The Moral Order of Panera | Hacker News Reader

The Moral Order of Panera

thebaffler.com

So, I can totally believe that this particular idea didn't work well. I can totally agree that we should learn from it, perhaps that people want to give $ to feed the poor only when they don't have to sit next to them, or that people on lunch break don't want to have to tackle a moral quandary just then.

But, the article seemed needlessly negative. So, the CEO of Panera tried something, put his business experience to work seeing if this idea would succeed, and when it didn't, after giving it a fair shot, he shut it down. I don't think that's a reason to hate on him for trying it, or that anyone who thought it was worth a try should have known better. Just a reason for solving hunger in a different way (perhaps the simpler one of just giving food-insecure people some lunch money).

The reason it's so negative is because it already notes that prior research showed consumer responsibilization doesn't work. Shaich might see himself as good-minded, even volunteering as cashier, but he comes off more as misguided (what with his Ted Talk enthusiasm) and out of touch (note the vast gap between the customers and this man who made $2 million that year). I'm not sure why you expected some bland analytical article. The author clearly doesn't agree with Libertarian ideals or conscious capitalism.

The only research this article cites is a 2017 study that looked at Panera Cares itself. You can hardly fault the Panera CEO for trying when his efforts are what allowed the research to be done in the first place.

Okay I was incorrect on that front, [0] but the field of economics isn't exactly new, nor is the general idea itself (things like pay-what-you-want, voluntary contributions, etc).

[0]: Here's the paper: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/205157071454056...

Exactly. It's negative because Shaich acted without doing any research, purely trusting his "gut" about how he, a rich white man, thought food insecurity could be "solved" despite being the last person in the world who would know anything about it.

It's negative because it was a waste of time and money that could have been applied much more effectively to help the problem if some research was done first instead of trying to swoop in like some Ayn Randian super hero.

Hmmm...I don't see much Randian about this effort. I'm not sure Rand would have approved of a CEO trying to help the poor at all. His point about soup kitchens being depressing places to have to eat, whether it is accurate or not, is at least evidence of thinking about the psychological need for respect of the recipient. Anyway, again, I'm not saying this was the right approach, I'm just saying the article should be more "let's learn what we can here", and less "look at this dumb rich guy being a jerk for trying to help people in a way that didn't work well".

Right, programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). But I do agree that TFA was needlessly negative. I mean:

> Unsurprisingly, Shaich never mentions SNAP in his TED talk. If he did, he may have had to admit that Panera Cares was nothing but an elaborate branding exercise, a solution to a problem we already know how to solve. Panera Cares was an experiment that, in the end, was exactly like Shaich: full of empty, unpleasant, and superfluous gestures.

I rather envy people who do gestures well. I've been coached at it, but I'm still pretty wooden.

AKA: "No good deed goes unpunished."

That last line is all I'll remember about this article. It makes the whole thing into an unnecessary, personal attack.

Yeah, no kidding. A guy tried to find a way for his company to positively contribute to society and failed while absorbing losses. So he should be lambasted? What did Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein do?

Judging from his articles[1] he's a professional kvetch.

[1] https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/robin-kaiser-schatzl...

Sounds like a standard case of people applying the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics[0]. That is: you've somehow associated yourself with a problem, so now you get to be blamed for it. Heaven forbid you tried to make money solving it - now you're a monster.

[0] - https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

In the U.S. a large segment of the population (100M+) is told over-and-over again that they should rely on the expertise and charity of the elite in business and politics to take care of them.

Examples like this just show how naive and detached from reality that self appointed elite is and how little value their "charity" provides.

"self appointed elite" is a weird bag of people, which would likely contain Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and many random CEOs in between the spectrum. Their approach/value is radically different, so it's generalising here useful?

These kinds of things are typically done for optics rather than any actual empathy for the vulnerable/less fortunate, It's just a failed attempt to win over the hearts of more of those consumers that can and will pay. Wealth/income inequality can only be solved by a redistribution. And such a redistribution can't rely on the same dynamics that caused the inequality in the first place. (How did these people become so food insecure?) The project was clearly doomed to fail from the outset and I think it makes sense to call people like this on their feel-good bullshit.

You're right. It sure was morally wrong of them to take a chance on a novel way to help people. I also hate the CEO for constantly shouting, "end all other redistributive efforts, we solved it ourselves!" /s

I think the point the article was trying to make was that what the CEO tried is classically delusioned thought processes from a rich privileged person. His business experience was not applicable to the situation but he thought it was. And it's people like him, and his broader political views, that are stymieing the things that have been shown to work.

It's negative because it's tiresome. Will these people ever realize that their time, money, and lobbying are better put towards programs that work?

This article isn’t a criticism of the CEO of Panera, per se, it is a criticism of conscious capitalism and libertarian ideology trying to solve collective problems with individual actions, that the marketplace is the proper place to express our morality.

I found the employee who said the discount was only available the first time to be a symptom of a self-defeating policy: once you make such a statement, the transaction would become uncomfortably personal as illustrated by the account of the mother in the article. Having a sign outside the store and another one near the checkout would be less personal. The most that I would ask an employee to say in that sort of situation is "Please pay it forward when you can".

The part about the customer dress code was declared to be unevenly enforced between the Panera Cares store and the normal Panera bread store, so that seems like another issue of policy.

The Yelp comment that mentioned smell is a tough one. I was thinking about not having any place to sit period to avoid that, but then one could make the argument that isn't the Panera Bread experiment.

I applaud Ron Shaich for at least trying. I personally would not have gone towards opening four stores without proving out and refining the first experience of the first one. By just having this one store, it could have stayed open longer before closing, and the employees working at that store could have been given better job security e.g. if this store doesn't work out, then I'll guarantee you a position of employment at your nearest Panera Bread.

There's a secondary cause mixed in here I'd like to propose.

If you were to pay forward at this Panera, you don't know where your money is going to. That alone would make you hesitate as a consumer: You're not sure whether you'll be paying forward for someone who is in extensive need of the meal, or just a well-off customer who's looking for their discount-of-the-week for a decent sandwich.

It's the same kind of unease that pushes people away from giving money to panhandlers: they want to know that they are actually helping a person survive, not enabling them to seek out the means that may have contributed. (No, that's not what all of them will do. The point is you don't have the information and you will tend to err on the safe side in that context.)

We all collectively benefit when children get a good education, when everyone has fast and safe transportation, when everyone has enough nutritious food, and when healthcare is available to all.

These collective goods must be paid for collectively, or the free-rider problem guarantees failure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem

I will gladly pay my share to secure these social goods, but I won't shoulder the entire burden by myself.

When I see most people free riding, I'm much less likely to step up and be the chump who contributes.

> These collective goods must be paid for collectively, or the free-rider problem guarantees failure.

That’s close to the truth, but it ignores the efficacy of charities and churches — where many people can (and do) give generously to help others. When run well, those do far more good than even government programs.

I challenge anyone who cares about the poor and wants to make a big difference to give to, volunteer at, or even start one of these nonprofit community programs.

In my city there’s a charity that provides clothes to poor people at massive discounts. They don’t feel like they’re getting a handout, since they’re still paying (less than $1 per item) - hence they don’t lose any sense of dignity or “providing for their family”. It also reduces free-loading since you do have to pay. And store employees take time to help people with all sorts of things - job applications, government forms. If I’m bit mistaken, they also offer counseling, showers, and a cold weather shelter.

The thing is, charities and churches are rarely "run well". Many charities have become a cash cow for their executives and office staff (“Hey, look, we can direct a lot of these donations to paying us extremely generous salaries”), with actual generosity to those in need almost seeming an afterthought. I saw this firsthand when I volunteered in the central office of a charity, and it rather shattered my idealism.

Churches have been notorious for either stipulating that recipients act in a certain church-approved way to get aid, or giving charity in the hope that recipients will convert. Either way, it hardly strikes most people outside that religion as "generous".

It is worth pointing to the Nordic countries, where private charitable endeavours have largely faded away with the rise of the welfare state, and even the local churches are happy to let the state take care of the feeding, clothing and housing business because the state enjoys economy of scale far beyond any church’s ability. In spite of the dwindling of private charity, those countries have less wealth disparity than countries fond of charitable activity. Consequently, some feel that charity is a just an awkward substitute for a functional state, not a good thing in itself.

I can't find it now, but in the last few years there was a "well but what about churches?" story as public services for street problems were being cut, and they themselves said that they'd prefer not to have to take up the slack, certainly aren't prepared to take up all the slack, and that they aren't pros like the people who had just got their funding cut.

> ...they'd prefer not to have to take up the slack, certainly aren't prepared to take up all the slack, and that they aren't pros like the people who had just got their funding cut.

Churches literally aren't able to address "street problems" like violence and mental health problems. Governments are the best place to deal with problems where push actually has come to shove.

There might be some creative way to make sure charity-oriented churches are better supported by social service organizations, police departments, etc., but if that sort of setup exists now, it isn't routine or well publicized.

> The thing is, charities and churches are rarely "run well".

Do you have any data or personal experience (not just one example) to back that up?

The truth is, the vast majority of churches and local faith-based charities just quietly do their thing and usually aren’t big enough to garner any recognition or attention at scale.

Actually, it’s the big operations with money flowing to a central hub that are usually the most suspect - when those at the top have less accountability and more temptation to not put all that money where it ought to go. The American Red Cross comes to mind. The only exception is large charities with a “100% of donations go to help people” policy (i.e. employees and leaders have to raise their own support to work there).

> The truth is, the vast majority of churches and local faith-based charities just quietly do their thing and usually aren’t big enough to garner any recognition or attention at scale.

Your original comment said:

> When run well, those do far more good than even government programs.

Can you prove this? Because Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps do more good for 100+ million Americans than your local charities and churches, nor do faith based organizations have anywhere near the resources available to them government does.

Because Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps do more good for 100+ million

Do more good because their have much bigger budgets? - Maybe. More good per every dollar spent? I doubt it.

I prefer my country’s social services delivered by professionals, inefficiencies and all, over church volunteers. Inefficiencies are okay, expected even, when operating at scale. Sometimes universal availability and coverage take priority (know what you’re optimizing for).

Also, when discriminated against by faith based services, you have no recourse. This is unacceptable, and can be monitored and governed more effectively when government provides services.

I really don't know why inefficiency is ok, sorry. If a system is less efficient at scale then engineering approach teaches us to modularize/split it into smaller chunks.

Btw, you used "professional" word as if it's something good in itself. That's far from truth. Professional bureaucrats, and state officials quite often are directly interested in growing inefficiency because it can be exploited to expand budgets, and staff.

Saying you prefer a welfare state provided by "professionals" does not necessary mean bureaucrats. It also includes things like social workers who have undergone rigorous training to better deal with the mentally ill, those suffering from addiction, and vulnerable minorities. A church or charity worker, no matter how well-meaning they might be, does not necessarily have those skills.

I agree it also includes some usefully prepared people, nevertheless no state welfare program exists without bureacrats.

Also, preparedness/trainings are not exclusive feature of gov't system. I know what I'm saying here because I volunteered in private charity (not in US, so American mileage may vary), and I dare to say people who worked there were more competent then relevant state officials, at least target group always preferred them.

It depends what it is. The government is efficient at sending people checks and retail stores like Walmart are efficient places to buy things. It's hard to see how to do much better for supplying people with new stuff.

On the other hand, thrift stores also have an important role for getting used stuff like clothing to people who need it, and charities do some of that.

Then there are various services that charities do, which is a whole different thing and not easily replaced. But some of their funding comes from the government.

I agree that gov't is relatively good at sending checks (except in some economic circumstances, e.g. when the currency it prints is no more in demand - like in Venezuela, or late USSR). However it doesn't necessary make a particular welfare program efficient in general. Maybe recipients are poorly determined (which happens more often with larger programs), or sending checks is not the best idea at all.

You...”doubt it”? I guess the issue is settled, then. I’ll take it that the underlying argument is “government bad, private good”. It doesn’t really contribute anything, but at least we can guess at the reasoning.

"Doubt it" is pretty much a clear invitation to present arguments. But you are welcome to present some sarcasm instead, even if very general.

"Doubt it" is pretty much a clear invitation to present arguments.

Present an argue against what? “Is not!” doesn’t give a lot to work with. “Doubt it” does a fine job of presenting one’s biases, but it is most certainly not an invitation to stimulating discussion, quite the opposite.

To sum it up.

Starting point: A produces more good then B.

Me: A can produce more good than B, but not necessary more per dollar spent, and I think it's not the case.

--Here was a place to to try to prove it's more per dollar spent--

You: You are biased!

Me: You are invited to present arguments.

You: You are biased!

Furthermore, in all of the situations I've experienced involving these, not only does local government fail where these orgs quietly succeed, I've found that same government trying mightily to hamper the actions of those charities at every turn.

As far as churches, I’ve seen a number of places that 70% of the church’s budget goes to keeping the church afloat.

https://get.tithe.ly/blog/church-wasting-money

That sounds reasonable to me, as long as donations can be specifically earmarked for helping needy people or charity work.

Paying a pastor a median wage (if he’s full time—many have a job besides pastoring), having a building to meet in, and helping needy people in the church adds up quickly. For small and/or rural congregations, that might be most or all of what they can manage.

The thing is, charities and churches are rarely "run well".

It's good that gov't agencies, and programs are so well known to to be run well, don't have problems with inefficiency, and corruption. Oh... wait

When churches help people, they have an ulterior motive -- to convert the people they help to the church.

Why should people who need help have to contend with this?

Why can't we just help them without a competing agenda?

> When churches help people, they have an ulterior motive -- to convert the people they help to the church.

You might as well say God has an ulterior motive for providing for our needs - that we would come to know and love him. The two statements are analogous.

It’s true, churches that truly love people and believe the Bible will want people to be saved through belief in Jesus. Hell is so bad, nothing could be more unloving than to not care about people’s souls and offer them the gospel.

To be clear, the assumption that non-Christians are going to hell is not because of any moral superiority. All deserve hell, including Christians, because all have sinned. But free forgiveness is offered. It’s like a flag being waved over a well in the desert by a once-thirsty man who has found water. The statement “I’ve found water” or the assumption that we’re all in a desert carries no overtone of personal superiority.

At the same time, if people need help but don’t want to hear anything, fine. That is no reason to turn them away or treat them less favorably in charity/outreach.

I don't think it's an ulterior motive that churches want to help people be more spiritually healthy... it's part of the core function of the organizations.

> Why can't we just help them without a competing agenda?

It's only a competing agenda if you assume they're wrong. If better spiritual health complements the other efforts, it would be foolish not to promote it.

Your perspective is that proselytizing is undesirable is valid, but it does take quite a bit as granted.

These collective goods must be paid for collectively, or the free-rider problem guarantees failure

Free-rider isn't a natural law, it doesn't guarantee anything. It attempts to predict an increased probability of failure, but that's different.

FWIW, Raleigh has had an independent non-profit pay-what-you-can restaurant for about 16 months now:

https://tableraleigh.org/about

Customers have multiple options to pay and to pay-it-forward.

- Pay the suggested price

- At least half of the suggested price

- By volunteering with us

Pay it Forward

- Tip to fulfill our mission

- Buy a $10 token to hand out yourself in the community

I suspect these may work better as independent establishments as opposed to being part of a chain or large corporation.

Melbourne, Australia has had a pay-what-you-can restaurant (actually a number of them coming and going) since 2000: https://www.lentilasanything.com

“I suspect these may work better as independent establishments as opposed to being part of a chain or large corporation”

Agreed. I am always skeptical of large corporations doing charity work. It’s never clear clear where the money is going and whether they just do it for PR. I find it easier to trust smaller organize.

It seems to me that the author misunderstands the nature of the libertarian moral-economic approach. The whole point of it is that whatever decisions people make wrt charity and welfare with their own money are the only ones that reflect their true morality, and thus, a free market will simply express the moral consensus of the society in which it operates. Thus, if the experiment supports the theory that "consumers don’t prefer conscious capitalist businesses", from that perspective, it is not a failure - it just means that the current consensus is that the various social causes aren't important enough to pay for them.

That is also why people who subscribe to this value system wouldn't talk about SNAP - from their perspective, it's some people deciding what to do with other people's money, which cannot be moral by definition.

You may disagree with that value system and its definitions - I do - but you have to at least acknowledge that it is different enough that what you see as problems is not necessarily what its adherents see as problems. In this case, the article writer is complaining at the end that it's a failed attempt at "solution to a problem we already know how to solve" - but is it really meant to solve that problem? I don't think so.

> the current consensus is that the various social causes aren't important enough to pay for them

No, the only consensus I see from this article is that this particular approach to solving a very important social problem doesn't work.

Like I said, I do not agree with libertarian ethics. I'm explaining how it looks from that perspective. And in it, by definition, whatever the market does is the consensus.

The larger point is that they're not trying to solve the problem you (and the author) think about. It's not about solving hunger per se. It's about alleviating it to the extent permissible by the bounds of what their value system deems moral - and those bounds do not accommodate wealth redistribution via taxation. So it's kinda like complaining that communists can't solve the problem of protecting private property - well, yes, but they aren't trying to, so you should complain about that very fundamental premise.

In a way, it is rather like religion. Islamic banking, for example, is hardly efficient at solving most problems that modern banking does. If all you cared about was solving them, you wouldn't need it. But if you are under a religious prohibition on charging interest, then you have to come up with all those alternative convoluted schemes, that don't cover many scenarios outright, and are inefficient in others - but it's the best that can be had. Conversely, if a problem requires a sinful action to solve, then it's not really a problem. "Whatever God does is good" is a common religious trope - replace it with "whatever the market does is good", and you'll see that it works just the same here.

>The whole point of it is that whatever decisions people make wrt charity and welfare with their own money are the only ones that reflect their true morality, and thus, a free market will simply express the moral consensus of the society in which it operates.

Alternatively, emergent effects from the complex structure of the network come to dominate over the moral choices of the nodes and so therefore it acts more like weather than any actual reflection of a societal consensus, with the overall climate being driven by those who have inherited the most currency.

You can't apply what you describe as a "libertarian moral-economic approach" to a capitalist culture and society and claim that the result reflects the true moral fiber of its citizens. The system is too complex to make such a sweeping generalization.

For example, I could probably stand to donate far more money to charities and causes than I do. The reason I don't give more is because I worry about whether the charity I choose is being run efficiently, and I worry about my own financial stability changing the moment I give the money away, and a million other varyingly logical/illogical concerns. I'm sure I'm not the only one who fits this description.

Not to mention the capitalist fiction of being able to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps as an excuse for why I deserve the money I've made and the less fortunate are simply lazier, etc. I personally no longer believe in that, but a lot of people do. So-called "hustle culture" is somewhat related in that it romanticises having to work non-stop to be financially secure.

But I digress, as I've wandered off topic. My point is that it's unfair to judge a society's morality by the measure you've applied due to all of these factors of capitalism and more.

By that logic, it is moral to let people starve to death when you have enough not to. I guess some people might think that.

> If he did, he may have had to admit that Panera Cares was nothing but an elaborate branding exercise, a solution to a problem we already know how to solve.

I would expect there to be a lot less food insecurity if we actually knew how to solve it.

Yeah, I would consider "get everyone to agree with me on topic X" to be a very unsolved problem.

Agree with many other commenters here that holding this up as a supposed failure of free-market libertarianism borders on absurdity. Cut against the grain of human nature and you're going to fail, irrespective of your philosophy.

Also, counterpoint: https://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/television/Rosas...

It sounds like the problems are mostly shame and self-selection, which could perhaps be iterated on, for instance with some sort of automatic dynamic pricing. For instance, it's a lousy first idea, but I wonder if credit card terminals can tell how close you are to your credit limit, and if you're close it'll automatically adjust your price downward.

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