scholar
@scholar@lemmy.world
- Comment on Chocolate kept in anti-theft boxes as retailers warn it's being stolen to order 10 hours ago:
I hope every single corpo goes out of business and we can fix the world’s problems instead of perpetually transferring all our money to the ultra-rich and the elderly boomers who destroyed the world so they could vote for more racism and despair.
Unless you have evidence that supermarkets are artificially inflating prices this isn’t going to fix anything. Goods cost money to make. Shoplifting doesn’t pay for the production of goods. This isn’t a sustainable way of supplying people with food. It raises prices for customers. It exposes shop workers to violence and abuse. It funds criminal gangs.
And then to top it all off people like you come swanning in thinking you’re supporting Robin Hood and his merry men and that just a few more shoplifters will cause Tesco to collapse and that whatever replaces it (because you haven’t actually thought about what replaces it) will be some Star Trek utopian paradise compared to the devilry of having to pay cost + a margin. (Hint: Robin Hood gave to the poor, not sold to the poor).
What you may notice about Co-op and Waitrose (one being a consumer co-operative and the other owned by a trust on behalf of its employees) is that they are on the more expensive side of supermarkets. They aren’t transferring your money to the ultra rich. They aren’t funding the campaigns of right wing would-be dictators. They are paying a fair price for the goods that they sell, and they are paying a fair wage to the employees who work there. The other supermarkets are often cheaper on many items. Mass shoplifting isn’t going to help this.
The real problem is that the cost of many goods is too high. The real causes of this are climate change, international conflict, brexit and other tariffs, labour related costs, and to some extent, profiteering of the part of the producers. Notice how shoplifting doesn’t address any of these issues.
- Comment on Chocolate kept in anti-theft boxes as retailers warn it's being stolen to order 1 day ago:
By all means shop at Coop and Waitrose then, but you’re missing the point: this is making things more expensive for everyone else. Shops have to raise prices to offset losses and investment in security.
If everyone bought stolen goods the legitimate shops would go out of business and the shoplifters would have nowhere to steal from. Your cheap goods are being subsidised by honest customers.
- Comment on Chocolate kept in anti-theft boxes as retailers warn it's being stolen to order 1 day ago:
Producer - has already been paid by legitimate shop for goods, isn’t affected by theft. Legitimate shop - pays for goods then doesn’t get paid. Is affected.
- Comment on Chocolate kept in anti-theft boxes as retailers warn it's being stolen to order 2 days ago:
Most of the price inflation is because of global supply factors, such as war and climate change driving up the cost of wheat and cocoa, for example.
Shop attendants are absolutely affected as the number of violent and abusive confrontations was estimated around 1300 per day in 2024.
- Comment on Chocolate kept in anti-theft boxes as retailers warn it's being stolen to order 2 days ago:
My local shop is stealing from me?
- Comment on Chocolate kept in anti-theft boxes as retailers warn it's being stolen to order 2 days ago:
It doesn’t affect them: they’ve already been paid. It’s the shop who takes the loss and the average customer who ends up paying more.
- Comment on Chocolate kept in anti-theft boxes as retailers warn it's being stolen to order 2 days ago:
Because the targets of theft then have to invest in more security while making less money, raising prices for customers.
The shop that bought the item legitimately has to pay the full price of the item from the manufacturer / distributor. They have to sell the item at cost + VAT + a percentage to make money
The thief can sell at whatever price they like because they have no costs and don’t pay VAT on the sale.
The second shop has to sell the item at the new cost + new VAT + a percentage to make money. They save twice, on the cost of the item and the amount of VAT they pay.
The people who lose from this are:
- The legitimate business owners who pay full price and make nothing.
- Legitimate customers who pay increased prices
If the legitimate shop goes out of business then the whole system fails. Your cheap coke is being subsidised by honest customers.
- Comment on Chocolate kept in anti-theft boxes as retailers warn it's being stolen to order 2 days ago:
You would watch criminal gangs strip your local shop of high value items to resell for profit, and then offer to pay for it? We’re not talking about someone in need stealing essentials here.
- Comment on Chocolate kept in anti-theft boxes as retailers warn it's being stolen to order 2 days ago:
This isn’t people stealing chocolate because it’s expensive, it’s people stealing chocolate, cuts of meat, and alcohol etc. to resell. They aren’t ‘rebalancing’ anything, they are organised groups who are stealing in bulk to make a profit. This actually increases prices of those goods for everyone else.
- Comment on Chocolate kept in anti-theft boxes as retailers warn it's being stolen to order 2 days ago:
If you see someone shoving six bottles of whisky in their coat, yes you did.
There’s a difference between stealing for survival and stealing for profit.
- Comment on Steam Machine and Steam Frame delays are the latest product of the RAM crisis 2 weeks ago:
The announcement was shortly before ram prices kicked off. Theoretically the first production run wouldn’t be affected because they would have negotiated ram supply already, but any subsequent units would be at current rates.
Considering how much ram prices have risen by they would be taking a big loss per unit which makes no sense for them: they’re a business not a charity.
- Comment on AI controls is coming to Firefox 3 weeks ago:
None of what is considered ‘AI’ is actually AI, it’s just a rebrand of machine learning tech that has been around for a few years now (and is genuinely useful in certain circumstances). It’s all ‘AI’, only the generative AI is worth getting mad about.
- Comment on Check mate, Libertarians 4 weeks ago:
You can try it yourself, sit in a chair or the edge of your bed, and tap your knee just below the kneecap with your fingertips. You should be able to feel your leg twitch.
- Comment on Ubisoft has cancelled 6 games, including the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake | VGC 5 weeks ago:
The combat is fine, my only issue with it was the camera trying to get you killed, especially around corners. Still one of the best games Ubisoft have ever made.
- Comment on Would a fediverse alternative of Discord be possible? 5 weeks ago:
Do you use voice chats in the same way that Discord allows you to? Can you hop in to an empty voice channel without having to initiate an end to end call?
- Comment on Jeff Bezos said the quiet part out loud — hopes that you'll give up your PC to rent one from the cloud 5 weeks ago:
Not quite, he doesn’t demean himself by ‘buying’ anything, he just built a place where other people can buy stuff for a dollar and sell it for two, and Jeff takes a cut.
- Comment on Microsoft just open-sourced bitnet.cpp, a 1-bit LLM inference framework. It let's you run 100B parameter models on your local CPU without GPUs. 6.17x faster inference and 82.2% less energy on CPUs. 1 month ago:
No that would require AI (Actual Intelligence)
- Comment on Wikipeter was the founder of the site in 1993 when he wanted to know more about model trains without having to visit the library 1 month ago:
That’s why I only get my information from lemmy comments
- Comment on "i can hear the difference" 1 month ago:
It’s actually anti-lock breaking system, super high end; not many cables have it
- Comment on What're your strong opinions from an aged / dead fandom? 1 month ago:
We’re not told much about the Independant Planets, certainly nothing suggests that they themselves did anything wrong (other than secede). You seem to have a problem with their superficial resemblence of the confederacy.
Mal and his crew are thieves and smugglers, not pirates or murderers. The ‘Mal is latin for bad’ line another commenter mentioned was a red herring in an episode. They aren’t evil people intent on subjugation.
- Comment on What're your strong opinions from an aged / dead fandom? 1 month ago:
There’s no indication that slavery was a factor, only political self-determination
- Comment on 'A den of bandits': Rwanda closes thousands of evangelical churches 2 months ago:
This isn’t about personal beliefs, it’s about organised religion (where the church dictates to children their beliefs)
- Comment on Creating apps like Signal or WhatsApp could be 'hostile activity,' claims UK watchdog 2 months ago:
Then explain Denmark
- Comment on It just keeps getting worse - Firefox to "evolve into a modern AI browser" 2 months ago:
Local ML translation was pretty cool
- Comment on This long-term data storage will last 14 billion years 2 months ago:
Similar concepts have been developed before, Microsoft and Southampton University were working on glass cubes with 3D laser etchings in the centre around 2015-16
- Comment on Revisiting Jill of the Jungle, the last game Tim Sweeney designed 2 months ago:
EpicMegaGames was legit back in the 90’s, regardless of what a slimy, backwards, CEO Tim is today.
- Comment on Self-hosted TinyPNG alternative with Docker (imgcompress 2 months ago:
This may just be a usecase thing, but what is the advantage of this over imagemagick? I can already
magick photo1.jpg -resize 50% photo1.pngand when the process ends it’s not constantly using resources in a webserver. - Comment on Plex’s crackdown on free remote streaming access starts this week - Ars Technica 2 months ago:
I also bought a lifetime Plex pass a few years ago, but I’ve migrated to Jellyfin because Plex is no longer a trustworthy project.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
When you turn it on it boots to a controller friendly UI that shows you all your steam games. No setup, no hunting for drivers, no bloat.
- Comment on Why civilians don't crowdfund bribe money for politicians? 3 months ago:
you’d be surprised how cheap a politician can be