way to force an expense upon competitors that it was already voluntarily absorbing was to use the government, and he said Walmart was very active in lobbying for mandatory health insurance. He concluded that even a capitalist success story cannot stop itself from running to the government to tilt the playing field in its favor, and described this as an example of a business rather than just competing on the merits in the free market Obama Nationalizes General Electric (2011).
A 2018 episode returns to the same example. Zadek said Walmart was a strong supporter of Obamacare because it already was paying that and was at a competitive disadvantage if it wanted to force its smaller competitors to pay as generous a healthcare system as they were paying, so they would put them out of business. He said Walmart did the same thing in 2009 or ‘11 with Obamacare Stephen Moore on Trumponomics (2018).
Amazon, Walmart and the minimum wage
In the same 2018 episode, Stephen Moore cited Walmart among employers raising wages. He said Amazon has 250,000 workers across the country and was increasing its starting wage rate to $15 an hour because of competitive pressures, that Walmart with a million workers had increased its wage rate to $11 an hour, and that Target, many restaurant chains and Disney had also raised their wage rates. Moore described these as effects of a tighter labor market in the form of higher middle-class wages. Zadek characterized this as a marketplace-enforced minimum wage, one that cannot be undercut because workers will quit, and said it is healthier for the economy when the minimum wage is market-driven rather than mandate-driven by government. Moore then said that after Jeff Bezos announced the $15 wage rate, he went to Washington to require an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, and argued that Bezos was trying to use government to drive smaller competitors out of the equation. Zadek responded that this is why Walmart was a strong supporter of Obamacare, because it already was paying that and was at a competitive disadvantage if it wanted to force its smaller competitors to pay as generous a healthcare system as they were paying Stephen Moore on Trumponomics (2018).
The focus group exchange
In a 2018 episode on Janus v. AFSCME, Jonathan Tasini described taking part in focus groups, watching from behind a window as people answered questions around Walmart. He said Walmart is the biggest employer in the United States, that its selling point is low prices, and that it does not have a union and is very happy not to have one. Participants were asked whether, if they knew Walmart had to raise its prices because it had to guarantee its workers healthcare and pay higher wages, they would be willing to pay a nickel or ten cents more on a product, and Tasini said virtually everyone in the room said yes. He added the caveat that Walmart benefits from the poverty of people, because overwhelmingly its shoppers are so poor or so financially stressed that they have no option but to shop there. Zadek responded that the focus group was asked the wrong question: the right question would be whether, given two Walmart stores, one charging ten cents more and offering better worker benefits and one charging less without those benefits, a shopper would patronize the first. He said that in the focus group’s version, participants were given no choice, and that if Walmart is still the cheapest, a customer might be grumpy but will pay the ten cents more. Tasini replied that one might have to pose Walmart against Joe’s store or another competitor, and Zadek suggested Target. Tasini said there would certainly be some people who would rather pay ten cents less, but that his larger point was whether society benefits from a low-cost world, and that in his view the only way in the marketplace to even things out is to have strong unions The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
Marriage contracts and the market as affection
In a 2018 episode on government and marriage, Steve Horwitz speculated about a world in which government did not license and regulate marriage. He said such a world would see the development of fairly standard marriage contracts, and that one might be able to walk into Walmart or someplace and get a copy of the standard wedding contract that people use. He framed this as an illustration of the difficulty libertarians face in describing precisely what a stateless marriage regime would look like, since the point of wanting that world is to discover what those arrangements should be Getting the Government (Back) Out of Marriage (2018).
In a 2020 episode, Jeffrey Tucker described walking into Walmart and sitting there in shock that this gigantic building was erected for him, to give him infinite choice in anything he wanted, and inviting him to accept or reject the option. He called that a beautiful, benevolent kind of institution, in contrast to government, which he said mostly treats people as the enemy Big government can’t save us from coronavirus (2020).
Antitrust and lockdowns
In a 2020 episode on antitrust and big tech, Zadek asked whether antitrust policy should attack bigness as such in order to protect would-be competitors who cannot compete against, for example, Walmart because of size, or whether it should only protect consumers. He said he believed antitrust legislation was historically based on protecting consumers, and posed the case of a company so big that through economies of scale it sells at a price nobody can compete with, so that consumers get good goods cheaply while competitors cannot enter the market. Ryan Young’s answer begins with the words “Antitrust” and the excerpt ends there Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020).
In a 2021 episode, Carol Roth argued that the pandemic lockdowns fell almost entirely on small businesses. She said that if Walmart, Target and Amazon had been locked down, if Amazon had been told it could not keep its warehouse open or make deliveries, and if the Fed had not propped up the stock market, the lockdowns would not have lasted even two weeks, because those with power would have been screaming. She said the big players got the golden ticket and the free pass, and in many cases were getting dollars directly from the small businesses that were shut down, as well as Fed intervention that juiced their stock valuations Carol Roth on the War on Small Business (2021).
Across episodes
The regulatory-capture example is the one thread that recurs: Zadek advanced it in 2011 as Walmart’s lobbying for mandatory health insurance, and in 2018 he repeated it in the same terms while Stephen Moore extended the pattern to Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s push for a $15 federal minimum wage. The later episodes do not revise the earlier claim; they apply it to new companies. The other treatments of Walmart — Horwitz’s hypothetical standard marriage contract, Tucker’s description of the store as a benevolent institution, the Tasini focus-group exchange, and Roth’s lockdown argument — are separate uses of the company as an illustration rather than stages in a single argument.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Walmart’s founding date, its founders, its corporate structure, its revenue or its current size beyond the descriptions given by speakers. They do not describe any court case involving Walmart, any statute or bill by name, or the outcome of any regulatory proceeding. The antitrust discussion breaks off at the beginning of Ryan Young’s answer, and the 2011 episode’s section on the purpose of business contains no text after its heading.