i think it should be expanded to cover more categories than food and clothes when reuse and recycling infra grows to take the demand. its not just good for the environment it also prevents producers from restricting supply to keep their profits high.
the ultimate goal is make it illegal to destroy or intentionally damage anything usable before it reaches consumers. that would create a new ecosystem of discount stores and giveaway centers, and save everyone a ton of money.
If those costs are paid for by taxpayers then the consumers are in effect involuntarily buying products they would not have otherwise bought, just with more steps. We already see this with agricultural subsidies.
If those costs are charged back to the producer then it becomes economically optimal to under-produce, which will cause prices to rise and risk shortages but eliminate waste. One can make the argument that higher prices for basic goods to reduce waste is a social good but it also impoverishes consumers.
All of these scenarios have happened empirically countless times. That almost every producer over-produces to some extent at no profit to themselves when allowed has strong "Chesterton's Fence" characteristics.
What you've said is: Looking only at the internalized costs, pointless-wasting a percentage of clothes costs X but reduces clothes cost in the store by Y, with Y being larger than X.
Okay. Irrelevant - that math doesn't include externalized costs. It may well be that this is a stupid idea, but "market decided destroying some clothes was more efficient" doesn't prove anything unless you can show that the size of the externalized costs to this process are 0 or close enough to 0 to have no meaningful relevance.
Governments tend to be annoyed at having to regulate and will often ‘somewhat’ regulate the worst excesses and then do the equivalent of a staring contest with those regulated. If business push right up to the wire and fight every tiny loophole then they risk being hit with a second wave of much more severe regulations; if they generally comply and don’t embarrass regulators and politicians, then there isn’t need to spend more capital on better regulation. At some level it’s very costly to micromanage business regulation gestures at California but so there’s definitely some decisions to be made about How Far To Go Each Time that aren’t simply due to a lack of political willpower.
Or not. Who knows. The point is, this 'economically it is more efficient' is not a proven case because the externalities need to be taken into account, and so far the person I've been responding to seems to not understand this part, or is ignoring it.
The tradeoff may be worth it in some contexts, but if you don't understand that there are tradeoffs, you're going end up proposing silly policies like the original commenter's idea that nobody should ever be allowed to destroy any object a consumer could use.
If the benefit they get from waste is like 10% of the value they're destroying, then in a broad sense it is pointless.
And nobody is arguing against oversupply. Oversupply itself is fine.
Clothing is of course a bit easier to deal with (it'll still grow mildew if you don't protect it from moisture!), but the source link explicitly anticipates there will be some circumstances where it's impossible to give away clothing and authorizes destruction in that case.
This isn't some random guy. Their entire job is dealing with the logistics of big piles of clothes, and they have months in advance to plan.
All the examples I know of (Austria, Switzerland) are social clubs/associations (whatever that is called) and DO NOT depend on tax payer money.