Like many others, I’ve had a difficult time during this Thanksgiving weekend to get my mind around the tragic trampling of Wal-Mart employee Jdimytai Damour. Did people keep shopping? Did the Valley Stream store make any sales before the police closed it down? Who put up the sign outside the store saying “Blitz Line Starts Here”?
The president of a union that has been trying to organize that Wal-Mart questioned the lack of adequate barriers and security precautions. But Wal-Mart’s low prices and its loss leaders might have been a but-for cause of the tragedy:
As part of its Black Friday promotion, Wal-Mart had advertised sales like a Polaroid 42-inch LCD HDTV for $598 . . .
The Wal-Mart online catalog lists what looks like the same product on clearance for $750. If Wal-Mart had advertised its regular $798 price for this TV, Jdimytai Damour might still be alive.
People started lining up at the Valley Stream store at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving night. Some people were there because Black Friday has become a free-standing holiday tradition. There’s a certain esprit de corps to standing in line with your fellow shoppers. (I confess I do not share this feeling: Years ago when our first child was born, my beloved spouse took me to a 10 percent-off layette sale at a local store. The store was so mobbed and unpleasant that it hit me I’d prefer to go to a 10 percent-on sale to reduce the crushing throng and the cutthroat competition.) But other shoppers get out of bed early the day after Thanksgiving because of special early-bird prices. When we don’t ration scarce goods by price, Econ 101 says they will be rationed by having people queue.
To say that the low prices were a but-for cause of this man’s death is not to say that Wal-Mart should be legally or morally culpable for low prices. Indeed, there may be so many contributing causes to this tragedy that it is difficult to assign individual blame.
I’m particularly troubled by reports that police are thinking about charging individual members of the crowd. When people behind you start pushing you forward, there is often nothing you can do. And there’s a real fear that if you try to resist, you too will be trampled. Part of the tragedy is that there are undoubtedly people in that crowd who know they stepped on something that day, or who, in their excitement, spurred on the surge. These thoughts may haunt them for many years.
This is not an example of the wisdom of crowds.
This death and its multiple economic causes reminded me of the Bob Dylan song “Who Killed Davey Moore?” It’s about a boxer who died of injuries from a fight in 1963:
Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?“Not I,” says the referee,
“Don’t point your finger at me.
I could’ve stopped it in the eighth
An’ maybe kept him from his fate,
But the crowd would’ve booed, I’m sure,
At not gettin’ their money’s worth.
It’s too bad he had to go,
But there was a pressure on me too, you know.
It wasn’t me that made him fall.
No, you can’t blame me at all.”Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?“Not us,” says the angry crowd,
Whose screams filled the arena loud.
“It’s too bad he died that night
But we just like to see a fight.
We didn’t mean for him t’ meet his death,
We just meant to see some sweat,
There ain’t nothing wrong in that.
It wasn’t us that made him fall.
No, you can’t blame us at all.”Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?“Not me,” says his manager,
Puffing on a big cigar.
“It’s hard to say, it’s hard to tell,
I always thought that he was well.
It’s too bad for his wife an’ kids he’s dead,
But if he was sick, he should’ve said.
It wasn’t me that made him fall.
No, you can’t blame me at all.”Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?“Not me,” says the gambling man,
With his ticket stub still in his hand.
“It wasn’t me that knocked him down,
My hands never touched him none.
I didn’t commit no ugly sin,
Anyway, I put money on him to win.
It wasn’t me that made him fall.
No, you can’t blame me at all.”Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?“Not me,” says the boxing writer,
Pounding print on his old typewriter,
Sayin’, “Boxing ain’t to blame,
There’s just as much danger in a football game.”
Sayin’, “Fist fighting is here to stay,
It’s just the old American way.
It wasn’t me that made him fall.
No, you can’t blame me at all.”Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?“Not me,” says the man whose fists
Laid him low in a cloud of mist,
Who came here from Cuba’s door
Where boxing ain’t allowed no more.
“I hit him, yes, it’s true,
But that’s what I am paid to do.
Don’t say ‘murder,’ don’t say ‘kill.’
It was destiny, it was God’s will.”Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?
and 
. You can also watch it on 
When you go to your local department of motor vehicles, there is also a long people queue. Clearly nobody is in a rush to get in and grab the earliest number available — nor do most people enjoy staying in that queue, I’m sure, but visiting the DMV is a necessary evil that also has a deadline associated with it (license and registration renewal, for example).
Why, then, don’t we use a ticketed queue at every store for Black Friday? For one thing, shoppers will still make a mad rush for the queue tickets. On the other hand, now we have an opportunity to exercise basic supply and demand right outside the store: those shoppers who badly want to get in the store first will now be willing to pay cash for a low ticket number. If there WERE no other costs associated with ticket trading, then an optimal queuing order will emerge on its own.
More interesting still, what if the stores start auctioning their early-hour queue tickets by time slots with but a handful on reserve for first-come, first-serve? Might the stores not generate revenues from the auctions comparable to from the loss-leaders?
In the mean time, charge this Wal-Mart with public endangerment, I say. Surely this Wal-Mart violated every conceivable fire safety protocols in the book with its Black Friday sale.
Of course this wouldn’t have happened with protected, unionized employees:
Because Wal-Mart wouldn’t have been able to offer those products at low prices. Just another ho-hum Christmas sale by a company desperate to fund a poorly performing pension and dealing with employee absenteeism.
“People wait in these long lines generally because the $100 to $150 savings means a great deal to them.”
Perhaps those people should not be buying big screen TVs then…
Let’s try to get some of the particulars of the situation into this discussion.
1) Witnesses have said that the crowd jumped over barricades. I only saw this in one report — on Friday night — so I am not sure that it is true. But there might have been barricades.
2) The crowd was chanting something like “bread the door down.”
2) The crowd broke the down door.
3) Store employees tried to stop the crowd by forming a human chain across the the entryway.
Who was the fool who thought a crowd so eager to get in that they broke the door down was going to stop for a chain of store employees? Who organized this?
And what would Wal*Mart had done to stop such a crowd? Not some vague idea that they should have done something, but what specifically could they have done with such a crowd? If they were willing to break down the door, why should we think that they’d abide by a number system?
I thinks it’s the greed. The policy of putting artificially high prices throughout the year and then drop them to their real levels at some made-up “door buster” events all grouped around the year end.
From reading various articles, I understand that the crowd at the FRONT of the line took the doors off the hinges to get in the store. That is a very deliberate action and is the fault of specific people. I’m sorry, but those people should be punished for breaking and entering, if nothing else.
Offering large loss leads on very liquid items is the equivalent to throwing money up into the air and yelling come get it. I’m not saying this is criminal or wrong, but it shouldn’t be surprising when a mob of people all rushing for the free money develops.
If memos are found talking up the large Black Friday crowds as a way to generate publicity and excitement for Wal Mart’s every day slave labor savings perhaps a large lawsuit is in order.
The only issue is that Wal Mart didn’t have adequate crowd control measures. Any organization that conducts business practices meant to ignite a mob mentality is ultimately liable for that mobs actions. Wal Mart simply needs to hire ten security guys at $10 hour for a single night. Now I would hope a jury finds the company responsible for up to $10 million dollars in damages.