Capitalism Means Policing Big Companies

[LMD]

‘We never said there’s no lead or cadmium in it.’ (paraphrased)

Huge, huge red flag. I would be conviced that they were trying to fuck me over. They’re broadcasting that they’re a liar.

A friend of mine bought designer branded clothes online once and when they arrived it was clear they were counterfeit. When they got in touch with the seller to request a return, the seller, instead of insisting they were authentic, said that they never claimed in the listing that they were authentic.

But of course, since they were sold as items of that brand, it was implied that they were authentic. If they were described as counterfeit, then it wouldn’t be false advertising (I think it’s still illegal to sell counterfeit products in many places though, but if buyer and seller both know it’s counterfeit then there’s no fraud.) Paypal let my friend return the items for a full refund.

It’s like how with this chocolate issue, it’s implied that your food doesn’t have lead it, because it’s food. If you advertise your product as food, but then it has lead in it, then it’s false advertising because you’re giving people poison instead of food.

I think these are examples of people being dishonest about what they think honesty is that you discuss in your article lying.

‘These claims are so exaggerated that no reasonable consumer would rely on them to buy a product’ (paraphrased)

wow, so then they tell you that no reasonable person would listen what they said in the past that made you think that it wasn’t poison. Is this gaslighting?

Its so fucked up because like, you’re admitting that the things you say about your brand are bullshit and that people are unreasonable for not expecting your products to be poison. Like what are you saying about your company?

If a person said something like this it seems to amount to saying “I’m an asshole and the harm I’m causing you is your fault because you believed all my lies that convinced you that I wasn’t an asshole.” Like you aren’t defending yourself, you are admitting that you are the thing that you’re being accused of and then telling the accuser it’s their fault.

‘no one has been proved to be injured directly from our chocolate’ (paraphrased)

They’re playing dumb and pretending this is how reasoning works. They know that lots of people will hear that claim and think it’s reasonable. But it’s widely understood that there is no safe amount of lead for humans. There are good explanations for why. That is evidence that people are being harmed.

This is the kind of thing you were taking about in this video of yours.

@Elliot

Imagine, instead of a company, an individual did all that then said those defenses. What would you think of that person? Would that remove some excuses you may have made for the company?

I’d think they were a dangerous, toxic, manipulative liar. I would put serious effort into avoiding any future interactions with them. I would tell people I knew about them.

I don’t seem to have any trouble thinking these same things about Lindt now.

[Elliot]

@LMD

It’s like how with this chocolate issue, it’s implied that your food doesn’t have lead it, because it’s food. If you advertise your product as food, but then it has lead in it, then it’s false advertising because you’re giving people poison instead of food.

In my understanding, tons of food has lead in it. There’s lead in soil.

I think it’s plausible that, regarding lead, Lindt hasn’t done anything worse than most or all other chocolate companies. Plausibly, no chocolate company is currently able to control lead levels enough to reliably satisfy California safety standards. (Not that they’re doing a great job of trying. There’s room for improvement. But I’m not sure this lawsuit has actual merit. Just because Lindt made terrible arguments doesn’t mean there are no good arguments they could have made instead. Which is interesting.)

I think maybe Lindt would rather use these sorts of bad arguments than explain the truth about the situation (how lead gets into chocolate and many other foods, and why it’s so hard for companies to prevent it, and how they aren’t doing anything particularly better or worse than other companies regarding lead).

They advertised stuff like their chocolates being “fine” not being “low lead” or “lead free”. I think “fine” might actually be defensible! (Or “finest” I’d accept as puffery that reasonable consumers should interpret as meaning “fine” not literally “finest”, but it’s not meaningless.) But instead of defending their potentially reasonable marketing, they said it’s obviously indefensible. I think that’s interesting.

Should You Eat Dark Chocolate? -- Facts on Lead & Cadmium I don’t think they have enough data to conclude any chocolate brands are particularly good or bad. But this is interesting (I have not fact checked it):

This trend of heavy metals in chocolate is pretty evident since 2014. The lab results garnered over the years have become the the basis of Proposition 65 notices that As You Sow filed with over 20 companies including Trader Joe’s, Hershey’s, Mondelēz, Lindt, Whole Foods, Kroger, Godiva, See’s Candies, Mars, Theo Chocolate, Equal Exchange, Ghirardelli, and Chocolove for failing to warn consumers that their chocolate products contained cadmium or lead, or both. When these lawsuits were won, other researchers studied how metals might contaminate cacao, as part of a settlement. What did they find? Here’s some things that need to be improved in the chocolate industry:

• Cacao grown in the Latin American and Caribbean regions have significantly higher Cadmium concentrations than cacao grown in other parts of the world, most notably West Africa. This is based on the soil in those parts of the world and it varies from region to region and farm to farm.
• The significant source of lead in chocolate products is chocolate liquor. Chocolate liquor is produced from milled cocoa nibs, which are the deshelled portion of a cocoa bean.
• The source of lead in cocoa beans occurs during post-harvest handling of wet cocoa beans. This does not happen by the uptake of lead from the cocoa tree.
• During the post-harvest handling of wet cocoa beans, the source of post-harvest lead in cocoa beans is a result of the following mechanisms:
  • Foreign material included loosely within bulk cocoa beans.
  • Encasement of soil particles on the wet and sticky cocoa bean shell during outdoor drying.
  • Chemical adsorption of Pb by the wet and acidic cocoa bean shell during contact with soil.
• The transfer of lead from cocoa beans to nibs occurs during the shell removal process. They found that the nib obtains approximately 70% of its lead concentration through contact with Pb-containing material (i.e., shell, soil, light, and fine material) during bean breaking.

Chocolate has other problems besides lead and cadmium, btw. For information only, I’m not endorsing this or expressing a conclusion: Child Labor and Slavery in the Chocolate Industry

On a related note, mercury in fish is a problem. So people invented better mercury testing technology which enables selling a low-mercury canned tuna product. And they tried to sell this technology to tuna companies. But none of the companies wanted it. So they made their own tuna company, Safe Catch, which I think is good, and successful enough to be sold in Costco, but I don’t think it’s especially successful (merit doesn’t rise to the top very well).

Safe Catch FAQ

Why don’t other brands test each tuna for its mercury level?

You would have to ask the other brands. We started as a technology company and invented proprietary testing technology to screen seafood for mercury. We offered to test and certify purity for other brands but every brand we approached declined. So, we used our technology to start our own brand, and we call it Safe Catch. Safe Catch is the only brand that tests every single tuna to a strict mercury limit.

The big canned tuna companies know there is some mercury in their food and apparently don’t want to measure how much nor warn consumers. (I have not fact checked this matter.)

[LMD]

I looked this issue up myself and I was going to post about it before your reply to me:

Lead and cadmium appear to naturally occur in some amount in a range of foods. I haven’t looked into this ~at all but some quick google searches showed some info. It seems there is some disagreement over whether cacao has lead naturally or not. Google AI says it doesn’t, but some other things say it does and I haven’t looked into it. I do kinda know that lead is a very common element in the soil/ground/the earth so it sounds plausible to me that a range of foods contain it.

–

@Elliot

In my understanding, tons of food has lead in it. There’s lead in soil

Yeah it seems so.

@Elliot

Just because Lindt made terrible arguments doesn’t mean there are no good arguments they could have made instead. Which is interesting.

Yeah I see that. My first thoughts after searching about lead and food were why are Lindt using really bad arguments to defend themselves. They’re the kind of arguments that make you seem guilty.

@Elliot

I think maybe Lindt would rather use these sorts of bad arguments than explain the truth about the situation (how lead gets into chocolate and many other foods, and why it’s so hard for companies to prevent it, and how they aren’t doing anything particularly better or worse than other companies regarding lead).

It seems like that to me. The arguments are so bad. I wonder why they prefer it? It seems like showing the courts that everyone else’s chocolate has lead, and the fact that lead occurs in soil, i.e something more truthful, would be more compelling. Maybe fighting with the food safety standards of the state is a much bigger fight than defending themselves against this, and they weren’t up to it?

@Elliot

But instead of defending their potentially reasonable marketing, they said it’s obviously indefensible. I think that’s interesting.

Yeah it makes me wonder why they would prefer that.

[Elliot]

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1gjfwfd/the_customers_wont_taste_the_difference/

Multiple comments have similar stories.

[Eternity]

@Elliot

The issue, to me, isn’t that they called it “puffery”. It’s that they were denying they meant what they said in their marketing. They are like “we didn’t really lie; you (customers) were just unreasonably stupid for ever thinking we would have been telling the truth”. So you can’t ever trust anything in their marketing; they’re saying they aren’t even trying to make it true.

I don’t think I disagree’d with you. Though you didn’t explicitly say you did. I agree that its bad. I think maybe our disagreement(?) is that I thought “puffery”/saying your ads are puffery and saying your ads are unbelievable and that you’d be dumb to believe it are the same thing

[Eternity]

@Elliot

I think maybe Lindt would rather use these sorts of bad arguments than explain the truth about the situation (how lead gets into chocolate and many other foods, and why it’s so hard for companies to prevent it, and how they aren’t doing anything particularly better or worse than other companies regarding lead).

So I tried finding Lindt’s original motion to dismiss where they made all their arguments (the above is just a summary by a judge explaining why their motion to dismiss was denied). Its a bit of a hurdle it seems. But from the above document I shared:

First, Lindt argues that “[b]ecause lead and cadmium are unavoidable in the food supply, plaintiffs cannot plausibly allege that thetrace amounts reported in the Products (at levels substantially below the thresholds set by regulators) are material” omissions.

So it seems they did argue something more reasonable/explaining the truth of the situation and then also:

Next, Lindt argues that the phrase “[e]xpertly crafted with the finest ingredients” and the word “excellence” are inactionable “puffery.” (ECF No. 34-1 at 28.) Only “[g]eneralized, vague, and unspecified assertions,” that is, only “exaggerated advertising, blustering, and boasting upon which no reasonable buyer would rely” constitute puffery.

I could be wrong but from my very limited legal knowledge they could have just been putting argument after argument in different sections in their motion to dismiss. So maybe they did share something about the supply chain and then later also added the puffery argument. They could have also maybe put the two together in the same argument, which would be pretty bad. idk.

[Eternity]

Similar story from Starbucks, though I don’t think this one is quite as bad as some of the one shared:

The white mocha syrup for our white mocha drinks has been calibrated to have 10% less syrup per pump or something quite recently. Customers won’t notice it apparently. Only reason I feel like it isn’t as bad as some of these other stories is that additional pumps of the same product is free. So if it tastes weaker you could freely add more.

[Elliot]

I think we disagree about two main things.

1. You think it’s OK, reasonable or even beneficial/necessary for lawyers to throw argument spaghetti at the court without regard for only making good or reasonable arguments. I think it’s irrational, unnecessary, actively making the world worse, and much less effective than its advocates believe (and it can easily be counter productive).
2. You don’t seem very concerned with what the arguments imply about reality, specifically about the company making them. Like if they say “no reasonable customer would believe our ingredients are good quality or healthy just because our packaging said ‘finest ingredients’”, they are saying they don’t try to tell the truth on their packaging and don’t respect their customers.

[Eternity]

@Elliot

You think it’s OK, reasonable or even beneficial/necessary for lawyers to throw argument spaghetti at the court without regard for only making good or reasonable arguments. I think it’s irrational, unnecessary, actively making the world worse, and much less effective than its advocates believe (and it can easily be counter productive).

I see how I can come across as that. Mmm. I think its ok in this sense: lawyers think such things are necessary even if they have problems with such arguments in their day to day life. They believe their job is to get their clients off no matter what (I don’t agree with that to be clear). So when I see these lawyers making these arguments I don’t have as bad of a judgment of them. I am aware of examples of lawyers who don’t do such things and only make good/reasonable arguments (or at least try to).

I don’t think its beneficial/necessary. I just think its normal. Normal not even necessarily meaning ok. Maybe this is a mistake I’m making? Its kind of like corporal punishment in my head. Depending on the context, some parents I judge worse for hitting their kids vs other parents. I judge my parents, and the Bangladeshi community I grew up in, less harshly for hitting me, and their kids, then I do for the average westerner. In both cases I don’t think its fine for parents to hit their kids, I just judge it a bit differently. Is that a mistake?

@Elliot

You don’t seem very concerned with what the arguments imply about reality, specifically about the company making them. Like if they say “no reasonable customer would believe our ingredients are good quality or healthy just because our packaging said ‘finest ingredients’”, they are saying they don’t try to tell the truth on their packaging and don’t respect their customers.

Hmmm. I think I didn’t take it seriously because I heard the argument in a legal setting. I thought of it as something Lindt was doing to avoid legal trouble. I think because of hearing a lot of bad stuff about courts, I’ve become a bit biased in thinking that doing anything to avoid issues in court is fine. Now that I think about it a bit more though their are probably companies/individuals who fight cases without using bad arguments/doing shady things.

[Elliot]

@Eternity

Hmmm. I think I didn’t take it seriously because I heard the argument in a legal setting. I thought of it as something Lindt was doing to avoid legal trouble. I think because of hearing a lot of bad stuff about courts, I’ve become a bit biased in thinking that doing anything to avoid issues in court is fine.

This is why I suggested thinking about it as if one person did all the things, instead of a company with multiple different people.

What if the one guy who writes the marketing, and creates the chocolate, also said like “lol y’all believed that marketing? haha y’all are as dumb as I thought”. But he said it in court. Why is saying it in court better? Court is where you’re supposed to tell the truth and people are often under oath or have to sign any documents they submit to the court and attest the stuff is true and good faith and things of that nature. So I think saying it in court is worse than saying it at e.g. a party – it makes it more serious, more thought out and meant as stated not a careless offhand remark.

I think having the lawyers say it, rather than the CEO, workers or marketers, makes it seem more separate from the rest of the company. But it shouldn’t. Lawyers are especially official representatives of the company: they are highly paid, highly skilled, and have way more authority than most workers.

Basically a company should be held to what it says in court the same or more than what it says elsewhere. Court statements are extra serious, not less meaningful.

@Eternity

They believe their job is to get their clients off no matter what

From their point of view, their job is to help the clients’ interests. That includes getting off in court but also includes other interests like not harming the company’s reputation.

[Eternity]

@Elliot

I think having the lawyers say it, rather than the CEO, workers or marketers, makes it seem more separate from the rest of the company. But it shouldn’t. Lawyers are especially official representatives of the company: they are highly paid, highly skilled, and have way more authority than most workers.

I got recommended this YouTube short from a layer while at work after this conversation:

Allstate's Poker Tell

Companies hires lawyers that are like them.

The more I think about it the more it does make sense. In general, lawyers should/would act how their clients want them too or you would hire a lawyer that is going to act like how you want them too.

I think my particular bias on this topic has to do with government action against private entities. Whether be companies or individuals. You say:

@Elliot

Court is where you’re supposed to tell the truth and people are often under oath or have to sign any documents they submit to the court and attest the stuff is true and good faith and things of that nature. So I think saying it in court is worse than saying it at e.g. a party – it makes it more serious, more thought out and meant as stated not a careless offhand remark.

From all the legal stuff I think this is probably true for issues related with private companies. I forgot about issues in that area of law, but I do remember, and agreeing, that area of law being fairly good, in my judgement at least, at truth seeking. Its just recently (no rough time frame) I’ve been consuming a lot of legal content related to bad stuff the government does which has made me kind of not trust the legal system. Thinking back on it, I initially read that Lindt lawsuit as “Lindt vs Government” and not “Lindt vs private parties”.

Where I would disagree with your comment from above is with issues related to government action. Now, to be clear, I’ve only really read one side of the arguments on this kind of stuff and all, so there could 100% be stuff I’m aware of. However, here’s a simple example of my point: plea bargain. From what I know people will admit to crimes they may have not committed to get a good plea. A guaranteed one year in prison versus a potential 5-10 years in prison while going through an awful trial process. People take the one year in prison. I don’t think I trust any statement gained through this method. Another example related to pleas: governments will give underlings(? is that the best word here) of an organization reduced (sometimes insanely reduced) sentences to get testimony to throw leadership in jail. Those statements I don’t trust. Its stuff like that that has colored my vision of the court.

@Elliot

From their point of view, their job is to help the clients’ interests. That includes getting off in court but also includes other interests like not harming the company’s reputation.

I agree.