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Comment by ahmedfromtunis | Hacker News Reader

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And Mr Beast dangles a fortune in front of one of his employees that grew up in poverty to pressure them into staying in a room for 100 days with all the lights on. Guess it's all the same though.

How is that worse than grocery stores price gouging resulting in malnourishment, starvation and homelessness?

You're dramatically overestimating the profitability of selling groceries. Most of the high prices come from further up the supply chain, or other parts of the local economies like rent, utilities, transportation, and labor. Obviously some stores are better than others, but if some company is just milking people in any given grocery market, competitors will show up in a second to take their customers away. Even in food deserts served only by expensive bodegas and the like— selling fresh food at low volumes is fucking expensive because of how much waste you have, and beyond that, your street corner retail space is a whole lot more expensive per food item than a grocery store on the edge of town.

Australia has two major grocery chains who stockpile vacant land to remain monopolistic. The supermarkets screw suppliers on price and will dump them entirely if they speak out. They also produce their own ‘home brands’ which undercut competitors as they own the entire supply chain. You can be damn sure it’s happening here.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yoo6XVxpiU8

Edit: and whether it happens or not, my question was related to whether mr beast dangling a million dollars for someone to stand in a circle for 100 days is as unethical as price gouging essential items. One may take advantage of a few people and is probably not extremely biased towards the most vulnerable, (e.g. the participants are probably not homeless), the other is taking advantage of everyone, homelessness is surging in aus atm. I see Mr beasts videos as far less damaging than the current problem in Australia.

Not all shady business practices are gouging. I was responding to the statement you made. Selling a product cheaper than your competitors, even if you're using unfair leverage to do it is not by any measure 'gouging.' In the US, discount stores are most likely to play the "strategically let this useful land moulder in a densely populated area during a housing crisis" game but they're definitely not price gouging. Those are problems with business ethics, and I do not consider them more harmful, generally, than lampooning poor people to an audience of millions. The stigma of poverty and houselessness has direct, consequential economic and mental health impact on the people that experience it.

Australian supermarkets are screwing producers by making lowball offers on stock and increasing prices far beyond inflation to consumers. They are both price gouging and performing other shady business practices at the same time.

Ok, so one of those things is price gouging (the price gouging), which sounds like a problem local to the Australian grocery market. It's obviously bad, but Mr Beast has 12x Australia's population in YouTube followers. The comparison doesn't make sense. Your trying to whatabout this with that is completely bizarre, and why your initial comment is dead. Bye

I’m not sure how his follower count is relevant unless he’s paying all his followers to stand in a circle. But sure, keep thinking mr beast is the most unethical entity in the world while we all suffer the consequences of late stage capitalism.

Come on... you know I never even intimated that Mr. Beast is the most unethical entity in the world. Saying that viewership doesn't matter when you've turned degrading poor people into a form of entertainment is obviously a bad faith argument. Now, for real, I'll leave you to destroy every straw man you can fabricate, by yourself.

Nah, you have the wrong idea completely, non-shady businesses provide a good or service, that you can't obtain (easily) yourself. Period, non-stop. (Ignoring for a minute monopolies, which can actually be quite fair but usually aren't unless heavily regulated.)

If you have infinite time, resources, patience, sure, you might be able to provide the same thing for yourself, but not everyone has a farm, not everyone has the time or ability to visit Grandma...

Shady businesses try to sell you gum while on your call to Grandma (nothing to do with calling grandma, just a "value-added" thing).

I'd also posit, if you don't know the difference, you're probably being exploited yourself. I'd take a hard look at who you are giving money to, and try re-evaluate if they are providing you value or not (with respect to your circumstances).

Equitable positive-sum trade isn't somehow inherently the same thing as exploitation.

I wouldn't call it that, but I think the term does get used in that way: any profit due to my skills is my labour being "exploited" in some sense. (Not one I am upset by).

The terminological disagreement makes it easier to miss abusive exploitation.

I don't think "exploitation" is the right word to use for every business transaction.

When there's choice/competition and transparency/information (i.e. not some form of advanced psychological manipulation going on that can be impossible to economically avoid for many), who's being exploited?

"Profit" means you're overpaying (i.e. the amount of money you exchange for goods or services exceeds the cost of providing them). Failure to operate at a profit (even if it may be indirect in cases like VC-funded disruptors undercutting established competitors for early growth) means the business will fail.

Business transactions are exploitative. That's the entire point of them. Otherwise it'd just be tit-for-tat or a gift economy. You don't want to recover your investment, you want to grow your investment. And beating inflation is the baseline.

'exploit' comes from Latin via French, where the meaning of 'to attain profit through abuse' is further down on the list of meanings (https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/exploitation/...) compared to English where it's the primary or secondary meaning (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exploit).

I'd probably agree that it makes sense to try to find a synonym where possible, but I wouldn't say it's necessary in cases where it would not be succinct or clear otherwise.

We're speaking English in this conversation, not Latin or French. The word "exploit" clearly has a significantly negative connotation that is not appropriate in this context.

I disagree.

The grocery store doesn't exploit my inability to grow food, it enables me to do something more productive with my time instead of growing food and leaving that part of society to the experts. Food surplus and specialization are vital concepts to any advanced society.

Such a cynical take.

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