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Comment by seanalexander | Hacker News Reader

The clothes end up in third world countries where they are sold, hurting local industries.

some of them end here in thrift shops in Tunisia. they get extended life. and no they don't hurt local industry. in fact we have an important clothing industry and it's mostly targeted towards export. so the clothes get exported new and come back as used. it's not unusual to find clothes made in Tunisia in thrift shops. the funny thing is the clothes are sold in thrift shops the same price (converted to dollars) they were sold new when exported. i find this distortion illustrates accurately the injustice in the world

Or their ability to focus on other higher margin production than clothing may be a net gain. Or not, I don't know. But I don't think it's as simple as "local clothing production suffers".

Dumping is rarely good for any economies. That’s why the US had anti dumping laws for their own market.

Where does dumping start and comparative advantage start? Seems like the US has a high supply of cheap clothes, not unlike how new zealand has a high supply of cheep lamb.

Dumping is selling stuff below cost.

And what's the definition of "cost"? Moreover, does exporting anything second-hand constitute "dumping"?

Cost is the price for something of value. The two don't have to be correlated. I suppose where money is not involved, you might say the the costs are the repercussions.

By traditional usage of the word dumping, donating use items doesn't qualify. It's not being done to gain a non-competetive economic advantage. It's a semantic issue though: decide you want to construe the word a bit more abstractly and you can make it fit.

Lexical and semantic issue aside, freeing up local resources (people's time) to focus on education and learning higher level skills seems a reasonable plan. Not unlike what a family does when freeing up the time of it's youngest members to focus on learning. Of course in the context of foreign aid to a country, it presumes you don't just air drop in supplies for basic needs and leave it at that. If you're really interested in bootstrapping a population to a higher quality of life, you have to still ensure that learning etc. are available along with the capital infrastructure to create businesses and industries that utilize that learning. I'm not sure the developed world, when lending a hand to less developed countries, always gets that second part right.

Dumping is only a problem when it's used to create a monopoly.

Producing something efficiently for cheap is not dumping.

It's not below cost if the goods don't have a resale value otherwise. Should they be destroyed so profits can be made by some other company selling clothes to the same population?

Planet Money did an episode several years ago.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/08/26/434988401/epis...

Developing countries, not third world, that term is offensive. Those clothes allow people to open their own small business fashion boutiques which creates jobs. They lower prices and give consumers more choice. They do take away business from giant clothing brand companies that exploit labor in developing countries. What local industries does it hurt?

> that term is offensive.

Sorry, but 'third world' is really only offensive to people from first world countries who find the term 'third world' offensive. Oh, and it might also be offensive to people in developing countries who can afford developed countries' lifestyles.

I may not agree with the usage either, but that's what I see all around the third world countries that I've been to, and the one where I have lived since I was born. No one really cares, and no one is offended (except see previous paragraph).

“Third world” is a dumb term to use because it’s based on the Cold War where the USSR was the “second world” and that shit hasn’t existed for over 30 years. Developing / underdeveloped are better, far less amorphous terms. Agree it’s not really offensive, but it is a poor choice of words for reasons completely unrelated to political correctness.

At least its better than "global south". It was rediculous when people would start talking about "global north" countries like Australia.

Yep, all these workarounds get used because some people force their sensibilities on everybody else. Obviously, the real divide is between "rich" and "poor" countries, but it's too "cruel" or "crass" to call things what they are. It seems that the poor don't mind that much, but the term is especially offensive for the rich, as it induces guilt in some of them and a fear of retribution in others. Anyway, whatever else is used in place of rich/poor, is bound to comically fall flat on its face, i.e.:

- "third world" should include Switzerland and Austria, as they were neutral during the cold war

- "developing countries" should not include places in major wars or civil wars (such as for example not Yemen), as they're clearly not developing, but rather deteriorating.

- as you point out, "global south" should include the wealthy Australia.

It also expands into other examples of hypocrisy, such as the term "African-American", which is just an euphemism for black Americans (which itself suggest that being black is bad somehow), but due to its clumsiness also includes lots of non-black people, such as Tunesian-Americans (no black people there).

Indeed it is very dumb because it does not categorise countries by development, in actuality is it only about their political alignment - 'neutral' countries were third world.

Everybody knows that history , terms change with time, as someone who has lived all his life in the 3rd world, I have never met even 1 person who is offended by the term (I have met online a lot of first-worlders offended though). We use the term as sarcastic self-mockery and as encompassing umbrella to identify ourselves with nations all over the world under the same predicaments. Proud tercermundista here.

As a first worlder, it never occurred to me that there was a second world so TIL

I had no idea it was related to the USSR at all and had just assumed third world strictly meant a poor nation

> We use the term as sarcastic self-mockery and as encompassing umbrella to identify ourselves with nations all over the world under the same predicaments.

Yes, that's it. You said it better than I did.

Im literally born and living in a third world country and its not offensive lol, but yea you're right people here LOVE those cheap quality clothes.

https://www.humanosphere.org/social-business/2014/09/toms-sh...

There is one article talking about the effect on local industry. The gist of it is that you help people out by giving them free stuff, but you kill the local food/clothing/shoe industry and therefore trap the very communities you intend to help into a cycle where they can never start businesses and raise their standard of living because nobody will buy their stuff because they get it for free through aid.

Also, the term "third world" is not offensive and most people are tired of playing this game where some group declares some term offensive and we are all expected to stop using it. You don't get to dictate the language people use to talk and think about the world around them.

Do people really wear secondhand clothes and shoes if they care about appearance and can afford more fashionable, better fitting locally made stuff? This could be equally applicable to first-world countries, where most people don't wear cheap secondhand clothes although they're readily available

Nobody said anything about being fashionable.

I personally wear almost exclusively second hand clothes. The only things I buy new are shoes and underwear.

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