7 ms·

Questions unfortunately not answered by the article: a) Who profits from this recycling program? How many people get a western salary to coordinate all this?

by jlg23 10y ago

Questions unfortunately not answered by the article: a) Who profits from this recycling program? How many people get a western salary to coordinate all this? b) Following from (a), how many optometrists and lens makers could make a living in Cambodia if people just put $1 in a collection box each time they'd dump their used glasses in a box? This suspiciously sounds like the "2nd hand clothes for Africa" scam that only profits the collectors of those in western countries and destroys local tailors' businesses in the target market.

WalterBright 10y ago
> scam I'm glad someone makes money off of my old clothes rather than they go in the trash. > destroys local tailors' businesses That's a variation on the broken window fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
- jlg23 10y ago
  > I'm glad someone makes money off of my old clothes rather than they go in the trash. I don't have a problem with that per se, only that it happens under the pretense of charity and that the model exploits economic inequality in a globalized world on the expense of those the "charity" claims to help. > That's a variation on the broken window fallacy. I fail to see the connection because the broken window fallacy is about a coherent economic system, not about a global economy where one can make a profit by exploiting inequalities. The proverb says: Give a man a fish and you feed him for the day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Following that idea, I am much more for transfer of knowledge than for transfer of goods. And in extension also for sourcing urgently required products locally (and if required donating to build the required industry) than just sending products. One does not have to see that in any ideological way: Just publish all numbers, show me that it's more cost-effective to send assembled products to a place and I won't object. But the article just showed that we again failed to run the numbers, thereby wasting money and potentially harming the local economy in the target country.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    By sheltering tailors, everyone else in the economy pays a higher price and is thereby worse off. It's a net loss. Might as well go around smashing windows so the local glaziers can make money.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- xyzzy123 10y ago
  I see your point, but there is a good deal of hypocrisy in the way this kind international "trade" is viewed. Giving away second hand clothes to developing countries is indistinguishable from "dumping", a trade practice which more developed countries (including the U.S) frequently take trade action against. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    Dumping is a losing game for the dumper. It's nearly as bad as paying someone to buy your products. It only "works" as long as you keep paying, things revert to normal when you stop paying. Meanwhile, the dumpees are better off at your expense.
    - xyzzy123 10y ago
      Then rationally no one would do it, right? And U.S border protection wouldn't need to enforce anti-dumping tariffs. I think you're accounting only for first-order effects and ignoring costs to reboot industries that have been shut down. EDIT: To clarify, I think your position is logically consistent and my guess is that you'd explain WTO actions / anti dumping enforcement as regulatory capture and protectionism.
    - twblalock 10y ago
      > things revert to normal when you stop paying Not if you do it right. If your goal is to destroy an industry in another country, you can stop dumping after that industry has been destroyed. Then, the people of that country will have no choice but to buy from you, because there is nobody left in that country that produces the goods you produce.
      - WalterBright 10y ago
        Can you provide a case history of an industry destroyed in this manner (selling below cost), where the dumper goes on to enjoy monopoly profits?
- Manishearth 10y ago
  > I'm glad someone makes money off of my old clothes rather than they go in the trash. Nobody makes money off your old clothes. People make money off of the money donated to keep the charity running. That is okay if the charity is actually helping people; but if it isn't that money isn't being used right.
markvdb 10y ago
More of the second hand clothing from Western Europe at least ends up in Eastern Europe than in Africa: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30227025 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30227025 . Anecdata. My second home country, Latvia, has so many more second hand than new clothes shops. At the same time, local textile industry seems to be thriving even within the EU single market. Local shops manufacturing high end clothing for Western EU clients...

brownbat 10y ago

Well, there's one hiccup. You can't privately dump. Well, you can try. Since you're selling at a loss on the open market, others with capital will see an unexpected price and wonder if you have developed a unique efficiency. After some basic research, some will guess at what you're trying to do. They then have some great options. Invest in competitors or substitutes for the coming reduced supply. Or, stockpile the goods you sell, buying cheaply from you and even undercutting you in the future. Or, develop ways to reduce fixed costs. Build "fast spin up" sites with on-call labor so you can quickly return to market. The dumping strategy works pretty well in a game with only two players. It does not work against the entire global system of capital and investment.

emp_zealoth 10y ago
Right, the Free Market Fairy that always produces results consistent with rules that can be written on one A4 page /s
- brownbat 10y ago
  > the Free Market Fairy That's a straw man. Markets have lots of failure modes, this just isn't one of them. It's like an underpants gnome plan. Maybe it looks OK on paper, but it falls apart under any outside strategic pressure.
legulere 10y ago
> Invest in competitors or substitutes for the coming reduced supply Which will be at a loss, so you need just as much money. This is especially hard in developing countries. The market will still be destroyed, and you'll end up with a oligopoly. > Or, stockpile the goods you sell, Many things can't be stockpiled, and stockpiling also costs money (see the above) One example where private dumping is tried, is uber with the taxi business. Uber regularly subsidizes fares (e.g. [1]). Local independent taxi drivers don't have the economic backing of investors and can't fight against dumping. [1]: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/why-uber-is-paying-its-china-drivers-more-than-the-fares-they-collect/articleshow/47600297.cms http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/busin...
- WalterBright 10y ago
  The taxi business is easy to get into (absent government regulations trying to prevent that). It's hard to see how dumping could prevent competition from rebounding quickly after the dumper's investors get tired of the losses.
  - popra 10y ago
    You're just arguing that dumping can be fought with dumping and hence it's not rational for economic agents to engage in dumping. When did a rational argument stop the market from doing something?
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      The thing about free markets is reality tends to punish irrational business practices.
      - popra 10y ago
        I can now reply to your comment here, so I will reply again :) You say that reality tends to punish irrational practices which means that some escape this punishment. Hence I will conclude that with time irrational business practices accumulate in the free market.
  - popra 10y ago
    I can't reply to your last comment below so I'll reply here. To me it seems that you are using some game theory ideas to explain how markets behave. The problem is that you forget to incorporate concepts from the "reality" you speak of in the last reply - more precisely timespace. If you incorporate timespace, the enounciation becomes "the probability of the market punishing dumpers increases with time and becomes certainty after an infinit milenia have passed"
- brownbat 10y ago
  > Many things can't be stockpiled Right, and there are other responses in those situations, as described above. But even if you retreat to the position that dumping is really only feasible for goods that can't be stockpiled, then you already agree with me in enough cases for this to be moot. Almost all public concern about dumping is directed at things like tires or concrete or steel that could be easily stockpiled if it were really a dumping strategy, if prices were returning to monopolistic high levels after reduced competition. What's usually happening is that the other region simply has lower costs of production or is selling off overproduction at their own loss.