| ▲ | 4ndrewl 9 hours ago |
| The invisible hand of the market will rectify this of course. Nothing to see here. |
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| ▲ | mpyne 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| The invisible hand of the market has been handcuffed a bit here though. Though I imagine this will simply show up as higher cost rather than blanket inavailability. |
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| ▲ | altairprime 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | If a charity sets up a ‘returned product classification’ flow and issues tax credits to companies donating their return flow to the charity, then companies can simply shunt returns to charity and lower their costs in triplicate: 1) changeover of return provider replaces expense with deduction; 2) compliance with EU regulations costs shipping to charity; 3) charity provides itemized receipts for compliance and further tax credits. Of course, companies won’t actually lower their prices to reflect the net reduction in costs, but it will certainly strip away the excuse that they must raise costs. | | |
| ▲ | mpyne 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Couldn't they already do this today, without an additional regulation? Why is a charity supposed to be able to magically conjure sales the original seller was unable to find? I just think if it was as easy to doing this, there's already be nothing for regulators to be complaining about. | | |
| ▲ | altairprime 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Possibly? I’m not sure anyone’s ever considered it before, since prior to this EU regulation there was nothing directing innovation in this space. I might well be the first to come up with the idea :) Corporations regularly price goods higher than demand in order to delay lowering prices or create artificial scarcity — see gas stations, rental collusion companies, and Prada bags, for example. Charities don’t have to sell clothes received at all to ‘pay’ the donator in tax credits. This law is about forcing corporations to one way or another deliver 100% of their finished goods to end users rather than diverting a massive fraction of that to waste streams, and charities can use clothes up to a point. |
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| ▲ | leonidasrup 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The invisible hand of the market is already disabled by regulation, in this case trademark protection. For example: if Nike is willing to destroy 100$ shoes, instead of selling them at 40$ discount, for brand protection, another shoemaker could try make identical shoes and sell them at discount. But the alternative shoemaker is not allowed to make identical shoes, this would infringe Nike trademark. |
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| ▲ | groundzeros2015 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| What do you mean? This is a case of a regulation distorting the markets ability to price and distribute goods. |
