(02-02-2010 04:05 PM)emmiesix Wrote: I don't mean that greed and disregard for the needs of others is solely an attribute of corporations, just that it seems particularly encouraged in those businesses by the way they are set up. And they typically make no apology for it, because $$ is a reason in itself for anything to these people.
Yes, the purpose of business organizations is to make money -- just as the purpose of governments is to govern; of fraternal organizations is to fraternize; of charitable organizations is to be charitable.
An organization may have ancillary purposes as well (businesses give to charity; fraternal organizations have fundraisers; Lord knows governments do all kinds of things that are pretty tangential to governing). But if greed is defined as having the purpose of making money, then the statement "businesses are greedy" is a tautology, albeit a popular one.
Of course, people who don't want money are free to dissociate themselves from businesses as much as they want. That's not a popular choice, because it turns out that people actually do want money (but of course one's own desire for money is necessarily "moderate" -- by definition only other people are "greedy"). But it is an available choice.
(02-02-2010 04:05 PM)emmiesix Wrote: Actively having an employee take the time to cut up or rip apart perfectly good clothing is a cost in itself -- clearly less than the cost of your "logistics" for sending them to Haiti, agreed.
I'm not sure the relative cost is "clear" at all. Sorting, packaging, and shipping are actually pretty time-consuming processes. (In fact, that's one reason that local food banks would much rather have your money than your canned goods. A chief reason is that for the same money you spend on a can of beans to give to the food drive, they can buy a a whole case of cans from their suppliers. But another reason is that processing small batches of stuff is surprisingly costly -- whether cost is measured in hours or dollars.)
(02-02-2010 04:05 PM)emmiesix Wrote: how hard is it to send that clothing to your local women's or homeless shelter, or to contact local churches and synagogues and have them pick up the clothing (I'll bet at least some of them would) for their own supplies?
I don't much about H&M, but it sounds like the Wal-Mart has a process for doing just that, but this case slipped through the cracks. Given that Wal-Mart is (one of?) the largest employers in the U.S., I am not sure the whole company should be tarred just because some employees in one location dropped the ball. And to revert to the food bank example, remember that one-time, odd-lot donations are far less cost effective -- to the business AND to the charity, in money AND in time -- than most people realize.
(02-02-2010 04:05 PM)emmiesix Wrote: At least some of this seems to have to do with creating artificial scarcity -- how else do you explain wanton destruction of material goods?
Sometimes goods are legally required to be destroyed:
-- intellectual property protection: the goods ripoff a trademark/patent/copyright.
-- contractual rights: the goods were made under an agreement that they would only be available for a certain time.
-- other legal prohibitions: goods made in violation of child labor laws.
At the margin, these may seem like examples of "artificial scarcity"; but no serious economist or historian would doubt that enforcement of IP and contractual rights, far from causing scarcity, is in fact an essential foundation for alleviating scarcity.
Maybe in the Wal-Mart case, the goods were supposed to go to a charity but got mistakenly mixed up with goods that were tagged for destruction because they were made by underage trademark pirates. And maybe the clerk who normally catches such errors was out that day serving at a soup kitchen -- or maybe he was at the dentist, or his kid's play, or hungover, or just blew it.