> prevalence indicates the customers appreciate their presence

Focusing solely on consumers ignores negative externalities. There are many situations in which cost benefits from such externalities (slavery, pollution, human rights abuses, animal mistreatment) can lead to a favorable marketplace position vs competitors who do not exploit such externalities.

What is more, many of these exploits (slavery, pollution, human rights abuses, animal mistreatment) were or are legal at the time such exploitation occurred. Therefore using legality as sole criterion of propriety is insufficient. A moralistic/ethical take on business is, far from a negative thing, highly necessary.

I think it's helpful to separate out pricing from product when talking about morality in business.

What a product should cost depends on how much people are willing to pay for it. Whether a product should be allowed to exist depends on whether it's morally acceptable.

The issue with slaves, and products that pollute the environment or mistreat living things isn't how much they cost - it's that they exist at all.

> I think it's helpful to separate out pricing from product when talking about morality in business.

I don't think the two are so easily separable. If you take for example, "a dozen eggs", most people would consider that an acceptable product. But if you said "a dozen eggs for ten cents", for those to be legitimate eggs, they must be stolen. If you could somehow inspect them and guarantee they were legitimate, I am sure plenty of people would accept those stolen eggs at that price, but their willingness to pay for it doesn't mean the existence of a market for "a dozen eggs for ten cents" is moral.

I'd argue that blaming the buyer is not appropriate though - the problem is the lack of regulation (preventing theft in this case) so you can blame the thieves and/or the police/government, but you can't expect the buyer (or anyone) to determine exactly what price is too good to be true. If you could, then we wouldn't need to have a market pricing system in the first place.

I'm reminded of how people would express outrage over products made in a low wage country being defective or toxic, and sometimes a response would be "well, people who demand ultra-cheap products deserve what they get". That's a denial of the fraudulent aspect of such a transaction, and the inability of the consumer to solve it.

This is such a beautiful answer. I never thought of that, what we consider today as the absurd was knife the norm, so challenging the quo is so important

I don't think the poster used legality as the moral compass, rather, consumer choice was the moral compass.

If consumers lack the moral conciousness on their day to day transactions, then how can we expect them to make the right moral choices when they vote?

I addressed consumer choice in my first paragraph. Let me expand on that:

There have in fact been successful consumer-led movements, but the most successful of these concern cases where the consumers also happened to be the same people being exploited (colonial India's rejection of dumped British textiles, the Montgomery bus boycott, the Boston tea party, etc).

Cases where consumers have acted en masse on behalf of another exploited class are a lot fewer and weaker. To some extent, one may point to the current growth of organic animal products as an example of this, but even in this case, this has been boosted by consumers seeing these choices (in some cases rightly, in some wrongly) as also healthier for human end consumers besides the question of animal cruelty.

History's guide suggests that while morally-minded consumers can and should vote with their wallets, such personal virtuous choices are largely useless without a larger movement to effect change.

If consumers are not morally-minded enough to act on the behalf of another exploited class, then how can you expect them to vote on behalf of the exploited class?

And if history suggests that people's virtuous choices are largely useless, then how is their voting going to be any better?

Which of those apply here, exactly?

That assumes consumers actually have a choice to make in the situation. For example let's say you disagreed with how Comcast throttles the internet or behaves in monopolistic behavior. Your only option to make the moral choice is to simply not have internet at all in certain regions.

A more topical one might be if you disagree with a company using sweatshop labor. Figuring out which companies engage in sweatshop labor and avoiding them is a remarkably difficult task, not in the least because companies do whatever they can in order to hide said actions. And even if you do manage to create a list of good/bad companies, there's no guarantee that you can purchase solely from the good companies without having to go through some other morally dubious medium such as Amazon.

The idea of shopping based on your moral conscious might've worked 50 years ago when the supply chain was far smaller, but nowadays it's so complex as to be almost unfathomable for one user to shop their moral compass without touching at least one thing they disagree with.

Comcast is in a position to throttle the internet because voters voted against the interests of the consumers. Specifically, the voters restricted other market participants from competing with Comcast. So the consumers are not acting in their own best interest as consumers and they're not acting in their own best interest as voters. Why is Comcast on the hook?

With regards to the sweatshop labor: if you care not to buy sweatshop clothes and you can't reasonably establish the origins of the clothes, then don't buy them. Only stick with manufacturers who have had their products verified by a trusted third party.

For your first argument: Isn't that argument absolving companies of all blame possible? If a company for example chooses to dump waste in a local river and there aren't any laws preventing that, is that because of the consumers failing to act in their own best interest? I just want to establish according to your logic at which point a company should be blamed for immoral behavior.

It's also overly reductive and ignores things like voter suppression, extralegal affairs and abusing the court system.

For your second argument, you seemed to ignore my original point which is that it's generally impossible to actually establish the origin of said clothing due to the complex supply chain behind the scenes. Even if it's a trusted third party, that clothing is still being delivered via companies that deliver sweatshop clothing and sold in stores which sell sweatshop clothing. At a certain point some percentage of what you pay will go to support said sweatshops whether directly or indirectly, so how can you expect a consumer to operate in a full moralistic behavior when all of their actions are losses? At that point the only winning move is to not play, which is also not possible because, well, Capitalism.

On the issue of moral responsibility, I'm not sure I follow the analogy with dumping waste. Comcast has monopoly status because the government gives them exclusive access to the market. The company should be blames for immoral behavior when it morally responsible for the situation at hand. Comcast didn't make the laws that give it monopoly status, the voters did through their representatives.

Given how many people actually don't even bother to vote, I doubt voter suppression is the problem. It seems like an issue of implementation and limitation of the current political system. In contrast, "voter" turnout by consumers is 100%. Every product you buy is a vote you cast.

With regards to tracing the origins of a product: you're trying to fix a problem that's even worse with government. If you're so concerned that you aren't able to identify the origins of a product with 100% certainty, then we ought to compare it with the baseline: what is the trust factor with government? At any rate, the traceability of a product can get as accurate as you want it to be... so long as you pay enough money to establish it. If you want, you can be flown to every part of the world and you can personally ensure that every fiber of your clothes is not coming from a sweatshop. Of course, that would be insanely expensive, but it is possible. 99.99999999999% of consumers don't want that much transparency.

What? You don’t think people give more thought to who they vote for than buying a burrito?

Everyday I'm more inclined to believe that it's about equal. You've heard of single issue voters yes?

No, actually.

> slavery, pollution

right, so if you get pizza delivery, you're probably Hitler running Deep Horizon. What a nice way to argue your point.

You're right externalities exist but I doubt there are any significant ones in food delivery.

Half of the examples given can easily apply to food delivery, namely pollution and human rights abuses.

Which human right is being abused here? People download the driver apps and work for them of their own free choice.

As for pollution, if that's immoral, then so is going to the restaurant to eat itself as well as driving in general.

> Which human right is being abused here? People download the driver apps and work for them of their own free choice.

Not counting of course the fact that in certain regions of the world, if they don't do that they'll starve to death.

I'm not aware of anyone running Uber, DoorDash, etc. where that's true. They require some sort of transport which prices the poor out of being able to provide that service in the poorest area I know of where such services are popular (Brazil).

It's not unusual for poor people who don't own cars to rent (with a Uber driver discount). Otherwise, they work using bicycles in the case of Uber Eats and other food delivery services. Source: I live in Brazil.

The argument recommends take out which also involves driving somewhere, and given that deliverers many times deliver to more than one household this is an argument for delivery over take out. Also it's not significant, even with a carbon tax to eliminate this externality that would be at most a dime or quarter of pollution.

And human rights abuse? I had a job delivering, and it was honestly one of my favorite jobs. The pay wasn't great but just cruising around listening to music all night was awesome.

"It can't possibly be happening because it never happened to me" is a pretty weak argument.

Original argument was "bad things happen"

then "humans right abuse is somehow related to delivery but I won't specify how"

then I replied "I was a deliverer and it was a fine job"

Of the three arguments mine is most relevant.

Maybe you can explain how subway delivery involves human rights abuse.

Yeah I feel like the “people shouldn’t profit from catastrophe” thing is a big part of why it’s still hard to get PPE (no one can justify extra manufacturing etc.)

> (no one can justify extra manufacturing etc.

In cases where the free market isn't incentivized to make the supplies we need, it's the job of the government to take over and make them. "Profiting from catastrophe" as you put it will result in price gouging.

In the US, especially at the current federal level, the market is better at making a profit than the government is at governing.

> it's the job of the government to take over and make them

And how that usually works is that the government offers to pay a very high price to someone willing to doing so.

This isn't all that different as the government then pays 5x for the item.

It need not be a high unit price, often a sufficiently large order could do the same as well.

Depends on the timeframe. If you want 5 million masks next week and each machine produces 1 million a week, you need 5 machines. If you can wait 5 weeks, then one machine will do.

But yes, this certainly could be true.

I think they were arguing that measures intended to stop price gouging can disincentivize an increase in supply, e.g. it's a lot harder to undercut someone selling a pack of toilet paper for £10 than £1.

Definitely possible but I'm not sure it's happening specifically at the moment.

You misunderstand the difference between profiting and profiteering. Nobody is claiming companies should sell toilet paper at cost, but they are saying toilet paper shouldn't get 5x more expensive.

But that constricts the supply because if you want to make a short term investment (the length of the pandemic) to increase the supply of home toilet paper, you can't as that investment can't generate a return. Most production is based on demand being there for 5+ years the current prices.

If home toilet paper demand will only be high for 2 years you can't make money.

You also want prices to increase to discourage hoarding. Otherwise what happens is that people with disposable income just strip the shelves because there is no possible downside to hoarding toilet paper. They can just not buy it later with no loss to themselves if the price is the same.

I know an EE in the toilet paper manufacturing. The production rate wouldn't change in the time frame you want it to because it is impossible. You'd have to bring in new machines, set them up on the line (the rest of the line has to stop), and trouble shoot any issues - this reduces production in the short term. For any temporary price increase it just isn't going to happen.

So, raising the price on TP does nothing to increase supply in a 1 month time frame and reduces availability to the poorest. Instead, reduce demand with a bidet and limit customer purchases.

Do you think there would be any effect on the mindset of toilet paper manufacturers if they knew they could raise the price in a shortage? Would they not want to prioritize higher flexibility in production, since they would be able to profit from the higher prices during a shortage?

That's only true if all the plants run all their lines 24x7.

If you have some plants that are not at capacity, you can hire additional shifts to produce more, run on weekends, etc. Then you have additional labor costs, overtime, materials costs, etc. to recoup.

The manufacturing plant I once worked for had spare capacity for the better part of a decade, so it's not some completely unusual thing and was in fact part of our corporate strategy at the time to gain market share.

Right, but that doesn't mean the price has to increase. If they are profitable and handle all their fixed costs running a single shift, then the second shift should be more profitable at the same price. (Assuming the machines can handle it, etc.)

Depends on how much overtime they have to factor into there. In the short term, especially for short term demand, it's going to be a lot of people making time and a half or 2x more likely than not.

A new shift will take a while to train up and temps are... ugh... don't even get me started about the sort of people temp agencies send. We had some that only lasted a day for not listening and doing stupidly unsafe things. One of them nearly hit me upside the head with a piece of glass because he wasn't paying attention to where he was swinging it. That was his last day on the job, for precisely that reason.

That is addressing a different point. The comment I was responding to claimed people were upset that companies are making a profit. I countered that profit is OK, profiteering is what has people irate.

What is the ideal pricing to achieve long term goals wasn't something I was addressing.

And MattGaiser's point is that the line between profit and profiteering is vague. The claim is that by saying no to vague "profiteering", we have at least discouraged some of the morally healthy profit that would've encouraged otherwise inefficient production.

The short term is too short: the investment won't pay back. Almost all profiteering reduces supply by causing hoarding and waste rather than use. Plus the dead weight loss of people killed by lack of PPE.

How does profiteering reduce supply? Or it's use?

If anything it's the opposite.

I agree if the disaster is truly short term, but is an 8 month rolling quarantine short enough to count?

If their supply chains are decimated, they won't receive new equipment for additional manufacturing.

But they may be able to hire additional shifts or work overtime on existing production lines.

Not every plant is run at a constant 24x7 three shift schedule. There are plenty of businesses that keep some slack in their manufacturing to respond to changes in demand as part of their corporate strategy, especially if they think there's an opportunity to gain market share.

What percent is that? Also dont look just at manufacturing, but things like transport and raw inputs.

That's the rub, of course, it's going to vary by time and by industry and I doubt anyone but those who run the places can give you real numbers.

But in my experience, there's usually some slack. Maybe not enough to pick up all the demand, but there's some. Maybe they have three shifts but don't work weekends or such. Then they can have people pulling lots of overtime.

Raw materials are usually well-stocked in advance. There is a limit on how much demand can spike before there are issues, of course, but some industries may have weeks or months worth of raw materials stocked. This is going to be highly variable by industry, though. Something like raw glass is nothing like stocking chickens for processing.

For TP I'd guess that they can stock a lot of raw materials, though. It's not made from anything that's going to go bad on them, so they probably stock up a lot based on whatever is cheapest.

IMO some price increase is a good idea to discourage hoarding, promote investment, and promote alternatives like a bidet. But, I think you achieve most of that with simply doubling prices, after that it’s generally more harm than good.

> But, I think you achieve most of that with simply doubling prices, after that it’s generally more harm than good.

How can one make such a vast claim without knowing things such as cost of input materials, machinery, labor, etc?

The profit in a competitive market is usually ~5%. Double prices while selling out and profit increases by 21x if not vastly more which is a huge incentive. To the point where doubling the profit again is unlikely result in meaningfully increased production.

PS: And yea it’s more complex than that, you can generally skip out in advertising but may be paying significant overtime etc. But that’s rarely particularly important as there are so many inputs involved in ramping up production that you hit multiple different limits.

To argue that every possible choice to both produce and conserve toilet paper is incentivized at $1.68 is an extraordinary claim. Almost all supply and demand curves don't have cliffs. And without extraordinary knowledge of toilet paper manufacturing and consumption how would you know this cliff exists at $1.68 per roll.

How is that not particularly important? In a shortage scenario, you don’t just crank up a dial to make the factory output more. You might need additional facilities, new factories, new workers, etc at the same time others are trying to secure resources too.

People in short supply also don’t just work additional hours for double pay. An hour of my leisure time is worth far more than double.

Though I believe you would not work overtime for double time, I also believe that an enormous number of people would do so.

5x more expensive might actually be the correct price. Remember that you cannot compare a price for a good manufactured overseas with lack labor laws vs something manufactured in the US with laws, insurance, regulations, etc.

Further, just as the US abandoned domestically made masks after the H1N1 epidemic, and went back to inexpensive overseas versions -- they may do it again with PPE. So you also need to cover the costs for quite-possibly a factory you are building that might stop operating in a year or two.

> 5x more expensive might actually be the correct price. Remember that you cannot compare a price for a good manufactured overseas with lack labor laws vs something manufactured in the US with laws, insurance, regulations, etc.

Perhaps so, but if that were the case, the producer wouldn't be fairly accused of profiteering. Usually these accusations arise when the production or acquisition cost for the seller is low and the sale price is very high.

That's true but there are quite a few people out there who don't understand/believe in that.

Talking about buying your own health insurance is taboo amongst some in the UK, even though it reduces pressure on the (I should "our") NHS, because to them it's immoral to have capitalism in healthcare or something like that

Seems like that means of productions being shuttered to protect humans might have a bigger play on that.

I personally believe these businesses have lagged seriously in upgrading themselves to what was coming for them. They would have paid a certain percentage to cooks, and staff from the prices they were charging, definitely lower than they deserved (hence tipping). Nobody ever complained about them not paying enough and not buying insurance for them. Now once these delivery companies have forced their hands into paying commissions (BTW same items are expensive 10-30% on Uber/DoorDash and people still order) they have suddenly came to a rude awakening. Not that I don’t sympathize with small business owners going through trouble, but this sound hypocritical when Amazon in retail space has done exact thing and nobody cares, but over here everyone sees opportunity for political point scoring.

Tiping and how it is used in some countries to basically subsidize staff wages is just so wrong.

For example in Japan there is no tipping and trying to do so will be considered very rude. The restaurant and its staff are professionals, they have set a price and you are paying it. They dont expect a tip for doing a good job as they simply strive to do a good job each and every time they serve guests.

> Amazon in retail space has done exact thing and nobody cares, but over here everyone sees opportunity for political point scoring.

Some people care about both.

Continuing with that logic; the prevalence of beggars on street corners indicates that their patrons appreciate their presence in the space.

Also everyone loves customer service on airlines, the fact that it keeps getting worse is gold plated proof

Now you're talking about price discrimination, which customers DO prefer.

If I wanted premium service and a premium seat, I can pay the premium price for business or first class, or fly on a better airline. Even though people complain about the terribly small seats and lack of service on budget airlines and economy tickets, they still choose the lowest seat price above anything else. And the cost of plane tickets has fallen drastically over the past few decades so it's not like the same product is more expensive, people just want cheap flights.

Likewise long wait times on customer service phone lines is proof your time is valued the same as the company's.

From a business perspective, it seems the biggest issue is that this price gouging is short term thinking. It may simply be that a sustainable (where no participants are victimized) version of this business model doesn't exist.

But is there really competition? All platforms seem to charge the same outrageous fees to the businesses, we're not seeing competition driving fees down. It's more like a coordinated oligopoly with price-fixing.

Is it possible that delivery itself is actually inherently expensive?

Online ordering companies like ChowNow & qMenu that take <5% commission have existed for ages.

this and there doesn't appear to be an abundance of choice in teh apps? and they're consolidating right now

> Their prevalence indicates the customers appreciate their presence in the space

Appreciated their presence in the space or appreciated that some VC bozos were handing out huge discounts on taxi rides?

I love food delivery apps. It’s incredibly convenient to have a single consistent app that provides me with so many options in one place. I’m also not blind to the fact that this convenience comes at a huge and invisible cost: it’s being used as a cudgel to literally beat the snot out of my local restaurants, quite possibly resulting in many of the best ones going out of business. The power of this small and apparently harmless gatekeeping effect is one of the most unfortunate aspects of capitalism as practiced by real human beings —- and that inefficiency is precisely why so much VC capital is being invested in capturing the customer interface to various industries, rather than in new productive applications.

The word "should" is a red flag.

Your take itself is a judgement. Does a company indulging in non-coerced commerce (i.e. voluntary) make it virtuous? Why is questioning the efficacy, for society, of the economic models of any company considered immoral?

Capitalist enterprises are neither immoral (left) nor moral (right). They just happen to be the most efficient - read easy to cobble together. It does not mean they are the best outcome for society.

Best outcome for whom? I trust people to spend their own money in the way that they want rather than some top down dictated manner.

I don't like the societal purpose questioning because people forget that not everyone has a lot of money to spend - the trade-off will almost definitely be between "ethics" and the cost to the person on the street.

I don't buy my books from Amazon because I love Amazon, I do it because it's the cheapest option and I know it'll work. If you want to spend a bit more and support a local book company that's up to you but Amazon is undoubtedly a better experience than any other company I've seen (Specifically for relatively niche technical books, if it was a fiction book it's basically the same).

^ that isn't to say Amazon should he left to monopolize as they please, just that the nuance is easily missed.

I never ever said anything about top-down choice depriving solutions. That is a straw-man you have dragged into this conversation.

This is not a debate about the merits of capitalism vs. socialism (or communism).

This is simply saying that some free-market solutions lead to worse outcomes for society. My hoped-for solution was a co-op model app which is completely in the free market realm.

You went ahead and made this about the inherent virtue of capitalism and choice.

I really dont know what you are saying about Amazon since you seem to be equivocating. Not letting Amazon be a monopoly is depriving their customers of choice!

> worse outcomes for society

as determined by who?

> Does a company indulging in non-coerced commerce (i.e. voluntary) make it virtuous?

No, the reward is money/resources and the person wasn't implying the polar opposite of the article. You are creating a false dichotomy here by trying to split things into good or bad. There is a neutral position that you don't have to be invested in.

> Why is questioning the efficacy, for society, of the economic models of any company considered immoral?

I don't think the parent said this at all.

The parent opens with saying - I am not a fan of moralistic takes on business. I did not create the dichotomy, the parent did!

They are saying the exact opposite. They don't like assigning a moral judgement either way to a business that isn't hurting anyone. You were replying as if they had said that instead of something being bad, it was good. That is not the same thing. Treating something as neutral is not the same as saying something is an opposite.

Keyword "don't like". Moral judgement also.

No, that's ridiculous. Saying you don't like assigning moral judgements to companies is essentially saying you think they should be looked at as neutral.

If someone says they don't like cauliflower, that isn't a moral judgment. You are not understanding what is being said or what it implies.

You fail to see the distinction but on a meta level they are the same thing. Labeling something as a "moral thing" and saying you don't like is a judgment. Value? Moral? Esthetic. . We are semantic hair splitting here.

You are just reasserting the same thing without backing it up in any way. Saying something shouldn't carry any moral weight is not a moral judgement because who would it be judging?

Correcting someone about is not casting a moral judgement. Saying a piece of a system meant to create and capture some value doesn't need to be ascribed good or evil is a statement that can be taken at face value. Trying to say everything is a moral judgement that someone else is creating a false dichotomy is just projection.