If you had to give Joan of Arc an idea of how different our world is from theirs, where would you take them? You would load up your time-traveling phone booth and head to the nearest Walmart. Bill and Ted took the crew to a shopping mall. Walmart goes the mall one better by putting everything under one roof and making it possible to buy it all with one trip to the cash register. The sporting goods and keyboards you can buy at Walmart might not be as good as what you could get at one of the specialty stores at the mall. The self-help books in stock might not be as good as a visit to a psychologist’s couch. They are pretty good substitutes, though, and what makes a trip to Walmart most remarkable is the fact that the place is stocked from floor to ceiling with food, clothing, electronics, office supplies, and all sorts of other goods available to people of modest means at Every Day Low Prices. …

What I think is most striking about Walmart – and what I would hope Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, Socrates, and others would notice – is that the floor-to-ceiling cornucopia is not restricted to the elites. You don’t have to be a member of the Party to shop at Walmart. You don’t have to be a titled lord or lady or an emperor, despot, or iron-fisted warlord to enjoy the (literal, in some cases) fruits of the world’s labors. You just need a few dollars that, in a commercial society, you earn by creating value for others.

[I daresay that Joan, Genghis, and ol’ Soc knew a lot more about exploitation of workers in real experience than today’s Academia elites, too. They’d look at the standard of living in today’s world and laugh out loud at such claims. Well, Genghis might look at it and decide to conquer such a wealthy and soft nation obsessed with faux victimology, but Joan and Socrates and Napoleon would laugh. — Ed]