• gravitas_deficiency
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    1 year ago

    PSA: remember, if you see someone stealing essentials like groceries or whatever: no, you didn’t.

    • agentshags
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      1 year ago

      Food, medication, hygiene products, diapers or formula, all no you didn’t for sure

      Now if a group keeps hitting designer goods and electronics or something, that’s up for debate.

        • agentshags
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          1 year ago

          Depends on where you work and where you draw the line apparently. I would say organized theft of luxury goods, or even one off, I would personally be less willing to look the other way. But if I was employed at Walmart (not that they carry luxury goods), making minimum wage, and being instructed on how to subsidize their wages with food stamps, I might me less inclined to ‘no you didn’t’.

          But if it’s freezing in the middle of winter and I see some raggedy person taking a generic coat and some gloves, I would probably not see it either.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      stealing essentials

      stealing only essentials, you mean.

      Steal a bit of food for today, didn’t see anything and the food bank may just be too far. If I’m on the ball, I’ll try and pick up the tab. You touch the earbuds or lego, though, I’m finna report it.

    • huge_clock@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      There are food banks. Pay for their groceries if you want. If you advocate stealing you have no right to complain if you are stolen from.

      Plus we pay for stolen groceries through higher prices. So honest people also hard-done by have to pay more.

      • hark@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve got news for you: they increase prices regardless of theft.

          • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Grocery prices spiked by 35% in my area over the course of three months. It wasn’t because of theft, they claimed it was because of inflation (bullshit).

            Right after they jacked up the prices, theft went up. So you’ve got it backwards, actually.

            You know what the geniuses in corporate office did about the increased theft? Spent $18k per store to install railing to fence the customers in.

            Right after they did that, theft went up again.

            Prices have fuck all to with theft, and everything to do with the idiotic decisions made by the greedy retards at the top.

          • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            That’s not at all how prices are set in a Market as per all the applicable theories of Economics (and in practice).

            Any profit-driven sellers (i.e. all except maybe a mom-and-pop shop with soft hearted owners) will charge the most that they think buyers are willing to pay, so if for example a seller becomes a local monopoly in an essential good, they’ll pump prices up because customers have no other options (with nothing on the cost side pushing it) and will act similarly when cartels are formed.

            This is very much proven again and again by observeable reality - market competition goes down prices go up, completelly independently of costs.

            Cost pressures will only push prices up in a market with actual competition when it affects every seller (for example if input prices go up, certain taxes go up, or there’s an event that most sellers can use as an excuse to up prices, such as widespread news of inflation in which case they informally act as a cartel would) or if the cost pressure is so large that it will bankrupt a seller that won’t raise prices (so the seller has no option than to raise prices to try and survive, even at the risk that customers will just walk away).

            This theory of yours as well as the “if companies pay less taxes they’ll raise salaries” and other such Economically-ignorant theories that ignore basic market principles and causality, seem to be immenselly popular with people with certain political-faiths who have never actually run a business or worked with Markets.

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Fuck economists. It is about as accurate as astrology. Except most government officials don’t take astrology seriously so it doesn’t matter as much.

              • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I suggest you read some books about Behavioural Economics.

                But yeah, most of what you see out there from Economists is really Politics, not Science.

                However those observations about price making are also from Finance, and those are immensely pragmatic people (as they put real money on the line) - you might disagree with their morals (what morals, eh?!) but they certainly are putting their money where their mouth is.

                • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Are they? Because last I checked

                  A. Those experts are beaten out by random stock picker software over long term.

                  B. The entire industry requires the government bailing them out, regulating their small competition out of business, huge infusions of cash via the Fed, and a complex legal structure that pretty much limits your investment options to stocks and bonds or your mattress.

                  C. For people who claim to be able to predict the future they sure need other people’s money a fair amount. Pensions, managed market accounts, 401Ks, trusts. If you really could best the market you would never team up with anyone since all they would do is open you up to liability

                  D. When those wall street scumbags do take over the management of a company the company consistently fails. It turns out pledging to Skull and Bones after daddy got you into an ivy doesn’t mean you can run a retailer or a tech company. Who knew? Remind me how Toys R US, Sears, and Fluke multisystems are doing.

                  E. There is a link between growth in finance and poverty for everyone else. Which makes sense since it sucks away people from productive work to unproductive work. As Wall Street grows in the US incomes for everyone else have fallen.

                  Economics is bullshit lies that aspires to the accuracy of astrology. Economists are shills with zero integrity. Financial bros are conmen.

                  But thank you for your reading suggestion. If I ever want to read up on mathematical models that have no connection to the real world based on a sociopathic paraody of humans I will. Everything you want to know about the types of people who become economists can be understood if you know who their hero is. Homo economis a being of pure self. Is there any in particular book you can recommend? If so what chapter is titled “fuck the diabetics, let them mortgage their house for insulin”?

                  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Most of that is just a generalization falacy.

                    Behavioural Economics is exactly the only part of Economics that actually works like a real Science with actual experimental validation of theories (with properly conducted experiments).

                    Using mathematical models doesn’t make something false (or true), it’s the lack of real world validation that does. Believing otherwise is believing Physics has “no connection with the real world” so things like artillery rounds won’t fall were the Newtonian Physics formulas predict they will.

                    But yeah, most of the rest of Economics is self-serving bollocks, especially the closer you get to politically-significant monetary management (i.e. central banks).

                    It’s not by chance that the only time a Behavioural Economist won the “Nobel Prize” of Economics (which is not a real prize set up by Alfred Nobel but in fact the “Swedish Central Bank Prize for Economics in Honor of Alfred Nobel” which is very purposefully misrepresented as a genuine Nobel Prize) was for “Nudge Theory” which is about how to push the masses to favour certain financial choices (i.e. manipulation) and is minor next to the bulk of that guy’s work, which proves without a doubt the irrationality of humans in economic matters (people don’t behave at all as the Homo Economicus that is the human model that serves as foundation for the whole Free Market Theory bollocks, but he was hardly going to get even a fake-Nobel from the Swedish Central Bank for disproving Free Market theories, now was he?!)

                    IMHO, your take on this is too simplistic and as a consequence you’re throwing the baby with the bath water.

                    I suggest you read “Freakonomics”.

      • gravitas_deficiency
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        1 year ago

        I’ll copy the response I used when someone else responded the same way:

        Sometimes they run out. Or are 2 hours away. Or are in a bad part of town. There are tons of reasons why someone would be desperate enough to steal food.

        Nobody’s encouraging it. All we’re saying is this: as a direct result of the deficiencies inherent to our society and the socioeconomic structure it perpetrates, some people need food but can’t get it through legal means. Categorically refusing to make an exception for exceptional cases is implicitly saying that those people deserve to die.

          • gravitas_deficiency
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            1 year ago

            I have one I can reuse for that, too:

            Do you understand the difference between being amused by a meme and having a nuanced stance on the topic the meme is addressing in real life?

            • huge_clock@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              This is just straight up gaslighting.

              “We’re not condoning it, we’re just promoting an amusing meme that condones it.”

      • gravitas_deficiency
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        1 year ago

        Sometimes they run out. Or are 2 hours away. Or are in a bad part of town. There are tons of reasons why someone would be desperate enough to steal food.

        Nobody’s encouraging it. All we’re saying is this: as a direct result of the deficiencies inherent to our society and the socioeconomic structure it perpetrates, some people need food but can’t get it through legal means. Categorically refusing to make an exception for exceptional cases is implicitly saying that those people deserve to die.

            • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Well, sorta.

              You can say that the War In Ukraine was not natural (definitelly man-made and entirelly avoidable) and the imposition of Sanctions on a oil producing nation was not natural (it was a choice, even if the only reasonable one), plus all the increase in the money supply and decrease in the cost of debt from ZIRP which devaluated money (hence inflated the currency-denominated value of things) were also not natural.

              However the effects of those things were natural consequences, and that includes Inflation, which came in via increased energy prices, increased realestate prices (cheaper debt and the rush up the yield ladded of “investment” money pushed those up) and just the straightforward devaluation of money.

              However it seems that most of the inflation, at least beyond a certain point (this stuff was already happenning before the War) was not from the natural effect of those other things but rather companies taking advantage of the situation to, in a cartel-like fashion (not actually a Cartel in legal terms because they didn’t get together and agree to do so) pumping up prices in tandem to increase profits.

            • Maya@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Of course inflation is natural. Unless we are all gonna share the same $100 forever it has to happen at least without some sort of perfect foresight so the correct amount of money can be issued.

              What isn’t natural is somehow people are convinced they should be held hostage by business.

              When somehow we are convinced taking out a loan that you have to pay on for eternity (selling stock) that is not natural.

              When somehow limited resources (our time) has less value then an unlimited resource (money) that is not natural.

              • explodicle@local106.com
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                1 year ago

                It sounds like you’re saying why you think inflation is a good idea, not why it’s natural.

                Why not share the same $100 forever? As the value of $100 increases, we can just divide it up into smaller and smaller bills.

                We should be trading our limited time for another limited resource, not an unlimited one. At the time of the trade they’re always equal, but labor in the past should be worth more than that, not less.

                • Maya@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Dividing $100 into smaller and smaller pieces is the exact same thing as making money which causes inflation? If you divide it into 200 parts of fifty cents each and you only need 199 then someone has an extra fifty cents.

                  • explodicle@local106.com
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                    1 year ago

                    It’s not the same thing because each person’s percentage of the total supply doesn’t change, like it does with inflation.

          • huge_clock@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Grocery stores are pretty much the definition of a perfectly competitive industry. The profit margins are always between 1 and 3%. The only reason they raise prices is because they have to.

                • Hup!@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I wasnt disputing your margins report but that it makes for perfect competition. Why are you assuming low margins necessarily lead to better competition? With low margins, volume dictates the winning business in the unregulated marketplace. Big businesses monopolize and then one day have more leverage over their margins than the marketplace itself. Not a problem when antitrust laws are enforced but those laws have had their teeth pulled for the last 30 years.

                  • huge_clock@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    So what hasn’t been true for decades then?

                    Your question isn’t a bad question though so I’m gonna answer it in good faith. Basically when regulators look at whether industries are competitive a huge factor they look at is whether firms have pricing power and their market share. There are a couple other things they look too like purchasing power with suppliers.

                    If you look at a firm like Facebook (META) it has both high margins (>30%)and between Google has 80% market share in online advertising. That’s an industry that is oligopolistic and possibly a case for antitrust measures.

                    In a nut-shell the question is “how much of the pie is consumer surplus vs producer surplus.”

                    If you look at grocery you’ll see the market share is really broken up so yeah they’re doing a lot of volume but you have a lot of choice. Volume itself doesn’t really tell us anything about competitiveness.

                    As you’re thinking about this ask and still disagree ask “what would a good objective measure be for competitiveness?” We need some actual quantifiable metric, so what would your counter-proposal be then?

                • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Whole Foods has to be. The few times I have been there I was disgusted by the prices. Mother fuckers, I just want some apples. I don’t need certified that some old hippy said they were all natural.

          • gravitas_deficiency
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            1 year ago

            Do you understand the difference between being amused by a meme and having a nuanced stance on the topic the meme is addressing in real life?

      • huge_clock@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Fuck the downvoters. This is #trashy. Didn’t realize there were so many teenagers in here. Might go back to Reddit.

        • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          This is #trashy. Didn’t realize there were so many teenagers in here.

          Says the person using hashtags lmao

        • Nutteman@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I dare you to bruh youre not brave enough to stand up to the theives on Lemmy and return to the Homeland