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My perspective is that this business practice fills a niche of demand and is absolutely ethical. Your suspicion that this capitalism is what is causing people

My perspective is that this business practice fills a niche of demand and is absolutely ethical. Your suspicion that this capitalism is what is causing people to want to burn everything down needs some proof to be anything more than a political statement. Calling someone a jerk for being smarter and less lazier than you doesn't do anything for your argument, either. I'm sure that everyone who bought a pair of those flashy cool looking sunglasses were very happy with them and enjoyed telling their friends that they were an expensive Italian/French designer pair. And as to your final attempt to soften your attack, I got one thing to say: There's always someone happy to spend their money.

kthxbye123 6y ago
Nah, it sounds like OP was basically a ripoff artist- not smarter or more industrious, just more amoral. Pretty scummy way to make a living, hopefully it’s not viable from now on.
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  I'm not sure if I agree or disagree that there's something bad going on here. It sounds like: 1. Supplier purchases whitelabel goods from China. 2. Supplier produces fancy branding and marketing. 3. Supplier sells product for a markup. As long as they're not claiming the goods were made somewhere they're not, or that they do something that they don't, what's the difference between "Sunglasses by baybal2 (Made in China)" and "Some other product with a luxury brand name (Made in China)"? Or to put another example, is Superdry.com scummy because their marketing implies that they're Japanese when they're actually British? EDIT: from a consumer perspective, there being tonnes of whitelabel brand names that are meaningless is definitely a pain, but how do you resolve that? Heavy regulation forming a higher barrier to entry? Worse than lots of meaningless brand names is when a reputable brand gets acquired, and then the quality of the goods massively reduced in pursuit of maximising profits.
  - deleuze 6y ago
    I mean, I don't think we need to have an immediate regulatory answer to recognize it's a kind of scummy practice. Just because the consumer is too stupid to recognize the scumminess of the practice doesn't make it not scummy.
    - oarsinsync 6y ago
      I'm also apparently too stupid to recognise the scumminess of the practice (as I hoped was clear in my previous post). Which of these is true? None? Some? All? 1. branding whitelabel goods is scummy 2. branding goods with a name foreign to where they're manufactured is scummy 3. branding goods with a name foreign to where the business is operating is scummy 4. selling goods with a high markup is scummy 5. selling cheap goods with a high markup is scummy 6. A.N.Other reason that I've missed?
      - krisgee 6y ago
        Oh please. There's nothing legally wrong with it but you'd have to be pretty dense not to see the moral issue with labeling something in a way that would signal it as "high end" to consumers while it's actually just being marked up 100x over cost or more. Is there anything legally wrong with it? No, caveat emptor but I think you have to be willfully ignoring the moral implication to not see the issue with essentially abusing someone's preconceptions.
        Karunamon 6y ago
        "High-end-ness" can and does carry connotations of exclusivity, design, price signaling, and so forth, not just product quality. It doesn't stink of scumminess to me at all. There is no requirement, be it moral, legal, or whatever, that there be a tight correlation between manufacture cost and retail price. Why did you launch into a "oh please" rant instead of directly answering GP's reasonable question? What precisely do you take issue with? You seem to have some mental model here, so let's talk about it.
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  What makes it viable is that there will always be someone who is happy to part with their money. If a businessman is smart enough to help that person be happy with the transaction, then I feel they are entitled to their reward. Calling such practices amoral and scummy is a nice way to make oneself feel better about having not thought of it first.
flattone 6y ago
The expanded view of my argument is meant to be more productive, not to soften. As I said in the expansion 'almost like good versus evil'. It is certainly true that any individual or group of people may be happy to do some thing (spend money and do something). Whether it is rob a bank, get drunk and drive a car, or cure cancer people will always be happy to do some thing (referring to your point 'someone always happy to pay for a thing) as if this is the signal of some thing is OK). Just because the sensation of novelty happens doesn't mean we are doing well (see: basically any shitty thing humans do for a while and regret being assigned value through this mechanism). I'm trying to look at this from a higher altitude and say that with the levels of intellect and passion I'm aware of (and apologies for the lack of hard evidence or citations) I believe we are capable of better things. I believe in capitalism. I believe in the motivation to better ourselves to improve our circumstances through effort and education followed by returns due to providing things that people need or want. The sunglasses example in my view is a kind of prostitution of what the intention of capitalism is. In other words the hackers approach to capitalism. (I professionally and academically identify with and appreciate a hackers mentality, except in an economic social organizational sense due to it's regular self serving at any cost cultural grey areas). The mentality to circumvent standards and the creativity required to see pathways through a system is critically valuable to our species, but how in this case. In an attempt to open to you knowing/or having better view and resources on this than I do, please share a read, or whatever you expected me to provide? It feels like a waste of time, a waste of materials, a waste of human thinking, a pure waste of a reason to do anything when something is done just to synthesize value. For a light hearted 'citation': I see that the more pervasive this kind of behavior becomes in our world the closer to a scenario like the film Idiocracy we will become.
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  > It feels like a waste of time, a waste of materials, a waste of human thinking, a pure waste of a reason to do anything when something is done just to synthesize value. Value attributed to an item is not absolute, and this is where your argument fails. Value is something that is agreed upon by two parties and can be any arbitrary amount.
  - 6y ago

kthxbye123 6y ago

Nah, it sounds like OP was basically a ripoff artist- not smarter or more industrious, just more amoral. Pretty scummy way to make a living, hopefully it’s not viable from now on.

oarsinsync 6y ago
I'm not sure if I agree or disagree that there's something bad going on here. It sounds like: 1. Supplier purchases whitelabel goods from China. 2. Supplier produces fancy branding and marketing. 3. Supplier sells product for a markup. As long as they're not claiming the goods were made somewhere they're not, or that they do something that they don't, what's the difference between "Sunglasses by baybal2 (Made in China)" and "Some other product with a luxury brand name (Made in China)"? Or to put another example, is Superdry.com scummy because their marketing implies that they're Japanese when they're actually British? EDIT: from a consumer perspective, there being tonnes of whitelabel brand names that are meaningless is definitely a pain, but how do you resolve that? Heavy regulation forming a higher barrier to entry? Worse than lots of meaningless brand names is when a reputable brand gets acquired, and then the quality of the goods massively reduced in pursuit of maximising profits.
- deleuze 6y ago
  I mean, I don't think we need to have an immediate regulatory answer to recognize it's a kind of scummy practice. Just because the consumer is too stupid to recognize the scumminess of the practice doesn't make it not scummy.
  - oarsinsync 6y ago
    I'm also apparently too stupid to recognise the scumminess of the practice (as I hoped was clear in my previous post). Which of these is true? None? Some? All? 1. branding whitelabel goods is scummy 2. branding goods with a name foreign to where they're manufactured is scummy 3. branding goods with a name foreign to where the business is operating is scummy 4. selling goods with a high markup is scummy 5. selling cheap goods with a high markup is scummy 6. A.N.Other reason that I've missed?
    - krisgee 6y ago
      Oh please. There's nothing legally wrong with it but you'd have to be pretty dense not to see the moral issue with labeling something in a way that would signal it as "high end" to consumers while it's actually just being marked up 100x over cost or more. Is there anything legally wrong with it? No, caveat emptor but I think you have to be willfully ignoring the moral implication to not see the issue with essentially abusing someone's preconceptions.
      - Karunamon 6y ago
        "High-end-ness" can and does carry connotations of exclusivity, design, price signaling, and so forth, not just product quality. It doesn't stink of scumminess to me at all. There is no requirement, be it moral, legal, or whatever, that there be a tight correlation between manufacture cost and retail price. Why did you launch into a "oh please" rant instead of directly answering GP's reasonable question? What precisely do you take issue with? You seem to have some mental model here, so let's talk about it.
Fjolsvith 6y ago
What makes it viable is that there will always be someone who is happy to part with their money. If a businessman is smart enough to help that person be happy with the transaction, then I feel they are entitled to their reward. Calling such practices amoral and scummy is a nice way to make oneself feel better about having not thought of it first.

flattone 6y ago

The expanded view of my argument is meant to be more productive, not to soften. As I said in the expansion 'almost like good versus evil'. It is certainly true that any individual or group of people may be happy to do some thing (spend money and do something). Whether it is rob a bank, get drunk and drive a car, or cure cancer people will always be happy to do some thing (referring to your point 'someone always happy to pay for a thing) as if this is the signal of some thing is OK). Just because the sensation of novelty happens doesn't mean we are doing well (see: basically any shitty thing humans do for a while and regret being assigned value through this mechanism). I'm trying to look at this from a higher altitude and say that with the levels of intellect and passion I'm aware of (and apologies for the lack of hard evidence or citations) I believe we are capable of better things. I believe in capitalism. I believe in the motivation to better ourselves to improve our circumstances through effort and education followed by returns due to providing things that people need or want. The sunglasses example in my view is a kind of prostitution of what the intention of capitalism is. In other words the hackers approach to capitalism. (I professionally and academically identify with and appreciate a hackers mentality, except in an economic social organizational sense due to it's regular self serving at any cost cultural grey areas). The mentality to circumvent standards and the creativity required to see pathways through a system is critically valuable to our species, but how in this case. In an attempt to open to you knowing/or having better view and resources on this than I do, please share a read, or whatever you expected me to provide? It feels like a waste of time, a waste of materials, a waste of human thinking, a pure waste of a reason to do anything when something is done just to synthesize value. For a light hearted 'citation': I see that the more pervasive this kind of behavior becomes in our world the closer to a scenario like the film Idiocracy we will become.

Fjolsvith 6y ago
> It feels like a waste of time, a waste of materials, a waste of human thinking, a pure waste of a reason to do anything when something is done just to synthesize value. Value attributed to an item is not absolute, and this is where your argument fails. Value is something that is agreed upon by two parties and can be any arbitrary amount.
- 6y ago