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Comment by boesboes | Hacker News Reader

Funny, because it is illegal to pay donors here. I used to be a donor, but the energy and effort it takes were too much for me at the time. And plasma donors have to 'free up' a lot more time.

Not to mention how i get a cookie and the semi-goverment organisation charges >600€ for a baggie to hospitals. Someone needs to pay for that CEO's third house and car collection!

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Funny data story time.

I used to operate a database for a large North American alcohol retailer. We had a problem with our data that said that 30% of the ring from a particular store saw the name "A GIFT FOR YOU" on the CC stripe. After months of bitter accusations of my database being incorrect, we flew someone out to investigate.

We found that a block away from the store was a plasma "donation" facility. In order to skirt various laws, when you "donate", you are given a prepaid credit card. The name on the card is "A GIFT FOR YOU". Donators then took that card directly to the alcohol store.

All of the data was correct; 30% of the ring from one store was paid by credit cards from the plasma "donation" facility with "A GIFT FOR YOU" on the card. A large reputational battle then commenced as the retailer thought of themselves as a high-end "wine and craft beer" store, when ultimately it turns out Budweiser pays the bills.

*edited for clarity

There's an industry piece that points out that a remarkable percentage of beer sales in the US are single cans stored cold, sold at convenience stores. Most residents of the US drive to convenience stores. Given that they are buying 1-2 cans at a time it doesn't take much in the way of inference to figure out that they are buying them to be consumed while driving.

When I was in graduate school, my wife and I bought an affordable house in a neighborhood with a big factory next door. It was otherwise a lovely place, and so my morning jog often took me up and down the rural roads around the factory. On every road within a kilometer of the factory, the roadsides were littered with beer cans. On one particularly early morning, I was running when the late shift got out, and I watched somebody finish work (around 6am), get in their truck, pop open a beer, start driving, and then throw the can out the window as they drove past me. Given the quantity of cans on the roadside, this probably went on for years.

Refrigerated beer is not allowed in retail shops in Sweden! Tangential but interesting.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systembolaget

I have used the same system at home to reduce unplanned beers. Alcohol-free beers are always in the fridge waiting, and the ones with alcohol in are somewhere much warmer. On the two to three nights a week I want a refreshing malted beverage, this almost always leads to me going for the alcohol-free version.

That said, following your Wikipedia link, it seems that a different mechanic is at play:

> "No product may be favoured over another, which in practice means that the beers are not refrigerated, since otherwise all beer would have to be refrigerated which is too expensive."

Their mission statement:

https://www.omsystembolaget.se/english/systembolaget-explain...

Same thing with nips (1oz liquor bottles) which you see everywhere on roadsides in some parts of the US - The product basically exists to make open containers immediately disposable

I thought it existed so you could cheaply spike drinks at baseball games

The majority of litter on the sidewalks of the through streets near me is those 1oz shooters. Followed by aluminum cans (mostly beer), fast food trash (plastic cups for sauces, disposable drink cups), and then household trash that looks like it flew out of a trash can on windy days (empty boxes, plastic wrappers, a bottle of laundry detergent, etc).

Source: new year's resolution to pick up at least 1 piece of trash per dog walk.

IDK

I live in Baltimore and I see a lot of people drinking singles out of a paper bag on the corner or their stoop. I've seen it on the bus, too.

Might be more of a hood corner store thing than a rural guy in a pickup buying a beer for the drive home type thing.

Yeah, this kind of thing lead to some recriminations as a kid. Air conditioning was rare, many shops were small and had no seating, so the right thing to do was take your cold soda outside. But it the weather was so hot that it could be warm before you finished a bottle.

A few nice adults told us that it would stay cold a lot longer in a paper bag, and that a plastic bag wouldn't help. Both statements proved true…but most other adults would assume it was alcohol. They'd be scowling at us, telling us off. Sometimes we'd show the bottle, but few even need to smell it to be sure it wasn't alcohol.

Even then, most of them never started acting like they were the ones who had been in the wrong. All because some people were known to use a paper bag around beer bottles.

I'd actually be willing to take that bet against the inference. Here's my logic:

The only places that sell individual beers are convenience stores

Some of them are driven too, sure, but lots are also in city areas

Even so, people who only have a few bucks drive to the store where they can buy the beer, and drive home and drink it

If these were common cases, cops would lay in wait and nab them for open container.

>If these were common cases, cops would lay in wait and nab them for open container.

I mean, they do. One of the big issues is coverage of enforcement. Here in Texas you see disparities where arrests in big cities converge on public intoxication, where in smaller cities you run into a higher ratio of open container because of cops having time to sit and watch stores.

did you know you can buy a single bottle taken out from a multipack at any us grocery store?

Sauce?

I'm not following the logic. Why do you assume they aren't drunk at home?

Pretty much everyone in the US owns a working fridge. If you just want to get drunk at home, you just buy a case of beer and leave it in there. It's actually much cheaper to buy beer by the case in most places

Although I also assume people are drinking these beers in the car, it does seem like a bit of a leap… I mean, an alternative is that they just figure they’d rather have the beer ready right when they get home (instead of sticking it in the fridge for a bit).

Not if you're the type of poor person who buys lottery tickets, cans of beer, and cigarettes by the single.

There are also other good reasons to buy a single can from the fridge. For example, I do it frequently when staying at a hotel.

The same reasons convenience stores sell single cigarettes, and people smoke them in their cars. Compelling cravings don't care about your externalities and don't want to wait. Lots of people don't want the people they live with to know how much they actually consume. Some people live with others who don't allow beer in the fridge for various reasons. Some have a housemate who can't be trusted around a surplus. Lots of people like to think of themselves as the kind of person who doesn't need to have a whole pack around, they just want this one and maybe another one. Depending on who you're hanging out with, sometimes it's nice to go to a BYO party and not contribute a surplus if that would get abused. And as always, who said they waited to get started until they were driving home anyway?

But that requires planning ahead. The whole point of a convenience store is that it's a convenient place to get small quantities when you didn't plan ahead, and people are willing to pay a premium for that.

Some people don’t want to get drunk or buy a whole case.

warm beer is better

Better beer is served warm I think, but much of our beer is not that type.

Some good beer is better served warmer. Say, an imperial stout. But not all eg Pilseners are bad.

There's also the rare mulled beer which is drunk hot.

For some people, a beer is a once-in-a-while add-on to their purchase, a bit like a chocolate bar. I rarely drink at home but I can be tempted by a balcony beer when the weather is right.

The obvious solution is better public transit!

(Joking.. but not really.)

Speaking of public transit: bus stops and train stations are prime locations to drink your singlet can of beer and drop it on the ground, in a planter, or just leave it on a seat for someone else to move it later.

While it is not easy to drink an open container on a bus or train, drunks will consistently stop in a nearby convenience store, have a cold one before boarding, and leave it there for others to clean up. I suspect that a high percentage of convenience-store sales for singlet cans and bottles may be attributed to pedestrians and transit passengers.

Cans are actually good for this. (Much better than bottles.)

Aluminium is so comparatively high value, that it's usually in someone's interest to collect it.

Used glass is just bulky and cheap per gram.

Most drunks would rather not invite trouble by carrying around glass bottles. You don't want them near pools or jacuzzis, and you don't want to drop one on a bus or train and cause undue attention. Dropping or abandoning a metal can, by comparison, is no trouble.

And you're definitely right about recovery value. I believe, in Arizona, that glass has no redemption value at all, and so cans are the only logical choice.

There used to be a guy around here, a real character, called himself the Can Man, and he weighed about 350 lbs, and just rode the bus all the day, accompanied by an enormous bag full of cans that he would collect from every site possible. And he had songs he would sing and a little patter about himself, and whereas a can-collecting dude would normally be sort of smelly and repulsive, he managed to add to the "local color" and be somewhat endearing as he rode the bus around doing his can-collecting thing. I miss that guy!

This isn’t a correct assumption. I buy one or two singles to drink at home when I don’t feel like committing to a whole six pack.

And I buy them cold because I want them right when I get home. Not after an hour of cooling down in the fridge.

Have you actually looked up what how much a blood bank CEO makes? Is it a lot?

Edit: I just did a bit of research and didn't come up with a lot. I found this example [1] where the CEO's total compensation is $414k. That doesn't seem all that high...

[1]:https://givefreely.com/charity-directory/nonprofit/ein-57066...

Well, not in the us. here that is considered an unenthical amount for a semi-public servant.

In 2011 they made 260k€, which was at then time about 50% more then our prime minister made. Which is used as a norm to limit how much you are allowed to make when working for public services.

Is it enough to have three houses and a car collection as you previously stated?

Pretty close? Like 80k for your regular living expenses leaves you 180k/y in savings. That's a nice holiday house in France every few years.

I mean to really get to a mansion and multiple holiday houses and a bunch of fancy cars you need to work the job for like 15 years, but still. In NL (where I think GP is from) earning that kind of money qualifies you as "seriously rich". Even more so if the salary got inflation-adjusted since 2011.

Does your country not have taxes? Progressive taxation eats a lot of that quickly and all of the tax benefits of home ownership aren’t available for secondary homes. Additionally, vacation homes in desirable vacation places cost even more than normal homes.

Someone making 3x a normal salary is not excessive by any means.

I need to shout into the HN void that, yes, $414k is a very high compensation.

The CEO of a blood bank likely has the skills and connections to be a CEO of many other for-profit companies, where they would make much more than $414k. Intermediate FAANG employees are paid more. I’m perfectly happy that this person gets $414k for their role in _saving lives_.

Mid level faang employees get paid over 10 times more than me? I need to get a new job...

Fwiw, here are a couple other rough estimates of pay in the US. These are entirely my opinion, but I am in engineering so I think these are pretty well calibrated. I only share these because they might be useful to get a sense of how your job measures up:

Entry level engineering (any type): 80k minimum

Entry level software engineering: 120k minimum

Multiply by 1.5x for high cost of living area (Bay Area, New York, Boston, LA)

Multiply by 2x for FAANG in HCOL area

Levels.fyi gives good estimates of software eng pay bands above entry level. Non-software almost always makes less :/

I’m not convinced that any CEO is worth what we generally expect they be paid.

Emotionally I agree — what could these people be doing to uniquely add millions of dollars of value? However, the fact that they aren’t replaced with cheaper options is (imo) pretty good evidence that they are uniquely worth that pay. If there was a cheaper option, the board of directors would replace the CEO, and enrich themselves and other shareholders with the saved money.

Either way, that’s kindof disconnected for the CEO of this bloodbank. Their opportunity cost is quite high. They choose to work for comparatively low pay, but have a positive impact on the world.

i think i understand where you're coming from, but i think you're begging the question a little bit (ie, ceo pay is high because it is high).

i do think it's more likely that the executive class has a vested interest in keeping their own pay high (not just CEOs, but board members as you've mentioned), and they've got a lot more class solidarity than the rest of us, though they'd never put it that way - it's just The Way Of Things, you know? divide and conquer.

i should maybe mention that i'm a public employee and my "opportunity cost" is also relatively high, but... hell is hot, and i want to be able to sleep at night.

The board and shareholders are not made of CEOs. They are compensating the CEO highly because it’s giving them stock returns.

If that correlation doesn’t exist, then investors should be able to easily drive CEO comp way down.

The boards of most public companies are made up mostly of C-level executives of other public companies. Retail shareholders hardly ever get involved to a sufficient degree to fire boards.

Why would retail shareholders need to get involved?

That's what we have eg corporate raiders for.

The strongest predictor of you wage is physical distance to the CEO outside business hours. The second is physical distance to the CFO.

Since CEO is with them all the time, it follows they get the most.

I don’t think this is a rebuttal of my point above, but I do think it’s a very interesting claim! Could you link a study/article about this?

Agreed.

There is a good theory on why CEO's are paid more than they're worth called tournament theory.

A person in an upper layer of a hierarchical organization is paid for the value they provide PLUS an amount that incentivized anybody below them to reach that layer. If everybody is paid just for the value they provide, they wouldn't have a reason to try and reach higher layers and they would minimize work. After all, we cannot assume the value a person provides goes up in higher layers.

This additional pay bubbles up in larger organizations to exorbitant levels for CEO's.

Are you suggesting that shareholders are selfless donors to CEOs?

That's nothing. In NY, the "non-profit", "New York Blood Center" has a monopoly on blood harvesting, even the Red Cross has no blood drives here as a result.

Their CEO makes $3 million, most of their executives above $400k.

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131... (look under Compensation)

Fuck this shit.

They also award them bonuses.

They are so bloated that they invest in PE funds with their spare cash.

I interviewed at a place that made the software to track blood as it moved around. It's a regulated thing to make sure that the blood stays cold and that they can track who donated. Anyways, the point is that the guy who interviewed me casually mentioned that the PE firm bought up companies until they controlled 90% of the market. I'm sure they're making bank off blood as well.

> That doesn't seem all that high...

Maybe not that high by SC/HN standards.

Yeah, same. Illegal to pay donors here too. I’ve donated multiple gallons, kinda felt it was my duty as a driver on the road… but at some point I came in to donate and got told they were extra short staffed and I’d have to wait at least an hour. The clinics already have terrible hours that seem to mostly cater to retirees, never open in the evenings and most clinics are closed on the weekends too, the one nearest me that I was going to stopped opening on the weekend entirely, meaning I had to travel quite a ways. I’m basically poor and the cost in terms of time, travel, energy and food is not insignificant. Meanwhile the high level staff making the cuts to the clinics have secretaries to reply to the emails they solicit from donors. Even though I sent them a long, insightful email, with followups, about my detailing why they are struggling as a young millennial (supposedly an audience they are trying to attract), and after all of it I get phone calls from the vampires minimum twice a week every week, sometimes every day.

Which country are you talking about? I believe it's legal to pay donors on the USA.

Presumably a European county given you quoted euros?

Looks like the EU encourages member states to encourage unpaid donations:

> Furthermore, Member States should take measures to promote Community self-sufficiency in human blood or blood components and to encourage voluntary unpaid donations of blood and blood components.

From https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2002/98/oj/eng

Yeah, I am in the Netherlands.

They say paying donors puts them & patients at risk, because it would stimulate donors' to lie about their health when donating and we can't be asked to test blood for everything. And the say it is unethical to pay for human tissues.

Except when they are selling it ;)

I can assure you that the Netherlands tests all blood donations. It’s been standard for decades now.

People have diseases they don’t know about and if people are ashamed by a disease, they’ll lie even when donating.

I just shuddered thinking that donations wouldn’t be tested.

to be fair they said "test for everything"

If it’s things like CJD or other prion diseases then it’s true they don’t test, but AIDS, hep C, and other common blood borne diseases? They’ve been screening every donation since the 80’s.

I have the same story in the same country with presumably the same organization (Sanquin). I used to give blood, but not anymore because I don't find what they're doing ethical.

Does it just not feel ethical or is one of their claims false?

Both of the key claims do seem to have evidence to support them:

1) Paying for blood shifts the socioeconomic distribution of the donor pool.

2) The socioeconomic shift results in more contaminated blood due to greater incidence of drug use and/or related blood-borne diseases that cannot all be tested for with high accuracy.

The second claim would applies just as much to the US.

It is legal in the US. In fact you can potentially make a decent bit of money if you're paid $70 per donation and can donate 100 times per year [0]. Don't know if it would be worth the time to travel to the centre and wait in line, for many HN users.

[0] https://www.goodrx.com/health-topic/finance/how-much-donatin...

You could sell your plasma twice a week in the town I went to college. We also found that it took significantly less alcohol to get drunk if you had nearly a liter less plasma running through your veins, so it would also save us money in the evening!

You can donate every 3~4 days in the US? In France I believe it is only once every 2 months for men and every 3 months for women!

edit: confused plasma donation with blood donation; it is still only every 2 weeks for plasma donations over here

My understanding, at least where I live, Florida, is that plasma can be sold, but whole blood must be donated. I still get a $25-$35 gift card every time I donate a pint of whole blood (as close as possible to every 8 weeks).

Possibly Canadian, where it isn't legal to buy human blood.

On the other side, it is legal to pay donors where I am, but then it makes it feel like a waste to donate because you could be getting paid for it

No more of a waste than, say, any monetary donation.

Well, a bit more of a waste, because monetary donations are generally more efficient.

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