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This is clearly not a problem with capitalism. Do you think that Communist countries are somehow less wasteful? Try reading “The Liberators” by Viktor Suvorov.

by db48x 5y ago

This is clearly not a problem with capitalism. Do you think that Communist countries are somehow less wasteful? Try reading “The Liberators” by Viktor Suvorov. The first chapter is pretty instructive. https://archive.org/details/ViktorSuvorovTheLiberatorsMyLifeInThebOk.xyz/page/n6/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/ViktorSuvorovTheLiberatorsMyLife... Also, supermarkets do not spray bleach in their trash.

lm28469 5y ago
> This is clearly not a problem with capitalism. They keyword is "unregulated", not "capitalism" The fact is that it costs them less to destroy the goods instead of putting them back in the system or giving them away. No regulations = the only thing that matters is $ Idk about the rest of the world but France banned bleaching of supermarket trashes in 2016, at the time it was an "extreme and ground breaking" law, now they're legally forced to give them to charities (another example of regulation)
- scotty79 5y ago
  Throwing away stuff is just too cheap. If you somehow managed to pass the full enviromental costs of trash generation up the chain there would be way less of that and less manufacturing in total.
- db48x 5y ago
  I’m saddened to hear that French supermarkets were doing something that stupid. Most of the rest of the world doesn’t do that. I also don’t know how that law is supposed to work; when I worked in a grocery store as a teenager, most of the food I threw away was rotten or moldy. There’s no way I would willingly give that food to a charity. Actually, now that I think about it, perhaps the bleach was just an attempt to cut down the amount of mold spores people were exposed to. The problem isn’t a lack of regulation either. The problem is just humans making mistakes. A human decided to try to sell product X, but couldn’t do so. Their stock was sitting in a warehouse racking up storage fees, and it would also cost money to ship it somewhere else. Adding regulations won’t reduce the number of mistakes that people make, it will only increase the cost of those mistakes. That cost will simply be passed along to the rest of us, making everything more expensive to buy.
- retox 5y ago
  Some (a lot?) of people, especially today, have the patience to wait 6/12/18 months to obtain at a deep discount or even for free something that they *may* need to buy. I have a vacuum cleaner that isn't very good and is likely to fail in the future, at some point I will need to replace it. I won't buy one today for full price, but when it does fail I will have to. If I could get a replacement today for 0-50% of the price new I would jump at the chance, but I'd be a lost sale.

by db48x 5y ago

lm28469 5y ago

> This is clearly not a problem with capitalism. They keyword is "unregulated", not "capitalism" The fact is that it costs them less to destroy the goods instead of putting them back in the system or giving them away. No regulations = the only thing that matters is $ Idk about the rest of the world but France banned bleaching of supermarket trashes in 2016, at the time it was an "extreme and ground breaking" law, now they're legally forced to give them to charities (another example of regulation)

scotty79 5y ago
Throwing away stuff is just too cheap. If you somehow managed to pass the full enviromental costs of trash generation up the chain there would be way less of that and less manufacturing in total.
db48x 5y ago
I’m saddened to hear that French supermarkets were doing something that stupid. Most of the rest of the world doesn’t do that. I also don’t know how that law is supposed to work; when I worked in a grocery store as a teenager, most of the food I threw away was rotten or moldy. There’s no way I would willingly give that food to a charity. Actually, now that I think about it, perhaps the bleach was just an attempt to cut down the amount of mold spores people were exposed to. The problem isn’t a lack of regulation either. The problem is just humans making mistakes. A human decided to try to sell product X, but couldn’t do so. Their stock was sitting in a warehouse racking up storage fees, and it would also cost money to ship it somewhere else. Adding regulations won’t reduce the number of mistakes that people make, it will only increase the cost of those mistakes. That cost will simply be passed along to the rest of us, making everything more expensive to buy.
retox 5y ago
Some (a lot?) of people, especially today, have the patience to wait 6/12/18 months to obtain at a deep discount or even for free something that they *may* need to buy. I have a vacuum cleaner that isn't very good and is likely to fail in the future, at some point I will need to replace it. I won't buy one today for full price, but when it does fail I will have to. If I could get a replacement today for 0-50% of the price new I would jump at the chance, but I'd be a lost sale.