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Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

economist.com

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Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#551

Post by bryanrasmussen »

So not getting in to read article - but

Given the amount of theft in America, and size of Amazon's American revenue and sales, can we figure out what percentage of Amazon's revenue is generated from fencing stolen goods?

on edit: IIRC AWS is 70%, Ad revenue is half of retail (30%), that means criminal revenue has to be less than 15% and I would think probably significantly less than half of that even. Maybe 2% at most?

on second edit: I wonder if every corporation has a percentage of its revenue that is criminal, like how processed food has a percentage of bug parts. You would think not, initially, but just voicing the idea makes it strangely attractive as a concept.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#552

Post by pbhjpbhj »

WalterBright wrote: post #536
ryandrake wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve also noticed a weird tendency to downplay theft lately, either through projecting a theoretical moral justification on to the shoplifter or by insinuating that retail stores are evil corporations and therefore deserve no sympathy. Let me try to convince you without defending the morality of the shoplifter or declaring corporations evil. 1. On the totem pole of crimes, petty shoplifting (without violence) is pr…

From the article: "Rite Aid, a pharmacy, closed a branch in Hell’s Kitchen in February after losing $200,000 worth of stuff last winter. And last week Target, a big retailer, reported that a rise in “shrink” (to use the industry jargon) had reduced its gross profit margin by $400m so far this year. The National Retail Federation says inventory loss, largely driven by theft, cost retailers a record $95bn last year." I…

Is it unprofitable or just not profitable enough for the capitalists who could get more return elsewhere?

The cause in the increase is possibly an increase in poverty, or increase in wealth disparity?

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#553

Post by Oxidation »

public_defender wrote: post #159

Expert in stolen goods here. I was talking to a NYC colleague the other day about how there are trends in favor of not punishing people for certain criminal activity in the city. We were talking about driving with a suspended license, but I asked about shoplifting. She said, "Oh, no. That's on the opposite trend. Not only are they prosecuting it to the maximum, but they just changed the law to make it easier to hold…

The other thing that's interesting from their state graph is that it disagrees with the "people fleeing anarchist California to orderly Texas to escape rampant crime" meme.

Not only does Texas have higher rates of larceny theft[1], it is the biggest outlier on the graph in terms of lack of prosecution for it - no other state is further below the trend line.

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/232583/larceny-theft-rat...

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#554

Post by UncleEntity »

ryan_lane wrote: post #511
subradios wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a valuable activity that Amazon and eBay will ship any product to anyone at a fair price with a minimum of obligatory hoop jumping. The more pressure they receive from the public and regulators to put a stop to those dastardly shoplifters, the more room Nike has to stop people from selling Nike shoes without a badge of certification from Nike.

Selling stolen goods hurts everyone, which is why it's a crime. It hurts the companies being stolen from, it hurts competing businesses who have a hard time competing legally, it hurts consumers, who get reduced choice due to reduced competition, and it hurts communities when their local chains shut down because organized crime has a place to fence their goods. It's mind boggling that folks are defending the ability…

> It's mind boggling that folks are defending the ability to sell stolen goods, while wanting to harshly punish petty theft.

I’m not seeing anyone defending selling stolen goods just saying it’s nearly impossible to tell where the goods come from.

Product gets refused for various reasons and the trucking companies aren’t really in the business of selling goods so they just get rid of it. I’ve seen them refuse a whole pallet because one box was run into by a forklift before.

Sometimes they tell you where to take it, sometimes they tell you to just get rid of it (usually only if it’s a couple cases) and if it’s not something you particularly want you just find some random person who does want it or a dumpster.

Not to mention all the other cases people have explained in this thread.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#555

Post by etage3 »

magic_hamster wrote: post #510
abvdasker wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already tried this. It was called The War on Drugs and it failed totally, completely and unambiguously. If there's one thing to understand about the last 60 years of United States drug criminalization and enforcement, it's that those policies have utterly failed to curb drug abuse and addiction. There are a mind-boggling number of studies which show that criminalizing drug use doesn't create fewer drug addicts.

What is a better solution?

Portugal decriminalised drugs in 2000 and this is regarded as a better solution. Drug use is treated as a health issue rather than a crime issue, and the results are better. See here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#556

Post by nirimda »

kube-system wrote: post #439
bradleyjg wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon knows that the deodorant it’s selling is not discontinued or clearance. It knows Old Spice isn’t giving some mom and pop a better wholesale deal than the world’s largest retailer either. There’s no legit reason for there to be “other sellers” for that product, or really most any product it itself sells.

Amazon barely knows who is listing products on their site, whether the products are even legal, and sometimes they can’t even tell what a “product” is. https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/15/tech/cpsc-sues-amazon/index.h... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/07/amazon-mails-postcards-to-se... https://slate.com/technology/2021/12/amazon-listings-wrong-r...

But that's because they deliberately chose not to know it. A responsible business would have processes in place to identify all of that information.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#557

Post by dlkf »

alkonaut wrote: post #518

A cheap deodorant (Dove/whatever) is like $2-3 in expensive parts of Europe. That's not worth stealing. What makes them $8 or $10 in manhattan? It's an expensive area and I guess there aren't many large stores to buy from but more smaller pharmacies, but that still doesn't explain why there is a 2-3x price difference for deodorants in particular.

In Sweden, deodorant sticks are smaller than what I’d get in Canada. There’s also an appalling lack of variety. In particular, you never see Old Spice. I think there is a lucrative business opportunity in bringing American deodorant maximalism to the nordics.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#558

Post by concordDance »

ryandrake wrote: post #470
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's very fair to have differing attitudes/moral thresholds for an impoverished mother shoplifting a week's worth of baby formula versus "a couple in Alabama [which] pled guilty to shifting $300,000-worth of stolen baby formula on eBay". I’ve also noticed a weird tendency to downplay theft lately, either through projecting a theoretical moral justification on to the shoplifter or by insinuating that retail…

> I’ve also noticed a weird tendency to downplay theft lately, either through projecting a theoretical moral justification on to the shoplifter or by insinuating that retail stores are evil corporations and therefore deserve no sympathy. Let me try to convince you without defending the morality of the shoplifter or declaring corporations evil. 1. On the totem pole of crimes, petty shoplifting (without violence) is pr…

Two things:

Shoplifting results in shops closing down in poorer areas or raising prices. This is quite bad for the poor.

People getting away with shoplifting and seeing others get away with it makes them feel they are not in a law abiding environment and makes them far more willing to break other laws and do things like deal drugs, beat up/kill their enemies and take the law into their own hands. A look at the murder rate in poor areas is suggestive.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#559

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #199
z9znz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm not putting all the pieces together correctly. What is the significance of her wearing a hijab? Why is that worthy of mention, or the fact that the owner family was from Turkey? And also the Thanksgiving eve bit?

It’s a very American story, because American is the most diverse country.

The most diverse country? Not even in the top 50, nor the most diverse in the Americas.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-raci...

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#560

Post by subradios »

ryan_lane wrote: post #511
subradios wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a valuable activity that Amazon and eBay will ship any product to anyone at a fair price with a minimum of obligatory hoop jumping. The more pressure they receive from the public and regulators to put a stop to those dastardly shoplifters, the more room Nike has to stop people from selling Nike shoes without a badge of certification from Nike.

Selling stolen goods hurts everyone, which is why it's a crime. It hurts the companies being stolen from, it hurts competing businesses who have a hard time competing legally, it hurts consumers, who get reduced choice due to reduced competition, and it hurts communities when their local chains shut down because organized crime has a place to fence their goods. It's mind boggling that folks are defending the ability…

I am not promoting "punishing harshly petty theft" I am suggesting that the direction current prosecutors are going is to not punish theft at all.

I am also not denying that Amazon and eBay can operate as easy targets to fence stolen goods. What I am suggesting is that demanding Amazon "do something" about goods that fell off the back of a truck essentially means that any seller who doesn't get an Official Licensed Dealer badge or equivalent from a name brand company cannot do business on the internet.

The only way to combat this from Amazon's side is to ban all sales not authorized by the original manufacturer. There's no way for them to tell on their end whether goods were legitimately purchased or not, and any system used to track these sellers or prevent them from operating would give big brands a "delete" button on sales of their products worldwide.

As someone who is not a fan of software licensing for physical goods, this terrifies me, and bringing that regulatory environment as a response when we aren't willing to prosecute people for these crimes seems a bit much.

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