Allbirds CEO on Amazon's copycat strategy

Given that many brands are not exclusively a maker's mark, most folks can't even be reasonably informed in the first place without asking. But even if we ignore that, it's worth pointing out that your argument only is true for small independent designers. Big brands absolutely do sue if they feel their design has been copied, and they win.

Apple won their case against Samsung, you know.

> You continue to say "design theft," presumably to make the case that it is an axiomatically wrong thing do. The reality is that this is not theft. Theft has a very particular definition, and is wrong because it it deprives the victim of an actual good or item that was in their position.

But isn't design theft specifically depriving craftspeople and artisans of renumeration for their work, which we have been implicitly confining to product design?

> What's actually happening is not theft but "copying," which is in no way axiomatically wrong, and is instead the very mechanism by which humanity has grown and thrived, as it is a necessary component of innovation. "Standing on the shoulders of giants" and all that.

The problem is that the consumer doesn't necessarily even know have a choice between the artisan good and the mass-produced copy. In a modern global market, this matters a lot.

> If Amazon is violating the law, sure. If not, that's Allbirds' problem to solve with whatever business strategy they choose. Why wouldn't it be? Are they entitled to business success?

You keep implying that the law defines morality, or that the law should inform consumer sentiment. There are plenty of legal but reprehensible things. Amazon is a reprehensible company doing awful things, and this is just one in a long list of harms that we should recognize they are perpetrating and hold them accountable as a society.

You're arguing that if it is not illegal, it should not be something we can hold them accountable for. I find this idea extremely dystopian, demanding that people abdicate all free will and morality to government. Why even have a free market if we can't judge the qualities of the people and objects we interact with.

If folks know these things and choose not to buy the artisan good? Very well. But you're arguing that not only shouldn't they have that choice, but that to even ask for it or expect to be able to make it is itself wrong because no law was broken.

> Where did I say you shouldn't be allowed to do that? You can vocalize support for whoever you want. You can also vote with your dollars by shopping at your favorite companies.

You argue this again above. You're not only making value judgements and spuriously arguing that design theft is a victimless crime, but then you're also suggesting that a thing must be illegal to be wrong.

> But they are not entitled to win the market just because they were first, and their case against Amazon is a business challenge to be surmounted, not a legitimate moral issue.

They weren't first, but they were doing a good job. Then Amazon comes along to annihilate the market.

> Again, it's not theft, and it's not immoral.

Again, it is and it your value judgement isn't objective, nor is it mine.

> Yes, if we're talking about how the market rewards companies and creators, hard work is meaningless. Why should it be otherwise?

Except! The hard work of the Allbirds designers is rewarding someone. It's just not the Allbirds designers or the folks they've signed rights to. It's being parasitically extracted by Amazon.

> The point of capitalism is to incentivize us to provide value to others, not to incentivize us to work hard for its own sake. Hard work is merely a means (sometimes an optional one) to an end, and provides no direct value to consumers itself.

The "point"? That's not the historical interpretation of capitalism any economist takes seriously. Unrestricted capitalism rapidly destroys free market competition by exactly these mechanisms. The debate is about if that is good or not.

> "Person X works hard, therefore they should be paid more" is another very common misconception about how the market operates

The demand is not to work hard. It's to acknowledge the work that made a good or service possible rather than taking the benefit of that away from the origin. This distorts the notion of free markets far less than capitalism.

If your complaint is that the legal system unfairly benefits whichever entity has more resources, I completely agree, and I wish this was a cause that more people would champion.

> But isn't design theft specifically depriving craftspeople and artisans of renumeration for their work, which we have been implicitly confining to product design?

We're getting into semantics here, but theft as a philosophical, moral, and legal concept has a very specific meaning. You can only steal "rivalrous" goods, which harms the stolen-from party for obvious and intuitive reasons that anyone can understand.

It's only recently in human history that we've begun to assign rightful ownership to intangible non-rivalrous things such as ideas, inventions, designs, words, and the like. And that came about not for moral reasons so much as for utilitarian reasons, e.g. perhaps we will incentivize more creation if we give creators temporary monopolies over profiting from their intangible ideas.

Of course, any copyright owner is financially incentivized to extend their ownership for as long as possible, and so thanks to lobbying from companies like Disney, copyrights now extend dozens of times longer than their original length. And we also have new propaganda terms like "intellectual property" which were intentionally created to get people to begin thinking of ideas as property, and copyright violation as theft, and immoral. Unfortunately it seems to be working.

But it's not theft. Nobody is actually being deprived of any goods. Nobody is actually "stealing" any designer's work from their shelves and drawers. This is 100% about people wanting to be granted exclusive legal access to profit. Which is fine if they want to lobby for that, but using words like "theft" is inaccurate and propaganda, and injects a moral component where there is none.

> You're not only making value judgements and spuriously arguing that design theft is a victimless crime

I don't think my argument is spurious at all, so I explained it more detail above. I'm genuinely curious to see you build a case for why this morally bad.

To my mind, at best, the victim's complaint is some version of, "I should be able to profit more from activity X." That's not a moral argument to me. That's a legal and economic argument about to best structure our capitalistic society to incentivize creators. But I would like to hear your framing.

> You're arguing that if it is not illegal, it should not be something we can hold them accountable for.

No, not at all. I'm arguing that it's not actually immoral (see above). Thus, by process of elimination, this is either a legal matter or no matter at all.

> If folks know these things and choose not to buy the artisan good? Very well. But you're arguing that not only shouldn't they have that choice, but that to even ask for it or expect to be able to make it is itself wrong because no law was broken.

We must be talking past each other, because I sincerely don't understand why you think I'm arguing this. Where am I saying that people shouldn't have this choice? I've said the opposite.

I think Allbirds should have the right to brand its goods as Allbirds so people know who made it, Amazon and other distributors should not be able to obscure that information, and other companies should not be able to copy that mark. I believe all of these requirements are true today, too.

Consumers have choices and they have access to information, and from my perspective, you're simply worried that they will choose Amazon, who you don't want to win.

> The "point"? That's not the historical interpretation of capitalism any economist takes seriously. Unrestricted capitalism rapidly destroys free market competition by exactly these mechanisms. The debate is about if that is good or not.

Yes, the point. Nobody is saying capitalism should be unrestricted. In my view, capitalism is created by restrictions. It's all about restrictions.

It's an attempt to limit the ways that people and companies can profit so that they're forced to do so in ways that create value for consumers, e.g. innovation, lower prices, easier access.

That requires regulations against profiting in ways that destroy value for consumers, e.g. anti-competitive practices, misleading consumers, collusion, corporate espionage, bribery, violence, blackmail, creating unsafe products, dumping toxic sludge in rivers to save money, etc.

Of course, the regulations we have aren't perfect, and never will be. It's a messy business with moving targets.

But no, I don't support unrestricted capitalism. Quite the opposite. In fact, I think the term "unrestricted capitalism" is basically nonsensical and an oxymoron.

The difference between you and me is that I don't believe that turning boutique products into commodities is theft. Further, I think it's a clear win for consumers, as evidenced by the fact that they're quite happy to pay for cheaper and more easily available products.

Maybe this means that some businesses (like Allbirds) will find it harder to live up to their lofty billion dollar valuations. Maybe it means that some small businesses fail. Often, big businesses fail, too, for similar reasons. But that's the game they're choosing to play. Success isn't guaranteed, and I personally don't like it when business owners feel so entitled to success that they expect the rules to be changed in their favor.

> The demand is not to work hard. It's to acknowledge the work that made a good or service possible rather than taking the benefit of that away from the origin.

Sure, I don't disagree, but hard work is one of many components. Hard work is not sufficient on its own -- you could imagine someone working hard painting a wall that nobody needs painted, and creating zero value for anyone, possibly negative value. Hard work is also not always necessary -- you can imagine an cheerful dad coaching little league baseball, having fun, barely working, yet providing value to all involved.

It's not the hard work we should be rewarding. It's the final result. And by rewarding the final result (via consumers purchasing goods), we indirectly reward all the constituent parts that are required to produce those results, which might change over time and from industry to industry. It's much simpler and more accurate than trying to place a value on hard work.

as I said above, it's an unrelated issue with the clothes design issue itself.

I'm trying to find a reason why you've got such an elaborate and specific definition of theft (when english dictionaries certainly don't include it) but when you use words that have clear meanings in the space of economics you're willing to stretch them to metaphorical limits (e.g., your use of "commodities" and "commodification" to suggest outright copies of existing goods are good for consumers.

> It's only recently in human history that we've begun to assign rightful ownership to intangible non-rivalrous things such as ideas, inventions, designs, words, and the like. And that came about not for moral reasons so much as for utilitarian reasons, e.g. perhaps we will incentivize more creation if we give creators temporary monopolies over profiting from their intangible ideas.

This isn't true. The idea of misrepresenting other people's work as your own as theft (in particular: music and writtne work) is an old concept with examples in literature long before the advent of copyright law. It's pretty trivial.

> Of course, any copyright owner is financially incentivized to extend their ownership for as long as possible, and so thanks to lobbying from companies like Disney, copyrights now extend dozens of times longer than their original length. And we also have new propaganda terms like "intellectual property" which were intentionally created to get people to begin thinking of ideas as property, and copyright violation as theft, and immoral. Unfortunately it seems to be working.

The infinite extension of copyright in the US is a bad thing, I agree. But there is a difference between "infinity is bad" and "allowing people to be rewarded for their work in a society that starves them if they don't work" that clearly exists. You seem to agree that design and art is work.

But if we're going to level the accusation of "goalpost shifting", it sure seems like a goalpost shift that you're trying to draw a line from "infinite Disney copyright" to "Amazon has created an inferior but vaguely similar looking product and used their historically unprecedented and immense capitalization and ability to manipulate the retail market to capture the profits a small vendor was growing."

> But it's not theft. Nobody is actually being deprived of any goods. Nobody is actually "stealing" any designer's work from their shelves and drawers.

Theft is not exclusively limited to "goods" in any framework I can find. Money is not a "good" but stealing money is clearly theft.

> This is 100% about people wanting to be granted exclusive legal access to profit.

Well yes, because this is what they're required to do in a capitalist society that says they starve if they don't work. And since we're at least in agreement that design work, performance and art are work with concrete (if relative) value, this is most folks only option. A few hundred years ago, you might have said "access to patronage" instead of "exclusive access to profit".

> Which is fine if they want to lobby for that, but using words like "theft" is inaccurate and propaganda, and injects a moral component where there is none.

If it means they're materially damaged, isn't that the immoral bit? We can surely argue for moral and immoral theft and there is a rich tradition of this (starting from the most basic, "if a starving family steals a loaf of bread from a store to feed their kids, that is theft but is it immoral"

Oh also:

> We must be talking past each other, because I sincerely don't understand why you think I'm arguing this. Where am I saying that people shouldn't have this choice? I've said the opposite.

You literally just did this. You just said:

> I'm arguing that it's not actually immoral (see above). Thus, by process of elimination, this is either a legal matter or no matter at all.

Not only is this begging the question, but it's a false ... uh... trichotomy? That's a word now.

Skipping ahead:

> No, not at all. I'm arguing that it's not actually immoral (see above). Thus, by process of elimination, this is either a legal matter or no matter at all.

You were arguing it shouldn't be immoral and using as evidence of this that it is not illegal. Your definition of "theft" is curiously limited, but I think this is all a distraction. Ask anyone on the street if misrepresenting a musician's work as your own without permissions is moral. You will get an unambiguous answer.

Given how obvious this value is in our culture, your presentation of it as "not theft" seems... well... it stands out.

> Yes, the point. Nobody is saying capitalism should be unrestricted. In my view, capitalism is created by restrictions. It's all about restrictions.

This is not a well-supported view by history, economics or the philosophies underlying economics.

> It's an attempt to limit the ways that people and companies can profit so that they're forced to do so in ways that create value for consumers, e.g. innovation, lower prices, easier access.

This is not even faintly the definition of capitalism. Its also an attempt to define it by intent which is... a strange anthropomorphism.

> But no, I don't support unrestricted capitalism. Quite the opposite. In fact, I think the term "unrestricted capitalism" is basically nonsensical and an oxymoron.

I'm sorry, you're strictly wrong here. "Unrestricted capitalism" has a clear definition. It means "the deciding political and social factor is the accumulation and exercise of capital." This is only a few steps removed from, "the deciding political and social factor is the blessings of our Lord and Savior upon the King's family."

The thing you're discussing is interesting, but it's difficult to parse because you're muddling it with a lot of pre-existing terms in this space.

So you're saying if I rob your bank account it's not theft because it's not a physical good.

Okay.

> Amazon is threatening to turn Allbirds' unique design into an entire category, and Allbirds doesn't like it.

I am convinced you're misrepresenting what Amazon is doing. I've been trying to avoid that conclusion, but I can't avoid it any longer. Wool shoes aren't new. There are vendors before now. What is new is Allbird's specific look and minimally branded aesthetic. That is what Amazon is abusing.

> If you do something new, others will build off of it, and while that may be a challenge for you, it is a very good thing for consumers.

Let's destroy capitalism together to make this more likely to be true.