Charles Platiau/Reuters
Paul Constant is a writer at Civic Ventures, a cofounder of the Seattle Review of Books, and a frequent cohost of the Pitchfork Economics podcast with Nick Hanauer and David Goldstein.
In this week s episode of Pitchfork Economics, Goldstein spoke with antitrust lawyer and author Michelle Meagher on the difficulties of holding wealthy corporations accountable for breaking the law.
Corporations do not follow the same rules as the rest of us, Meagher says, and are rarely incentivized to follow the law because large fines for breaking it won t necessarily hurt them.
While Facebook s fine of $5 billion for user privacy violations seems like a massive amount, Meagher says it wasn t a lot of money to the social media giant, and just something they considered the cost of doing business.
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Counterfeit parts and accessories is a big deal, and a big business. On a global scale, the United States Federal Trade Commission estimates that it’s a $12 billion business globally. So when GM’s Global Investigations team that assisted in seizing over 50,000 ACDelco counterfeit products in Saudi Arabia in February, those in favor of quality automotive parts recorded a small (yet quiet) victory.
By far and large, counterfeit parts are made (manufactured, packaged and represented) in such a way so as to mislead the public and make consumers think they’re buying an OEM part (such as that by ACDelco or GM itself), even though what they’re really buying is inferior quality in design, engineering, and quality control. In case that doesn’t sound like an illegal practice, it is. It’s against the law to misrepresent the parts as that of the OEM (due to copyright and trademark infringements), but that hasn’t stopped the fakes. Even worse is the fact that the
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) may have to part with crown jewels WhatsApp and Instagram after the United States Federal Trade Commission and almost all states sued the social media giant for extinguishing competition, Reuters
alxslr Andrew Jakobs
If it were their only business, yeah I can imagine it not being sustainable, but that’s not what it was about, it was about selling the headset at a lower price than the cost of it, and THAT’s something I don’t think.. Christian Schildwaechter
It probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to break this into a yes/no answer. It is quite possible that through clever engineering and buying in large quantities, the production of a Quest 2 costs less than what Facebooks gets from the customer purchase, even including all costs of distribution, retail margins, service etc. By that definition, they aren’t selling under cost.