alt Hacker NewsDestroying unsold clothes is financially the most efficient thing to do. It remains unclear to me how taking actions to maintain higher markups on products would be socially efficient in any way. Companies of course can keep doing it, they just will face financial and legislative repercussions for it.
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quotemstr • today at 7:28 PM
How do you know the "social value" is real value if you ignore the market?
If you can't sell clothes to anyone, then it may be more socially efficient to destroy them than (a) keep them in a warehouse or (b) ship them overseas. Both (a) and (b) can have substantial environmental costs. I don't think it should be hard to come up with other plausible cases. You're assuming there's only one reason companies do this. I don't deny that that's a possible reason. I also don't see why taxing that behaviour would not reduce it.