The main difference from taxes is that this is private enterprise vs a purely government endeavor, but in that respect it's really not very different from other government regulations on private enterprise as well as contracts between purely private entities (there are plenty of proposed and actual regulations and contracts on bundling goods and services, which is effectively what this is, just with more flexibility than with usual bundling).
This shows up all over the place. Governments can force health insurance providers (private or governmental) to bundle both unprofitable at-risk patients together with profitable healthy patients. A fly-by-night insurance provider can swoop in and offer lower premiums to those profitable healthy patients. Nominally this seems great! Lower rates for folks who don't need it (similar to the garbage scenario, garbage gets picked up for those people dumping valuable garbage!). But now the incentive structure is getting pretty messed up and those at-risk patients are vulnerable to a lot of rate hikes since the premiums paid by healthy patients are being "skimmed" away.
Put another way, bundling goods and services in certain ways lets you control incentives, which can be used for good or bad ends. However, surreptitiously unbundling those things after there's already been an agreed-upon bundling can wreak havoc on that initial incentive structure.
Keep in mind that this is only possible because they are stealing cherrypicked materials. No municipality would allow them to run garbage removal legitimately if they would collect only valuable materials while leaving worthless at the curbside for someone else to deal with.
If I were to pay these men to take the trash away, would that be better for the city?
The core of their activity is at a loss and they make up for high profit on the side (selling drinks).
Then the cinema kicks you out if they catch you with a cola you bought in another shop.
All the shop did, was to provide a better service, at a better price.
This situation could stop if the law would stop allowing that.
The cinemas wouldn't die; the movie distributors would ask for less and less fees.
Now the distributors can ask for high fee (up to 90%) because they know the cinemas charge for these add-ons and make some turnover.
[0] At least here in Germany one can not opt out of this which is a good thing in my opinion. Otherwise some people undoubtely would opt out which would leave us with either unhandled trash or the public having to pay for their trash instead.
Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing? It would be great for both businesses and consumers. (although it would depend on how successfully it was executed)
And it would be a benefit to society if gas was priced higher rather than subsidized by junk food and the demographics more prone to buying it. Especially due to a certain something called climate change, and how cheaper gas helps suvs and other low mileage cars.
We want people to throw away more cardboard, because we want it to get recycled. A system where throwing away 'unprofitable' trash costs more than throwing away cardboard seems like a net good.
Even at a personal level, if the 'thefts' causes cities to raise prices across the board, but all of the cardboard is getting pulled out my trash by 'thieves', thus decreasing my overall volume and cost, then it seems like it still kind of evens out for me as an individual and rewards me for throwing out recyclable materials.
And communities/households that reliably throw out a lot of cardboard will be hit by 'thefts' more often, which will lower their trash bills even more, which is... yet another outcome we actually want -- systemic, community-wide, reliable disposal of recyclable materials.
It's the same problem for society as any other kind of theft.
If the exclusive right to the cardboard was taken away from the people who currently claim it, then it wouldn't be theft. Would that make it ok?
> If magic pixies have nicked their waste cardboard then it means they don't have to pay a firm like mine to come and pick it up.
That's not theft in any moral sense, though I can't speak to British law. The owner wanted it gone. It wasn't owed to anyone else (or they wouldn't have to pay someone to take it away). A firm is upset they didn't get a contract, that's all.
I don't see taking something abandoned at the side of the road as "theft".
> "And theft is hardly ever reported by companies, because why would they? If magic pixies have nicked their waste cardboard then it means they don't have to pay a firm like mine to come and pick it up. So they are going to keep schtum [quiet]."
> This is very much the opinion of the shopkeeper we spoke to in Madrid.
One could flip this around. Good for you if you want to waste police resources guarding your trash bins, but why should you get to make that decision for the other shop keepers in Madrid?
It's one thing for a city to go after criminals. It's another thing for the city to complain that its citizens aren't doing a good enough job helping enforce the laws that they don't care about.
For sure, if someone wants to set up security cameras by their trash bin and report thefts, go wild. But I'm just having a hard time getting worked up about something where the citizens themselves don't seem to be upset.