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Police raids found Dior was using exploitative suppliers to produce luxury bags
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoHow is this any kind of problem? They trade on the brand, obviously.
- cranberryturkey 2y agoThat's just capitalism. buy low sell high. how is that something prosecutable?
- stop50 2y agoacording to EU law companies have to check their suppliers for violations against a list of human right standards.
- morsch 2y agoStrictly speaking it's a directive, which the member states have to implement as law. And from what I can tell it only goes in effect in 2027. Of course, no one is stopping Italy from implementing it early.
- yorwba 2y agoThey're being prosecuted for labor law violations; having their fat margins revealed is just a side effect of the investigation.
- dylan604 2y agoSomething else that should be prosecutable is having a headline that so misleads the reader from that actual content that people are able to make comments like yours in online forums
- Zak 2y agoThe headline isn't. The illegal mistreatment of workers detailed in the article is.
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoAh! That might have been a better title. As it is, it's clickbait.
- yellow_postit 2y agoAlways be cautious if the url is business insider
- kibwen 2y agoSee the comment above, the price revelation is a side effect of an investigation into labor law violations. In the meantime, in a rational market, a product commanding a 50x markup would quickly have its price driven down by competitors, which is more evidence that our markets are dishearteningly irrational. Profit represents market inefficiency.
- clarkmoody 2y agoWhat's the markup on software?
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoClearly fashion and branding are immune to that calculus. Else we'd be buying designer clothes by the pound. In other news, it cost around $4 to mine each carat of Canadian diamond worth $100.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoThere is no crisis where markets don't supply handbags for less than $2k. Similarly, Markets are not a monolith so this doesn't prove anything about markets in general. Economics is a broad science which works to establish a model of commerce, with varying degrees of accuracy and utility. Profits are not an inherently bad thing or dirty word. It just means that surplus value was created by a transaction, and workers can profit too
- shortsunblack 2y agoProfit as intended means producer surplus. Economic theory predicts producer surplus reaching 0, while consumer surplus getting maximized. That is what competition does. It does tell everything about markets. This does not happen because of IP doctrines, which distorts competition. And advertising, which causes information asymmetries.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoHighschool theory might predict that for the price of butter, but everything after that is more complicated. I feel like you are setting up strawmen positions for economic theory, using more economics to refute them, and then claiming economics is bunk.
- BurningFrog 2y agoTrue. People aren't paying $2,780 for the bag. They're paying for the brand name, and they get what they paid for. Seller and buyer are both happy. The bad PR around this may ruin the brand value though, making the bags worth less retroactively.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bell-cot 2y ago[Yes, if I'm a famous-name artist, and can get $10,000 for a pencil-on-paper sketch that cost me $5 and 10 minute to produce, that's fine. But...] Reading the article... BusinessInsider's headline has little to do with the prosecutor's government's stated concerns: > In probes through March and April, investigators found evidence that workers were sleeping in the facility so bags could be produced around the clock, Reuters reported. They also tracked electricity-consumption data, which showed work was being carried out during nights and holidays, the report said. > The subcontractors were Chinese-owned firms, prosecutors said. They said most of the workers were from China, with two living in the country illegally and another seven working without required documentation. > The probe also said safety devices on gluing and brushing machines were removed so workers could operate them faster. > The prosecution said violating labor rules was a common industry practice that luxury giants relied on for higher profits. > "It's not something sporadic that concerns single production lots, but a generalized and consolidated manufacturing method," court documents about the decision to place Dior under administration said, according to Reuters. > "The main problem is obviously people being mistreated: applying labor laws, so health and safety, hours, pay," Fabio Roia, the president of the Milan Court, told Reuters earlier this year. "But there is also another huge problem: the unfair competition that pushes law-abiding firms off the market." Normally, I'd assumed that "famous brands used sub-contractors to do the dirty work" ==> "famous brand gets off with a slapped wrist". But the third subtitle: > Judges placed Dior and Armani units under judicial administration for one year. So hopefully not, this time?
- jeremyjh 2y agoI think the price matters insofar as they clearly have the revenue to produce quality goods safely. But they'd rather inflict human misery on people to save 0.4% of the retail cost.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> they clearly have the revenue to produce quality goods safely The headline figure does “not include raw materials such as leather,” nor core costs like distribution, R&D, retail and marketing. (That a “luxury” brand can be made by abused workers is a separate farce.)
- scotty79 2y agoI'm surprised it's this high. I though manufacturing of those costs at most $20. It would probably cost this much if they made it in volume.
- sharpshadow 2y agoExactly 57$ is already quite costly in comparison. 57$ in production would retail for at least 300$. And you can’t sell a bag cheap if your brand is demanding very high prices.
- RA2lover 2y ago> The costs do not include raw materials such as leather.
- McDyver 2y agoOr they wouldn't cost this little if the workers weren't exploited. How can people look into the costs and think: "it's fine, these people don't deserve compensation for their work. You know who worked hard, the shareholders. Yes, the $2000 profit should go to them."
- scotty79 2y agoSince pretty much everybody does that the problem is not with action of any single company. And the problem won't be fixed by actions of any single company. Let alone voluntary action.
- CuriouslyC 2y ago[flagged]
- malthaus 2y agoat least it's a product with utility (and resale value) looking at the crypto space on the other hand...
- immibis 2y agoand the race gets ever bottomer "At least the car does something." "The bag may not do something, but at least it's an actual physical object." "The cryptocurrency may not be physical, but at least you can spend it." "The NFT may be undependable and freely duplicable, but at least there's a block chain record identifying your one as the real one." What comes next? Perhaps pay to download a photo of a printed receipt that says you own a jpeg?
- kibwen 2y ago> What comes next? Perhaps pay to download a photo of a printed receipt that says you own a jpeg? The bottom is gacha games, which make billions annually, and are growing year-over-year with no end in sight. It's like a slot machine, except at least a slot machine has a theoretical chance of having a material payout. It's like Counter Strike skins, except at least Counter Strike skins can be sold to other players. It's like NFTs, except at least NFTs represent a notion of "ownership" that could theoretically survive the death of the issuing party. Gacha games are the worst of all worlds--gambling for jpegs that are neither transferable nor durable--and are the logical endpoint of the race to the bottom (well, maybe a slot machine that directly injects carfentanyl into your veins would be worse).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Almondsetat 2y ago>utility Same utility as a free bag I can get from the dump >resale value The resale value is as fake as crypto's since it's based on the same societal craze
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- amarcheschi 2y agoA few months ago something similar also happened to the fashion brand Alviero Martini who was found to be inert in regard to checking the supply chain of their products and whose subcontractors paid the laborers per piece (which is illegal in italy and it was a ridiculously low amount of money) here is what i could find in english https://www.lcalex.it/en/il-caso-alviero-martini-indica-come-evolve-il-concetto-di-responsabilita-aziendale/ https://www.lcalex.it/en/il-caso-alviero-martini-indica-come... although most articles dwelve deeper in italian, such as https://www.osservatoriodiritti.it/2024/03/13/alviero-martini/ https://www.osservatoriodiritti.it/2024/03/13/alviero-martin... Worth to note that Alviero Martini most famous products, the ones with printed maps design, aren't even made in leather but in synthetic leather, yet when you google them you find the page header as "borse in pelle da donna" (women leather bags) when most of them are synthetics and just a few of them are in part or in most part leather. I just realized this and it adds another layer of scummyness lol
- dylan604 2y ago> when most of them are synthetics in some circles, this is a feature not a bug. just use phrases like Vegan Friendly in the marketing and now your trendy
- amarcheschi 2y agoYeah, definitely. I use eco leather too as well as real leather, just let's not pretend it is higher quality than real leather
- electrodank 2y agoCallous example of a Veblen good, and many more like it.
- jskrablin 2y agoGomorrah (Gomorra), book by Roberto Saviano explains fashion brands business like this in detail (among others). Highly recommend, though sometimes quite depressing read.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Semaphor 2y agoNotably, the price tag does not even include the raw material. Which makes it an even weirder headline. But then it’s BI, which is not exactly known for quality or reporting.
- ghusto 2y agoI'm surprised they even cost that much to produce. Is this surprise to anyone? Even the people paying retail prices have known for some decades how this works. It's no less disgusting that they put human beings through what they do in order to squeeze every last penny out, and as a society we should stigmatise high price brands.
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoThis is one of the reasons I don't understand seemingly hysterical reactions to the existence of counterfeit goods (when they're being sold at prices that no one in their right mind would believe are for originals). I've read more than a few articles intimating that counterfeit goods fund terrorism. Funny how the originals fund human trafficking and breaches of safety laws and human rights violations and the illegal employment of child workers. Sigh. Repeating patterns everywhere.
- Cheyana 2y agoFrom Wikipedia: “Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault (born 5 March 1949) is a French businessman, investor and art collector. He is the founder, chairman and CEO of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company. Arnault is the third richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$194 billion as of July 2024, according to Forbes.”