Philosophy Now Forum

Say you have a business that, to many people, sell an inferior product/service. Yet this business always seems to sell a lot of product/service. Is it in the interest of society to let this business continue since they don't have an incentive to improve the product or service? What should be done in a case such as this?

PhilX

Philosophy Explorer wrote:Say you have a business that, to many people, sell an inferior product/service. Yet this business always seems to sell a lot of product/service. Is it in the interest of society to let this business continue since they don't have an incentive to improve the product or service? What should be done in a case such as this?

Sounds like all American manufacturing.

It should be a criminal offense to willingly or knowingly produce, transport, or sell inferior products. Regulators who allow things like pumping meat full of water should be in prison with them. Our economy hums along at about a 3% efficiency while many do without and people all over the world are starving. The ONLY people who profit from this nonsense are the CEO's and the Congress that sleeps with them.

We're left to eat cake. (...composed of lard and sugar in ever smaller packages and higher prices and ever more ingredients mined from the earth)

Let the producer of the inferior product or service go about his business without restraint. If folks continue to buy the service or product obviously those folks get some benefit. When those consumers no longer benefit, the producer of the inferior sevice or product will lose business. He'll improve the quality, or market his shit better, or go out of business.

Can't see any good reason to short circuit the process with interventions.

henry quirk wrote:Let the producer of the inferior product or service go about his business without restraint. If folks continue to buy the service or product obviously those folks get some benefit. When those consumers no longer benefit, the producer of the inferior sevice or product will lose business. He'll improve the quality, or market his shit better, or go out of business.

Can't see any good reason to short circuit the process with interventions.

The problem is that the government is propping them up. Now all products are garbage that have to be replaced frequently. If not for government interference these businesses would have failed long ago. Government builds deep moats around their friends in business to protect them from competition. We're not only turning into a world where all decisions are made by big bloated and inefficient businesses but we are losing our freedom while on an unsustainable path. We can't continue to waste resources forever. It's a wonder we've lasted this long.

Yeah, very large business does get a sheltering from gov, but the bulk of businesses (some large, many medium, most small) don't.

But that's beside the point...no matter how large and well-connected a business is, not a single customer is obligated to transact with it. Corp X produces gov-subsidized or protected crap that no one needs but every one wants: leave Corp X be.

As for decisions being usurped by the bloated: do you feel powerless in your own living? Why?

Consumers should vote with their money. That's the only way a business will change, if they aren't making any, or enough. Consumers usually don't, though, and so should suck it up until they start reserving their money' and not wasting it. Don't be a sucker to crap.

Companies with inferior products get battered all the time. Nokia and Blackberry are recent examples.

Huge government intervention was unable to do anything for the entire UK car industry because its end product was universally awful. Only selling it off to foreigners rescued it. Over time, something similar applies to nearly all industry (flag bearing airlines such as Alitalia being the obvious exception).

henry quirk wrote:Let the producer of the inferior product or service go about his business without restraint. ...

Unless of course the product is of harm?

Capiltalism is supposed to take care of that, unless the product is unsafe. What you are proposing is kind of a paradox: a selling inferior product. The only way this could occur is if the advertising is so good it masks the product's defeciencies. Did you have one specific product in mind?

Jaded Sage wrote:Capiltalism is supposed to take care of that, unless the product is unsafe. What you are proposing is kind of a paradox: a selling inferior product. The only way this could occur is if the advertising is so good it masks the product's defeciencies. Did you have one specific product in mind?

No

PhilX

Americans love to sue if a product fails them in a hurtful way...hell, they love to sue even when they just think a product is hurtful. So, at least in America, the courts are there to redress all real and imagined boo-boos.