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I think this is illustrative of how the economy gets more scammy the faster and more secretly ownership of a product, company, or brand can change hands To me,
by advael 3y ago
I think this is illustrative of how the economy gets more scammy the faster and more secretly ownership of a product, company, or brand can change hands
To me, this cuts at a fundamental logic we take for granted in the paradigm of Intellectual Property: That a brand is a fungible commodity that can be sold, like any other good or service. We treat this as a transfer of ownership of some property, but I think it makes more sense to treat this as a form of fraud. A name or brand is a signal people and businesses use to indicate who made something, and its chief value is the trust that's been built by the people running whatever operation carries that brand. The fact that it is not only legal but common practice to buy a brand explicitly for this trust in the operation is, from my perspective, obviously a big part of why everything is so scammy
- ryandrake 3y agoWait till you see the brand landscape in groceries and consumer goods. A few companies owning hundreds[1] of brands of everyday items. What company is actually behind Brand X? You pretty much need a database/app to remember as you're shopping. This is likely done deliberately to obfuscate and confuse. I always thought it would be a sensible law to make a company that displays a brand on a product also display their company name as-or-more prominently next to that brand, so people know who is actually making those products. 1: https://capitaloneshopping.com/blog/11-companies-that-own-everything-904b28425120 https://capitaloneshopping.com/blog/11-companies-that-own-ev...
- advael 3y agoYes, I think consumer brands for things like food are exactly the way this trend started, and the aggregation of them has been gradual but led to lower quality and more scamminess throughout
- lencastre 3y agoShrinkflation!
- donmcronald 3y ago> I always thought it would be a sensible law to make a company that displays a brand on a product also display their company name as-or-more prominently next to that brand, so people know who is actually making those products. They should have to display the entire chain of companies in the corporate structure and, if it's too big to legibly fit on the package, you can't sell it.
- jl6 3y agoThis can also happen without a change of ownership. 1. Launch good product 2. Get good reviews 3. "Optimize" the design to use cheaper, worse components 4. Sell it under the same name 5. Coast on those good reviews and enjoy the higher profit margin
- advael 3y agoYes, it absolutely can. However, these decisions are more the rule than the exception in an acquisition or change of management, whereas people who set out to make things that get the good reviews in the first place will often value the effort they've put into the thing they've made, the reputation they've earned with it, their relationship with their customers, or even just take pride in making something well Of course, perhaps it would be even rarer in a world whose incentives resisted "optimization" of this kind rather than actively encouraging it
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]