As if companies are just out here wantonly destroying otherwise valuable goods that could have been easily sold at a profit instead.
I guarantee this problem is far more complex and troublesome than the bureaucrats would ever understand, much less believe, yet they have no problem piling on yet another needless regulatory burden.
They quite clearly are. Burberry was caught a while ago https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44885983, but it's well known that every major upmarket brand was doing it to avoid the loss of prestige of sending the items to outlets.
you can try to reason with the people who post comments like the one you're responding to, but the truth is they are just there waiting for anything a regulator does to desparage it, defend corporate and capital, and change nothing about the status quo. The worst part is that they do it thinking they are so edgy for knowing exactly why just another piece of regulation will clearly not work.
Funnily enough, the EU track record proves that, apart from some exceptions, these type of regulations work really well.
USB-C. Data Roaming across all of Europe. Laws on single use plastics. Etc.
But yeah, it's just another regulation! EU BAD!
It’s a fair criticism, but note the Draghi report:
“The regulatory burden on European companies is high and continues to grow, but the EU lacks a common methodology to assess it. The Commission has been working for years to reduce the "stock" and "flow" of regulation under the Better Regulation agenda. However, this effort has had limited impact so far. The stock of regulation remains large and new regulation in the EU is growing faster than in other comparable economies. While direct comparisons are obscured by different political and legal systems, around 3,500 pieces of legislation were enacted and around 2,000 resolutions were passed in the US at the federal level over the past three Congress mandate:
(2019-2024). During the same period, around 13,000 acts were passed by the EU. Despite this increasing flow of regulation, the EU lacks a quantitative framework to analyse the costs and benefits of new laws.”
I agree with Draghi 100%, he’s a genius and I would love to see him take Von Der Leyen’s place.
That said, the original comment has a very different intent.
> you can try to reason with the people who post comments like the one you're responding to, but the truth is they are just there waiting for anything a regulator does to desparage it, defend corporate and capital, and change nothing about the status quo. The worst part is that they do it thinking they are so edgy for knowing exactly why just another piece of regulation will clearly not work. Funnily enough, the EU track record proves that, apart from some exceptions, these type of regulations work really well. USB-C. Data Roaming across all of Europe. Laws on single use plastics. Etc. But yeah, it's just another regulation! EU BAD!
How about extending others some good faith?
These are political disagreements with decades (sometimes centuries) of history, and unless you're fifteen years old, there's a better explanation for the fact that others disagree with you than "I am the single smartest person in the universe, and all my political opinions are so irrefutably correct that anyone who disagrees must be doing so in bad faith and out of ignorance".
The vast majority of people want what's best for their societies, and have different views as to how best achieve that goal, that arise from diverse life experiences.
> The vast majority of people want what's best for their societies, and have different views as to how best achieve that goal, that arise from diverse life experiences.
I'd personally disagree with that assessment. I think the vast majority of people want what's best for them and the cohorts they're in. Which is quite different from wanting what's best for society as a whole.
> These are political disagreements with decades (sometimes centuries) of history, and unless you're fifteen years old, there's a better explanation for the fact that others disagree with you
The better explanation is that they have acquired their political tastes mindlessly and are now defending them in an equal manner. The presumption of good faith is wasted on them.
> The vast majority of people want what's best for their societies, and have different views as to how best achieve that goal, that arise from diverse life experiences.
That's incorrect. Just take a look at the housing situation in the US: what's best for society is to build, but a majority of the people (the current owners) are blocking that because it suits them.
> The presumption of good faith is wasted on them.
That's just assholery masquerading as enlightenment.
> That's incorrect. Just take a look at the housing situation in the US: what's best for society is to build, but a majority of the people (the current owners) are blocking that because it suits them.
Maybe if you call the majority stupid some more, that's famously convincing in a democracy. You'll definitely build sustainable coalitions for the policies you want this way.
Capital loves this kind of left wing politics. Off-putting and impotent.
I don't doubt that some luxury organizations destroy unsold inventory rather than allow it to diminish the status of their brand. My claim is that if they could have sold that inventory at a profit, they would have.
It's theirs to do with as they please. They paid for it to be made.
If you don't like how they run their business, don't buy the overpriced garbage they sell.
People seem to be so concerned about externalities like CO2 emissions, but it's difficult to believe this problem represents a scale even remotely meaningful in that area. It feels like the plastic straw bullshit that took over the US for a few years. A useless, symbolic gesture that causes far more harm than good.
As a side note, it's a weird feeling to jump to the defense of an industry I generally despise, but the regulation just seems so ludicrous.
>It's theirs to do with as they please. They paid for it to be made.
This is not how that works. You have to pay for things within a legal framework setup by the government. If the legal frameworks changes then you have to deal with that.
Indeed. The government represents a legal framework for us all to operate in together. Sure.
If I pay for something to be made, that something belongs to me. It becomes private property and (at least in the US) I'm free to destroy a thing I own.
If you want to talk about options for protecting the environment, that seems great. There are ways to destroy textiles without fouling rivers or the air.
The OP article raises the spectre of "CO2 emissions" and "pollution" but doesn't provide any meaningful data (units or scale) related to these concerns.
My claim is that there is no way this activity represents any reasonable scale of impact relative to those separate concerns and that we already have lots of regulation related to keeping our water and air clear.
We can discuss ideas about how to do even better on those fronts, but this does not seem like a great way to have a large impact, if the environment is the actual concern.
How about all the laborers who were able to feed their families making these products that were destroyed? What happens to them when the company decides next year to be more conservative and make less stuff?
I'm not advocating for waste, I'm just pointing out that legislation like this often (almost always) comes along with unintended consequences that wind up causing more harm than good.
> It becomes private property and (at least in the US) I'm free to destroy a thing I own.
Only within the confines of the law. If I buy a skyscraper I can’t blow it up without permits. I can’t burn trash in my yard in the middle of the city. I can’t tear down a landmark in a historical district, even if I own it.
Yes, these laws have unintended consequences. I think at the continental scale the EU operates every law or decision has that.
But the current incentives in the fashion market also has unintended consequences: companies producing a lot of garments only to destroy them to protect perceived intellectual property value.
And here's the thing: this brand image value is relative. So by forcing all companies to comply no one has to take the negative brand image hit that would be required to unilaterally decide to do this.
> My claim is that if they could have sold that inventory at a profit, they would have.
That's utterly incorrect. They don't just want profits - that would be easy to obtain by sending the merchandise to an outlet - they want high profits in a way that maintains high profits in the future too. Any discount "cheapens" the brand by giving customers the expectation of low(er) prices in the future.
Agreed. A good business will take both short and long term profit into consideration when making a decision. They will strive to maximize profit (within reason) in whatever they do.
I don’t presume to know anything about the fashion industry and generally find it uninteresting.
My point is that I assume the people running those businesses know what they’re doing. Many of them have been around for many decades.
I’m admittedly surprised to find so many people here with so much confidence in their own ability to effectively constrain an entire industry they obviously also know nothing about.
Companies should be free to do whatever they want, as long as they pay for all their negative externalities.
It is not OK for anyone to litter, also not companies.
One can speculate that this is an easy way to force the companies to pay for their externalities - given that production in third countries are much harder to touch for the EU.
Clothing items are so cheap to make it's hard to believe. I used to work in a distribution warehouse for a national baby and children's clothing chain. Containers would arrive from China and we'd enter items into the warehouse stock system. Cost basis for most items was under 10 cents.
> Companies should be free to do whatever they want, as long as they pay for all their negative externalities.
No they shouldn't. Sometimes it's not a matter of paying for the externalities. If you're doing harm at scale the only sane option is to stop doing that, period.
When we figured out that leaded gas was bad we didn't make companies pay for their negative externalities. We banned that shit and that was it.
> As if companies are just out here wantonly destroying otherwise valuable goods that could have been easily sold at a profit instead.
I remember watching a documentary in which they tracked a package of coffee returned to amazon (unopened). It traveled through half of Europe to end up in an incinerator in Slovakia, which is funny because amazon doesn't even operate there.
Big companies are doing a lot of weird shit because at their scale if it's even 1ct cheaper to burn 10 coffee pods vs reprocessing them back in their store it's going to make a huge difference in the long run.
Of course they're not. They're destroying goods that they can't sell at a profit because, for example, the cost of processing some unworn but returned goods outweighs the potential profit from those goods.
In TFA it's estimated that between 4% and 9% of clothing put on the EU market is destroyed before being worn. An admittedly high uncertainty, but even 4% of all clothing sold in the EU is still a heck of a lot of clothes.
Luxury brands do in fact intentionally destroy old stock to make sure their value doesn't drop due to excess supply. I suppose the next step is making everything extremely limited like hypercars?
However hypercars are not purposely limited. It takes an enormous amount of time and labor to build them unlike a handbag where the limit is artificial to sell more.
Are you serious? Pricing theory includes both supply and demand, and limiting supply makes the remaining items more valuable by dint of rarity. Companies absolutely limit supply on items to maximize profits. How is this even a question?
I personally know that L’oreal will buy back and destroy products of theirs from outlets, just to keep the prices up. These items are often bought in bulk on grey markets by discount outlets. Not only does L’oreal destroy the products, they pay for them to do so. None of this is shocking IMO.
> I guarantee this problem is far more complex and troublesome than the bureaucrats would ever understand
if a manufacturer finds it too complex to not overproduce and not add all kinds of negative externalities then their business model is flawed or they’re not up to the task.
either way, it isn’t “the bureaucrats” fault they’re overproducing, and they absolutely are overproducing.
It couldn't have been easily sold because brands establish a floor below they don't want to go with value to maintain their perceived premium.
It's been known for ages that they operate like this. Some more ethical ones cut off the labels from the garment before they sell it in bulk. Most will destroy the items altogether.
This legislation targets this vanity and I applaud it.
I don't see anything shocking here. Corporations doing corporatey things, which is maximizing profits and that can easily literally mean destroying unconsumed stuff since it would cost them 2 cents more per tonne to ship it and sell someplace cheaper. Ever heard the term economies of scale for example? Those distort many things in money flows.
Those corporations don't give a fuck about mankind, environment, future, long term stuff etc. Any approach to similar topics which gives them benefit of the doubt is dangerously naive and misguided from the start. It's up to society to enforce rules if its healthy and strong enough. Some are better off, some worse.
It's about preserving brand image. Destroying a product is favourable compared to selling it at a discount and making the brand you spent so much marketing appear "cheap".
They absolutely do, source: warehouse job where you occasionally just opened boxes of unsold merchandise and smashed them. Something something tax write off. I never understood it. US based personal experience from almost two decades ago so take it was a grain of salt.
Yeah, it is shocking. And that's why it needed to be legislated. Companies prove time and time again that they will take the easiest route to minimise losses and maximise profits, even if that means destroying the environment or wasting perfectly good merchandise to do so.
They're not destroying clothing because it's inherently unsellable, or hazardous, or damaged beyond repair. They destroy it because it's easier to dump excess stuff than it is to set up responsible channels to get rid of it.
Many "high fashion" shithouses intentionally destroy excess stock so that their precious branded status symbols can't get into the hands of the filthy proles, which would dilute their brand recognition.
These "regulatory burdens", as you call them, are the only thing holding back companies from further messing up the planet and I welcome them with open arms.
Having a background in fine art (and also knew Aral many years ago!), this prose resonates heavily with me.
Most of the OP article also resonated with me as I bounce back and forth between learning (consuming, thinking, pulling, integrating new information) to building (creating, planning, doing) every few weeks or months. I find that when I'm feeling distressed or unhappy, I've lingered in one mode or the other a little too long. Unlike the OP, I haven't found these modes to be disrupted by AI at all, in fact it feels like AI is supporting both in ways that I find exhilarating.
I'm not sure OP is missing anything because of AI per se, it might just be that they are ready to move their focus to broader or different problem domains that are separate from typing code into an IDE?
For me, AI has allowed me to probe into areas that I would have shied away from in the past. I feel like I'm being pulled upward into domains that were previously inaccessible.
I use Claude on a daily basis, but still find myself frequently hand-writing code as Claude just doesn't deliver the same results when creating out of whole cloth.
Claude does tend to make my coarse implementations tighter and more robust.
I admittedly did make the transition from software only to robotics ~6 years ago, so the breadth of my ignorance is still quite thrilling.
If you think it's bad now, the early days of the web were absolutely filled with scumbag grifters who made small fortunes hiring contractors and then refusing to pay.
Many of them disappeared in the y2k dot com bust, but then seem to have reappeared in SF after 2008.
In the late 1990's, my second ever Flash app development client stiffed me on a $10k invoice.
He finally figured out 6 months later that he didn't have the source material to make changes and paid the full invoice in order to get it.
So I took precautions with the next client. It was a small agency that was serving a much larger business.
We were on 30 days net payment terms and I submitted the invoice when the project was done.
They didn't pay and within a couple weeks of gentle reminders, they stopped responding.
I smiled.
Exactly 30 days from the due date, I got a panicked call shrieking about their largest client website being down and did I have anything to do with it?!
I asked them what the hell they were talking about, they don't own a website. They never paid for any websites. I happen to own a website and I would be happy to give them access to it if they want to submit a payment.
They started to threaten legal nonsense, and how they had a "no time bombs clause in the contract."
I laughed because my contract had no such clause. If they signed such a contract with the client, that's not my problem.
I told them I wouldn't release the source files until the check cleared my bank, which could be weeks. A cashier's check arrived that morning and their source files were delivered.
By the end of it, the folks at the agency thanked me because that client wasn't planning to pay them and they hired me for other work (which, they had to prepay for).
Of course I don't know about the OP, but I'd bet the company was trying to stiff that contractor on their last check.
It’s incredibly sad to watch Google abandon the values that inspired so much trust and belief that there is a better way to build a company.
Long time Pixel user here who has always believed the story that Apple has the closed, but refined, higher quality experience and Google has the slightly freer, but coarser UX.
I was convinced to make the switch this year and the Apple iPhone 17 Pro + whatever iOS version is, by far the worst phone I’ve ever owned.
Photos are worse, low light is worse, macros are worse, the UI is laggy, buggy and crashes.
The keyboard and autosuggest is shockingly bad.
Incredibly popular apps on iOS (YT, X, etc) are just as bad and often worse.
iMessage is a psyop. The absolute worst messaging app in history with zero desktop access for non-Mac users?!
If you’re on Android, and especially pixel, please know that Apple has completely given up and no longer executes at the level you remember from 10-15 years ago.
The whole software world is shit now. The foundations were stable decades ago. Like Windows kernel, WinAPI, .NET, WPF, Linux kernel. But end user software is so terrible. Windows 11 with ads and unhelpful AI. macOS which is a bit less terrible, but still too bloated. Linux with its eternal changes between X, Wayland, Alsa, Pipewire, Pulseaudio, sysvinit, systemd, and endless choices. Both iOS and Android are terrible. iOS was perfect 10 years ago, it's absolute clownfest now. I would blame AI vibe coders, but it started before. I don't know who to blame. Why can't we just build solid minimal non-bloated OS that will last for decades without major rewrites. We've got so good foundations but so terrible end product.
It is true that this app is more hostile than asking someone to keep it down, but people should beware of either approach, as it's not unusual for the same assholes who are comfortable blasting their audio in public spaces to also be comfortable getting into a fist fight.
I have personally been threatened on multiple occasions because I asked someone to turn down (or turn off) their volume while watching videos on their phone in public.
In one instance, I was in a doctor's office waiting room and a rather large, otherwise normal-looking man (likely in his late fifties) was watching videos at full volume while 4-5 of us were sitting quietly. We were all annoyed by him and exchanging looks, so I politely asked him to mute the video or watch it outside and he stood up and started threatening to fight me in a doctor's office waiting room!
In my anecdotal experience in various tier 2 USA cities (i.e., not NY, SF, LA, etc), Gen-Xers and Boomers seem to be the worst offenders and also surprisingly, the most belligerent when confronted.
If you're going to try either approach (this app, or asking), please do not be surprised if you find yourself in a rapidly escalating confrontation that may quickly result in physical violence.
Sometimes, this calculus is more than worth it, sometimes it's not, but just don't think it can't happen.
Current branch without bloat is to cat .git/HEAD, and if that didn't exist, run git symbolic-ref HEAD. The first is faster and works in the common case where you're in the top of a git repo. In either case, run it through ${branch##*/} to strip down to just the current branch.
I have used this for a long time, never understood how people would put all of git in between them and the next prompt.
As if companies are just out here wantonly destroying otherwise valuable goods that could have been easily sold at a profit instead.
I guarantee this problem is far more complex and troublesome than the bureaucrats would ever understand, much less believe, yet they have no problem piling on yet another needless regulatory burden.
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