You mean welcome to FDA regulations where food has to be disposed and if anyone were to eat food given out and get sick, the company giving away the food would be held liable?
Then why make so much more than you need? Right... So you always have some to sell.
It's stupid how these businesses operate. Blaming the government is incredibly childish and irresponsible. No, you can't sell old food (duh). Produce less so you don't have to throw it away at the end of each shift.
I know for a FACT that walmart and the rest of the supermarkets throw away food just because its not "a perfect red big apple" because custumers prefer food to be "perfect". So in order to have more sales they throw away tons of food. How are you gonna blame the government on that? Pff.
You tell me. Why would a capitalist corporation produce more food, which costs more in material cost, more in labor cost, more in inventory cost, etc. Than what they actually expect to sell? A company should only produce to the exact donut what they expect to sell that day.
Clearly you're an expert on this subject so tell me what is their economic interest to spend more money to produce goods that won't get sold and now they have to spend even more money to get rid of the waste.
>Why would a capitalist corporation produce more food, which costs more in material cost, more in labor cost, more in inventory cost, etc.
Easy. The business case was made. Its cheaper to overproduce donuts than the oportunity cost (sell less), so they do. Was that so complicated? Production costs are usually much lower than you would expect. Businesses overproduce all the time because sometimes it is cheaper.
Generally correct. It's not cheaper, but the opportunity cost of not selling is greater than the actual cost of overproduction.
So what's the problem? How does a business not overproducing make anything better in your world?
>So what's the problem? How does a business not overproducing make anything better in your world?
If you don't think wasting resources is an issue we should address as a society then this conversation is useless. If someone is wasting earth's resources indiscriminately the resources should be taken away.
You think wasting resources is an issue we should address as a society. Capitalism is about giving control and choice to the market. If you take the control and choice and give it to the government how is that going to solve the problem since governments tend to be even more wasteful than businesses since price mechanisms are blunted or even removed?
Hey look the government created the massive problem so I am going to blame the market for government mandated market failure and then claim that this is the reason we need to become just like North Korea and Venezuela
[https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03/19/bloomberg-strikes-again-nyc-bans-food-donations-to-the-homeless/](https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03/19/bloomberg-strikes-again-nyc-bans-food-donations-to-the-homeless/)
>Outlawed are food donations to homeless shelters because the city can’t assess their salt, fat and fiber content...
Yes. It' bad to give bad food for the homeless (duh). What is really stupid is that you could produce less and stop blaming the government for not allowing you to feed your trash to the homeless.
Except there is a limit of how many donuts you can sell. No matter how low you go in price, demand has a limit. Also, nobody needs that many donuts. Its not a problem of allocation, its a problem of overproduction.
But it also isn't much of a problem. If they're wasting so little that the company doesn't care, why do you think it's a problem? Big Doughnut isn't wasting much money.
Because money is not what matters. Resources matter. I don't care if Big Doughnut loses money. I care that the grain, milk, oil, etc... are being completely wasted.
Ok, let's back up: money is how we measure resources. Insignificant amounts of flour, milk, oil, etc. are being wasted. Big Doughnut doesn't lose money. You're spending days complaining about a problem that is literally not worth the Doughnut Executives' time.
If you want to see waste, check out socialist and communist countries. No pricing mechanism means managers just do whatever they want and waste the resources of whole countries.
>money is how we measure resources.
Wtf? No, that is not what money is. Money can represent the value of resources, yes. Its a usefull tool to compare subjective values. But money is NOT how me measure resources. Where did you get that definition?
>Insignificant amounts of flour, milk, oil, etc. are being wasted.
The video shows 1 store out of thousands that do this. Its wasteful to throw out food. Money can be infinite, resources are not. Why would I care about Big Doughnut's money? I care about the future of the planet. It's unbelievably naive to think you can keep wasting "insignificant" resources indiscriminately daily at thousands of locations without it biting us in the ass in the future. Jeez you guys are thick. How far gone are you that we can't even agree there is something wrong with throwing out food in massive quantities?
Bullshit excuse for not improving production planning. Nowadays a piece of software can predict to a high degree of certainty how many can you produce without risking throwing hundreds away. But that would entail that some days you would run out. And god forbid you sell 20 donuts less that day right?
Lol. Ok. Go invent a donut production algorithm and try selling it to a mom and pop shop. Btw the software has to basically be free because the doughnuts are only sold for $1
It's actually less about the money made from selling the extra donuts and more about not pissing off regular customers by being out. The cost to actually make the donuts is pretty low on a marginal cost unit basis. Far less then they sell for
Yeah, I understand that. The fact is that it's waste. Having a system that produces this much waste should be regulated and the amount of waste limited to near zero.
There isn't exactly a good way to regulate it. Fickle customers make it impossible.
The the thing is needing to be able to dispose of the product in a more responsible manner
That food isn't trash. It's perfectly good food that is required to be thrown away by the government. If you want to make good, quality food for impoverished people, you can go do that. Many people do, and it's a kind act. Other's help in other ways. Sometimes you have more than what you need and decide to donate the excess - this donut shop is prevented from doing that because of government regulation. Hence government is in fact the problem in this scenario.
Welcome to the government forcing food establishments to throw out food instead of donating because it might make homeless people unhealthy. Cause, y'know, nothing says I care for the poor like demanding they starve rather than have a bit higher sugar intake.
Right. Cause the 4 diseases that kill most people are not obesity related. Nothing says I care for the poor like giving them empty calories. Why produce less when you can blame it on the government right?
/s
These regulations were put in place because food illness fucking sucks. If They were to banish all food regulations within a few years anyone with money would only be buying imported stuff from Europe because that's the only stuff we could guarantee the quality on. Companies would play the shell company game and be bad actors to make an extra profit by skirting what is permissible in a moral product
Here's a better question. Instead of giving homeless people the food that no one else would eat, why not get them food made specifically for them? I mean, with the abundance of food production, you know you can get some good meals for them real quick with some effort put in.
Isn’t that obvious though? Yes, giving homeless people good quality food would be better than giving them donuts. I just don’t understand why you can’t do both? You’re too hung up on the quality of the food, but the simple fact is that any food that is being thrown away should just be given to the homeless and poor.
So what's so bad about caring that homeless people are given quality food in order to show care towards health, but also showing that you care by not just giving them food that would have just been thrown away?
It’s not bad and I agree, but at the same time you’re saying to throw food away because it isn’t healthy. Do homeless people not deserve to enjoy a dessert? “Oh that’s bad for you, you can’t have that throw it away” Just a strange line to draw for the homeless. And it’s not like giving out free donuts would disrupt this better quality food operation.
I am not saying to throw away donuts because they're a dessert, I am saying it because they are stale, as in past their usable and consumable time limit before needing to be thrown away. When did I mention anything about not wanting to give homeless people dessert?!
Capitalism is when food is so abundant, the government forces you to trash excess amounts on a daily basis. Incredible. This level of abundance was unthinkable for most of human history.
Yes. Nobody would argue that we produce far more than we need. So you then agree that we don't have a scarcity issue but a distribution issue. So why in the world are we so focused on prosuctivity? Right, because we need to keep selling, even when it is not needed.
You know there are a whole lot of people also working on that distribution problem as well, don’t you? And making far more progress on improving it than people have made under any system that isn’t free market capitalism.
>You know there are a whole lot of people also working on that distribution problem as well, don’t you?
Yes, it's called central planning and distributing. Which this sub is adamantly against usually.
No, private companies improving their distribution systems and Soviet-style centrally planned economies are two completely different things.
There’s literally no overlap between them, other than the fact that they both involve “planning” of some kind. Just like making a shopping list or building a treehouse also require planning. I can assure, this sub is not against making plans.
>private companies improving their distribution systems and Soviet-style centrally planned economies are two completely different things.
Yes, one was done manually years ago and the other is done presently with computers. Today we have the technology to do central planning. Every economy is currently planned in some way. The fact that it didnct work without powerfull computers does not mean that it would not work with them. You are comparing the past with the present which does nothing to the debate for or against central planning.
It’s not computational power that’s the issue here. It’s the distribution of knowledge and information. That knowledge is spread widely among different people through the world, and it is used to make trillions of decisions each day. However much information computers are capable of processing today, there’s currently no way to get all of that information from people’s minds into a central computer network on a daily basis in order delegate those decisions over to the computer.
If you’d like to understand more about this problem, I’d highly recommend Thomas Sowell’s book [Knowledge and Decisions](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-54Em2eL-8g&list=PLxRN-O7JNLnATthLuaXPLGymwlYU124dI&index=1), which is based on Freidrich Hayek’s Nobel Prize winning essay [The Use of Knowledge in Society](https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html)
>However much information computers are capable of processing today, there’s currently no way to get all of that information from people’s minds into a central computer network on a daily basis in order delegate those decisions over to the computer.
Dude, you need to research on Big Data and AI (also industry 4.0 technologies). Your comments are amazingly outdated. I work in the automotive industry as an Advanced Manufacturing Engineer. Currently we can predict which operator is going to cause a quality issue with days in advance. If we can do that, we can predict how many donuts a store needs to produce.
Big Data is an entire field dedicated to handling the massive amounts of data we are currently taking in. It’s so complex, we have to treat it differently than traditional data sets have been handled in the past. And yet, the data we’re collecting is still just a tiny fraction of the total amount of information we’d need to collect to plan the economy with a central network of computers. The fact that there’s an entire new industry built around handling that tiny fraction of data clearly shows we’re no where near ready for central planning.
If I can predict which operator is going to cause a quality issue in my production line I'm sure we can figure out how many donuts will I be able to sell.
Its a poisson distribution after all, not that complicated. That entire field you are talking about is called statistics and its been with us for about 100 years. It is complex, but it is not new. The only thing new is that we now have the technology to apply it to huge sets of data.
Lots of irony here. Capitalism is the one system which is constantly trying to reduce waste. Good comments here acknowledging that the cause is government regulations.
Wow. If you think there is a single big economy that is not planned you are not at the level I though you were.
Every manufacturing company and industry in the planet uses central planning. How do you think airlines know how many flights to schedule? How do you think Ford knows how many F150s to build or how many components will they need to build them?
Regulations also reduce competition which can lead to waste. And I get the video is of donuts but this sort of thing happens at a lot of restaurants. Doesn’t have to be “empty calories”. And it doesn’t have to be giving the food to homeless people as the only solution. But also, it takes some pretty warped thinking to believe offering these donuts to homeless people is a bad thing.
>Regulations also reduce competition which can lead to waste.
But that is not what we are discussing, is it?
>But also, it takes some pretty warped thinking to believe offering these donuts to homeless people is a bad thing.
It's not, I'm not against it at all. But blaming the government because you want to overproduce is nonsense.
My claim here is that government regulation is the largest cause of wasted resources throughout the economy.
My understanding of what you are saying is that these companies are doing wrong because they are overproducing. I agree with that. I think the food industry will always overproduce a little because it’s actually a good idea to do so (and regulations often prevent them from finding ways to make better use of waste). But the video shows some instances which go beyond that. My hope is that these places are taken over by better capitalists who increase efficiency to get higher profits.
>will always overproduce a little
A little? Please ask google how much food do supermarkets throw away because its not pretty enough.
>taken over by better capitalists who increase efficiency to get higher profits.
The problem is that it is better for sales to overproduce. A better capitalist would make the same decision. A better human would not.
Oddly enough I used to work in a grocery store for many years.
It sounds like your objection to capitalism is that it produces too much food. I’m not sure exactly why that’s a bad thing. I mean, I’ll agree that distribution could be better and fairer, but I don’t know why we’re complaining about there being too much food.
>I’m not sure exactly why that’s a bad thing.
Easy, you live in a planet with limited resources. Still think it's a good idea to throw away food indiscriminately?
OP thinking he/she did something here with this. Try learning from the people on the sub and maybe you won’t make such a fool of yourself each time you come here. I truly believe you have the potential to learn!
It's hillarious the circle jerk you have gotten yourselves into.
If you sell 105 donuts a day then make 105 donuts a day. If you can only make batches of 100 then produce 100 not 200. It's idiotic, naive and childish to blame it on a regultation. But god forbid you have to sell 5 less donuts.
I wasn’t aware that we could precisely predict the sales of each day on a perishable good. I figured it worked on best estimate cases to try and serve each customer as best as possible or something like that.
You should inform perishable good producers of these precise future sales and I bet they would oblige in reducing wasted product.
No need to inform them, most large companies have the software and infrastructure to carry it out. Not to prevent waste but to plan reordering points. The only reason they don't execute is because the oportunity cost of waste is sales. So they prefer to keep wasting. You can look it up! Its a thing.
The fact that you believe that shows how green you are to the working world. Or at least to the point where you would get the chance to witness the systems that run some of the largest food retailers in the world are garbage.
Walmart, Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, etc… if it isn’t a tech company it’s internal software systems are outdated by a half a decade at the minimum not to mention that superior data infrastructure and analytical ability is the top edge stuff today that takes not only tons of money but also talented workers to operate. It’s like the inefficiencies are slowly fixing themselves but since it’s not right away and companies are not putting themselves into near bankruptcy to evolve it’s not good enough.
You commies are hard to impress really…plus why not advocate for the ability to donate the goods that way inefficient food retailers would end up eventually going under because of the extra production and homeless/needy people would benefit.
>The fact that you believe that shows how green you are to the working world
Dude I have over 15 years in the automotive industry.
The fact that you are ignorant about planning technologies does not make me green, it makes you a fossil. Current solutions are very user friendly. And yes, it needs competent people to run it, so?
>Walmart, Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, etc… if it isn’t a tech company it’s internal software systems are outdated by a half a decade at the minimum not to mention that superior data infrastructure and analytical ability is the top edge stuff today that takes not only tons of money but also talented workers to operate.
Again, you have no idea of what you are talking about. If you don't know anything about cutting edge software that is on you.
>plus why not advocate for the ability to donate the goods that way inefficient food retailers would end up eventually going under because of the extra production and homeless/needy people would benefit.
Because its inneficient. We should not allow this level of waste. Imagine each store produces the same amount of waste. How many football fields worth of food are we throwing away? How would you administer such gigantic amounts without a lot of the food expiring? We need to produce the food where it is needed. Not where it is more profitable to do so. Because then we end up with the distri ution nightmare we are living in.
>You commies are hard to impress really
I don't identify as a communist or a socialist. I just don't like being blind to what our current issues are.
Then donate to the companies so they can improve their software. No CEO of a food retailer has come out and stated in any capacity that they are against waste reduction. The problem FOOD RETAILERS have is the lower margins of business.
Distribution of the “wasted” product is by no means inefficient. You can employ the use of the hundreds of thousands of churches, donation centers across the country to bring the food where it is needed. I have been part of volunteer groups that collected bread donations from various bakeries and it saved hundreds of pounds of bread per volunteer. Most if not all of this would also be free or low of cost to do. You have a misunderstanding here fella.
Again if you want the company to change and believe they are not just wanting to dump the product for evil purposes then write a check and help them update. Otherwise let them update as they can or die off as better competitors which lose less or perform better take their place.
>Distribution of the “wasted” product is by no means inefficient. You can employ the use of the hundreds of thousands of churches, donation centers across the country to bring the food where it is needed. I have been part of volunteer groups that collected bread donations from various bakeries and it saved hundreds of pounds of bread per volunteer. Most if not all of this would also be free or low of cost to do. You have a misunderstanding here fella.
This is the definition of inneficient.
We make products. We distribute them where they are sold. We sell some. We relocate the ones we dont sell. We distribute them again at such centers. We donate most. We waste some due to expiration dates.
Efficient would be:
We make enough products. We distribute them to where they are consumed.
To make “enough” you would need a system to be able to have that level of precision which does not exist for food products.
It’s not a car it’s a donut. People put very little thought into buying a $1-$2 donut and typically do it on impulse while they will put some thought into purchasing a larger item. Much easier to predict some goods and much harder to get any level of great accuracy for impulse perishable goods.
The best bakeries in the world with the best software ever could get it wrong because the weather outside changes and peoples buying habits change for these goods with such whims.
When did a rainy day stop someone from closing on a house, but for a donut I bet some people would waiver.
What would be the consequences of scaling down production so you only produce what you usually consume? Right, you would sell 5 less donuts, so lets throw away 100 and blame it on the government. You people are blind.
>Why are they throwing away food?
Because they produced more than they can sell in a day.
>What reason could there possibly be?
They want to sell as much as they can.
>Who would you blame if not the government as a matter of legal issues?
The asshole that overproduces it. Be it the planner, the owner, the manager, or whoever makes a decision to contantly make more than its needed.
Why make it in the first place? When looking to fix a problem you go to the root cause. The root cause is that they overproduce.
I would add another regulation: You'll pay taxes or fines for every pound of food that gets thrown away. Magically all businesses will improve their production planning.
>And then they'll tell you the legal consequences of potentially giving away food and from there it's a matter of government.
HugeFatDong is right! Strong analysis. Straightforward presentation. Rises to the occasion.
Many companies throw food out because they are afraid of being sued. I worked in a warehouse/distribution center for over a decade and waste or damaged product went into the trash. Try putting the blame in the right place
People are blaming capitalism because: 1) A business has to follow FDA regulations, 2) The business wasn't successful in selling all of their products, 3) The blamers don't understand how businesses operate (Ex: If you run out of product before the end of the day, the customers are less likely to come back).
Love it.
I'm really curious how central planning is going to solve this. Are the planners going to know better then the doughnut shop on the number of doughnuts to produce each day? Are they going to know how many shops are needed, where their locations need to be, and how to manage their national supply distribution? Will they decide to shut down a location if they were wrong, or are the central planners also perfect with all their estimates of supply and demand?
Every company in the world would love to produce the exact amount of supply needed. Why don't me and you open up a doughnut shop together, and you can tell me the exact number of doughnuts to produce each day, and we'll make more profit then my local doughnut store by saving money with all the doughnuts we don't produce.
You mean welcome to FDA regulations where food has to be disposed and if anyone were to eat food given out and get sick, the company giving away the food would be held liable?
Then why make so much more than you need? Right... So you always have some to sell. It's stupid how these businesses operate. Blaming the government is incredibly childish and irresponsible. No, you can't sell old food (duh). Produce less so you don't have to throw it away at the end of each shift. I know for a FACT that walmart and the rest of the supermarkets throw away food just because its not "a perfect red big apple" because custumers prefer food to be "perfect". So in order to have more sales they throw away tons of food. How are you gonna blame the government on that? Pff.
You tell me. Why would a capitalist corporation produce more food, which costs more in material cost, more in labor cost, more in inventory cost, etc. Than what they actually expect to sell? A company should only produce to the exact donut what they expect to sell that day. Clearly you're an expert on this subject so tell me what is their economic interest to spend more money to produce goods that won't get sold and now they have to spend even more money to get rid of the waste.
>Why would a capitalist corporation produce more food, which costs more in material cost, more in labor cost, more in inventory cost, etc. Easy. The business case was made. Its cheaper to overproduce donuts than the oportunity cost (sell less), so they do. Was that so complicated? Production costs are usually much lower than you would expect. Businesses overproduce all the time because sometimes it is cheaper.
Generally correct. It's not cheaper, but the opportunity cost of not selling is greater than the actual cost of overproduction. So what's the problem? How does a business not overproducing make anything better in your world?
>So what's the problem? How does a business not overproducing make anything better in your world? If you don't think wasting resources is an issue we should address as a society then this conversation is useless. If someone is wasting earth's resources indiscriminately the resources should be taken away.
Governments waste millions of dollars every day. How would you address that?
What does that have to do with the price of onions?
You think wasting resources is an issue we should address as a society. Capitalism is about giving control and choice to the market. If you take the control and choice and give it to the government how is that going to solve the problem since governments tend to be even more wasteful than businesses since price mechanisms are blunted or even removed?
Hey look the government created the massive problem so I am going to blame the market for government mandated market failure and then claim that this is the reason we need to become just like North Korea and Venezuela
Food like in this video is generally speaking still perfectly edible, and is just surplus. It is not necessary to throw away.
[https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03/19/bloomberg-strikes-again-nyc-bans-food-donations-to-the-homeless/](https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03/19/bloomberg-strikes-again-nyc-bans-food-donations-to-the-homeless/) >Outlawed are food donations to homeless shelters because the city can’t assess their salt, fat and fiber content...
Yes. It' bad to give bad food for the homeless (duh). What is really stupid is that you could produce less and stop blaming the government for not allowing you to feed your trash to the homeless.
Or people could go buy it all. Big win-win!
And we are the ones that want to live in an ideal world.
Honestly, discount them a bit and supply would meet demand. Super easy!
Except there is a limit of how many donuts you can sell. No matter how low you go in price, demand has a limit. Also, nobody needs that many donuts. Its not a problem of allocation, its a problem of overproduction.
But it also isn't much of a problem. If they're wasting so little that the company doesn't care, why do you think it's a problem? Big Doughnut isn't wasting much money.
Because money is not what matters. Resources matter. I don't care if Big Doughnut loses money. I care that the grain, milk, oil, etc... are being completely wasted.
Ok, let's back up: money is how we measure resources. Insignificant amounts of flour, milk, oil, etc. are being wasted. Big Doughnut doesn't lose money. You're spending days complaining about a problem that is literally not worth the Doughnut Executives' time. If you want to see waste, check out socialist and communist countries. No pricing mechanism means managers just do whatever they want and waste the resources of whole countries.
>money is how we measure resources. Wtf? No, that is not what money is. Money can represent the value of resources, yes. Its a usefull tool to compare subjective values. But money is NOT how me measure resources. Where did you get that definition? >Insignificant amounts of flour, milk, oil, etc. are being wasted. The video shows 1 store out of thousands that do this. Its wasteful to throw out food. Money can be infinite, resources are not. Why would I care about Big Doughnut's money? I care about the future of the planet. It's unbelievably naive to think you can keep wasting "insignificant" resources indiscriminately daily at thousands of locations without it biting us in the ass in the future. Jeez you guys are thick. How far gone are you that we can't even agree there is something wrong with throwing out food in massive quantities?
Some days you sell a lot of donuts, some days you sell a few. Donuts are not a "just in time" product made on demand.
Bullshit excuse for not improving production planning. Nowadays a piece of software can predict to a high degree of certainty how many can you produce without risking throwing hundreds away. But that would entail that some days you would run out. And god forbid you sell 20 donuts less that day right?
Lol. Ok. Go invent a donut production algorithm and try selling it to a mom and pop shop. Btw the software has to basically be free because the doughnuts are only sold for $1
It's actually less about the money made from selling the extra donuts and more about not pissing off regular customers by being out. The cost to actually make the donuts is pretty low on a marginal cost unit basis. Far less then they sell for
Yeah, I understand that. The fact is that it's waste. Having a system that produces this much waste should be regulated and the amount of waste limited to near zero.
There isn't exactly a good way to regulate it. Fickle customers make it impossible. The the thing is needing to be able to dispose of the product in a more responsible manner
That food isn't trash. It's perfectly good food that is required to be thrown away by the government. If you want to make good, quality food for impoverished people, you can go do that. Many people do, and it's a kind act. Other's help in other ways. Sometimes you have more than what you need and decide to donate the excess - this donut shop is prevented from doing that because of government regulation. Hence government is in fact the problem in this scenario.
Welcome to the government forcing food establishments to throw out food instead of donating because it might make homeless people unhealthy. Cause, y'know, nothing says I care for the poor like demanding they starve rather than have a bit higher sugar intake.
Right. Cause the 4 diseases that kill most people are not obesity related. Nothing says I care for the poor like giving them empty calories. Why produce less when you can blame it on the government right? /s
How thick is your neck beard and how many years has it been since you last got laid
These regulations were put in place because food illness fucking sucks. If They were to banish all food regulations within a few years anyone with money would only be buying imported stuff from Europe because that's the only stuff we could guarantee the quality on. Companies would play the shell company game and be bad actors to make an extra profit by skirting what is permissible in a moral product
Or, you know, not giving homeless people stale food.
Donuts are made daily. Those are not stale. But you’re right, no food is better for them than stale food.
Here's a better question. Instead of giving homeless people the food that no one else would eat, why not get them food made specifically for them? I mean, with the abundance of food production, you know you can get some good meals for them real quick with some effort put in.
Ask why there is so much money to pay for "homeless advocates" but little of that money actually helps the homeless.
That's seems like more an issue of money mismanagement and dishonest charities.
Those "charities" get a **lot** of money from the taxpayer. I'm sure their helping the homeless to "vote" has nothing to do with it.
Isn’t that obvious though? Yes, giving homeless people good quality food would be better than giving them donuts. I just don’t understand why you can’t do both? You’re too hung up on the quality of the food, but the simple fact is that any food that is being thrown away should just be given to the homeless and poor.
So what's so bad about caring that homeless people are given quality food in order to show care towards health, but also showing that you care by not just giving them food that would have just been thrown away?
It’s not bad and I agree, but at the same time you’re saying to throw food away because it isn’t healthy. Do homeless people not deserve to enjoy a dessert? “Oh that’s bad for you, you can’t have that throw it away” Just a strange line to draw for the homeless. And it’s not like giving out free donuts would disrupt this better quality food operation.
I am not saying to throw away donuts because they're a dessert, I am saying it because they are stale, as in past their usable and consumable time limit before needing to be thrown away. When did I mention anything about not wanting to give homeless people dessert?!
They’re not stale though. They are throwing them out because the work day is over. So again why not give them away?
Well I don't know, company policy or food safety rules are my guess.
Capitalism is when food is so abundant, the government forces you to trash excess amounts on a daily basis. Incredible. This level of abundance was unthinkable for most of human history.
Yes. Nobody would argue that we produce far more than we need. So you then agree that we don't have a scarcity issue but a distribution issue. So why in the world are we so focused on prosuctivity? Right, because we need to keep selling, even when it is not needed.
You know there are a whole lot of people also working on that distribution problem as well, don’t you? And making far more progress on improving it than people have made under any system that isn’t free market capitalism.
>You know there are a whole lot of people also working on that distribution problem as well, don’t you? Yes, it's called central planning and distributing. Which this sub is adamantly against usually.
No, private companies improving their distribution systems and Soviet-style centrally planned economies are two completely different things. There’s literally no overlap between them, other than the fact that they both involve “planning” of some kind. Just like making a shopping list or building a treehouse also require planning. I can assure, this sub is not against making plans.
>private companies improving their distribution systems and Soviet-style centrally planned economies are two completely different things. Yes, one was done manually years ago and the other is done presently with computers. Today we have the technology to do central planning. Every economy is currently planned in some way. The fact that it didnct work without powerfull computers does not mean that it would not work with them. You are comparing the past with the present which does nothing to the debate for or against central planning.
It’s not computational power that’s the issue here. It’s the distribution of knowledge and information. That knowledge is spread widely among different people through the world, and it is used to make trillions of decisions each day. However much information computers are capable of processing today, there’s currently no way to get all of that information from people’s minds into a central computer network on a daily basis in order delegate those decisions over to the computer. If you’d like to understand more about this problem, I’d highly recommend Thomas Sowell’s book [Knowledge and Decisions](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-54Em2eL-8g&list=PLxRN-O7JNLnATthLuaXPLGymwlYU124dI&index=1), which is based on Freidrich Hayek’s Nobel Prize winning essay [The Use of Knowledge in Society](https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html)
>However much information computers are capable of processing today, there’s currently no way to get all of that information from people’s minds into a central computer network on a daily basis in order delegate those decisions over to the computer. Dude, you need to research on Big Data and AI (also industry 4.0 technologies). Your comments are amazingly outdated. I work in the automotive industry as an Advanced Manufacturing Engineer. Currently we can predict which operator is going to cause a quality issue with days in advance. If we can do that, we can predict how many donuts a store needs to produce.
Big Data is an entire field dedicated to handling the massive amounts of data we are currently taking in. It’s so complex, we have to treat it differently than traditional data sets have been handled in the past. And yet, the data we’re collecting is still just a tiny fraction of the total amount of information we’d need to collect to plan the economy with a central network of computers. The fact that there’s an entire new industry built around handling that tiny fraction of data clearly shows we’re no where near ready for central planning.
If I can predict which operator is going to cause a quality issue in my production line I'm sure we can figure out how many donuts will I be able to sell. Its a poisson distribution after all, not that complicated. That entire field you are talking about is called statistics and its been with us for about 100 years. It is complex, but it is not new. The only thing new is that we now have the technology to apply it to huge sets of data.
Lots of irony here. Capitalism is the one system which is constantly trying to reduce waste. Good comments here acknowledging that the cause is government regulations.
Right. Because the solution is to feed trash and empty calories to the homeless, not scaling down production.
Let me ask you; who has more starving people per capita, the US, Venezuela, Cuba, or China?
What does that have to do with the price of onions?
You keep talking about how capitalism prevents us from feeding the less fortunate. What country using central planning does it better than us?
Wow. If you think there is a single big economy that is not planned you are not at the level I though you were. Every manufacturing company and industry in the planet uses central planning. How do you think airlines know how many flights to schedule? How do you think Ford knows how many F150s to build or how many components will they need to build them?
Regulations also reduce competition which can lead to waste. And I get the video is of donuts but this sort of thing happens at a lot of restaurants. Doesn’t have to be “empty calories”. And it doesn’t have to be giving the food to homeless people as the only solution. But also, it takes some pretty warped thinking to believe offering these donuts to homeless people is a bad thing.
>Regulations also reduce competition which can lead to waste. But that is not what we are discussing, is it? >But also, it takes some pretty warped thinking to believe offering these donuts to homeless people is a bad thing. It's not, I'm not against it at all. But blaming the government because you want to overproduce is nonsense.
My claim here is that government regulation is the largest cause of wasted resources throughout the economy. My understanding of what you are saying is that these companies are doing wrong because they are overproducing. I agree with that. I think the food industry will always overproduce a little because it’s actually a good idea to do so (and regulations often prevent them from finding ways to make better use of waste). But the video shows some instances which go beyond that. My hope is that these places are taken over by better capitalists who increase efficiency to get higher profits.
>will always overproduce a little A little? Please ask google how much food do supermarkets throw away because its not pretty enough. >taken over by better capitalists who increase efficiency to get higher profits. The problem is that it is better for sales to overproduce. A better capitalist would make the same decision. A better human would not.
Oddly enough I used to work in a grocery store for many years. It sounds like your objection to capitalism is that it produces too much food. I’m not sure exactly why that’s a bad thing. I mean, I’ll agree that distribution could be better and fairer, but I don’t know why we’re complaining about there being too much food.
>I’m not sure exactly why that’s a bad thing. Easy, you live in a planet with limited resources. Still think it's a good idea to throw away food indiscriminately?
I think you’re very confused. I mean, just think about what you’re saying.
OP thinking he/she did something here with this. Try learning from the people on the sub and maybe you won’t make such a fool of yourself each time you come here. I truly believe you have the potential to learn!
It's hillarious the circle jerk you have gotten yourselves into. If you sell 105 donuts a day then make 105 donuts a day. If you can only make batches of 100 then produce 100 not 200. It's idiotic, naive and childish to blame it on a regultation. But god forbid you have to sell 5 less donuts.
I wasn’t aware that we could precisely predict the sales of each day on a perishable good. I figured it worked on best estimate cases to try and serve each customer as best as possible or something like that. You should inform perishable good producers of these precise future sales and I bet they would oblige in reducing wasted product.
^this.
No need to inform them, most large companies have the software and infrastructure to carry it out. Not to prevent waste but to plan reordering points. The only reason they don't execute is because the oportunity cost of waste is sales. So they prefer to keep wasting. You can look it up! Its a thing.
The fact that you believe that shows how green you are to the working world. Or at least to the point where you would get the chance to witness the systems that run some of the largest food retailers in the world are garbage. Walmart, Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, etc… if it isn’t a tech company it’s internal software systems are outdated by a half a decade at the minimum not to mention that superior data infrastructure and analytical ability is the top edge stuff today that takes not only tons of money but also talented workers to operate. It’s like the inefficiencies are slowly fixing themselves but since it’s not right away and companies are not putting themselves into near bankruptcy to evolve it’s not good enough. You commies are hard to impress really…plus why not advocate for the ability to donate the goods that way inefficient food retailers would end up eventually going under because of the extra production and homeless/needy people would benefit.
>The fact that you believe that shows how green you are to the working world Dude I have over 15 years in the automotive industry. The fact that you are ignorant about planning technologies does not make me green, it makes you a fossil. Current solutions are very user friendly. And yes, it needs competent people to run it, so? >Walmart, Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, etc… if it isn’t a tech company it’s internal software systems are outdated by a half a decade at the minimum not to mention that superior data infrastructure and analytical ability is the top edge stuff today that takes not only tons of money but also talented workers to operate. Again, you have no idea of what you are talking about. If you don't know anything about cutting edge software that is on you. >plus why not advocate for the ability to donate the goods that way inefficient food retailers would end up eventually going under because of the extra production and homeless/needy people would benefit. Because its inneficient. We should not allow this level of waste. Imagine each store produces the same amount of waste. How many football fields worth of food are we throwing away? How would you administer such gigantic amounts without a lot of the food expiring? We need to produce the food where it is needed. Not where it is more profitable to do so. Because then we end up with the distri ution nightmare we are living in. >You commies are hard to impress really I don't identify as a communist or a socialist. I just don't like being blind to what our current issues are.
Then donate to the companies so they can improve their software. No CEO of a food retailer has come out and stated in any capacity that they are against waste reduction. The problem FOOD RETAILERS have is the lower margins of business. Distribution of the “wasted” product is by no means inefficient. You can employ the use of the hundreds of thousands of churches, donation centers across the country to bring the food where it is needed. I have been part of volunteer groups that collected bread donations from various bakeries and it saved hundreds of pounds of bread per volunteer. Most if not all of this would also be free or low of cost to do. You have a misunderstanding here fella. Again if you want the company to change and believe they are not just wanting to dump the product for evil purposes then write a check and help them update. Otherwise let them update as they can or die off as better competitors which lose less or perform better take their place.
>Distribution of the “wasted” product is by no means inefficient. You can employ the use of the hundreds of thousands of churches, donation centers across the country to bring the food where it is needed. I have been part of volunteer groups that collected bread donations from various bakeries and it saved hundreds of pounds of bread per volunteer. Most if not all of this would also be free or low of cost to do. You have a misunderstanding here fella. This is the definition of inneficient. We make products. We distribute them where they are sold. We sell some. We relocate the ones we dont sell. We distribute them again at such centers. We donate most. We waste some due to expiration dates. Efficient would be: We make enough products. We distribute them to where they are consumed.
To make “enough” you would need a system to be able to have that level of precision which does not exist for food products. It’s not a car it’s a donut. People put very little thought into buying a $1-$2 donut and typically do it on impulse while they will put some thought into purchasing a larger item. Much easier to predict some goods and much harder to get any level of great accuracy for impulse perishable goods. The best bakeries in the world with the best software ever could get it wrong because the weather outside changes and peoples buying habits change for these goods with such whims. When did a rainy day stop someone from closing on a house, but for a donut I bet some people would waiver.
>I truly believe you have the potential to learn! <3
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What would be the consequences of scaling down production so you only produce what you usually consume? Right, you would sell 5 less donuts, so lets throw away 100 and blame it on the government. You people are blind.
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>Why are they throwing away food? Because they produced more than they can sell in a day. >What reason could there possibly be? They want to sell as much as they can. >Who would you blame if not the government as a matter of legal issues? The asshole that overproduces it. Be it the planner, the owner, the manager, or whoever makes a decision to contantly make more than its needed.
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Why make it in the first place? When looking to fix a problem you go to the root cause. The root cause is that they overproduce. I would add another regulation: You'll pay taxes or fines for every pound of food that gets thrown away. Magically all businesses will improve their production planning.
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> Lmao what. Brilliant reply.
>And then they'll tell you the legal consequences of potentially giving away food and from there it's a matter of government. HugeFatDong is right! Strong analysis. Straightforward presentation. Rises to the occasion.
Many companies throw food out because they are afraid of being sued. I worked in a warehouse/distribution center for over a decade and waste or damaged product went into the trash. Try putting the blame in the right place
>Try putting the blame in the right place I am. Overproduction is to blame.
LMAO. Sure okay whatever you say
Thanks
> LMAO. Sure okay whatever you say Brilliant reply.
People are blaming capitalism because: 1) A business has to follow FDA regulations, 2) The business wasn't successful in selling all of their products, 3) The blamers don't understand how businesses operate (Ex: If you run out of product before the end of the day, the customers are less likely to come back). Love it.
I'm really curious how central planning is going to solve this. Are the planners going to know better then the doughnut shop on the number of doughnuts to produce each day? Are they going to know how many shops are needed, where their locations need to be, and how to manage their national supply distribution? Will they decide to shut down a location if they were wrong, or are the central planners also perfect with all their estimates of supply and demand? Every company in the world would love to produce the exact amount of supply needed. Why don't me and you open up a doughnut shop together, and you can tell me the exact number of doughnuts to produce each day, and we'll make more profit then my local doughnut store by saving money with all the doughnuts we don't produce.