I genuinely think it's necessary to bankrupt the Trump family. If the family (and especially Trump himself) exits office with all the wealth he's stolen then it sets a clear example to Bezos, Musk, Gates or any other wealthy individual to buy the presidency so they can loot the coffers to multiply their wealth.
America as an organization needs to stand up and get retributive with robbing government coffers or it'll just breed even more kleptocracy.
It appears that right now the administration is fighting desperately to achieve an international state like the one had under the prior nuclear deal with Iran... the one Trump tore up because it had Obama's name on it.
It's all petty BS and I really do hope the electorate gets it together.
I'm not certain how recently you were in the grocery store but it's getting pretty serious in developed countries as well - not famine levels, for sure, but meat prices in Canada are going crazy right now and we're just feeling the first wave of the supply shocks - this will get a lot worse before it gets better.
Well one was just commenting that they don't observe meat prices - I don't mind that at all though I have seen non-meat groceries go up as well (just less so than the meat).
America is also having a whey protein shortage, but that's mostly because it's very popular right now and we're eating the available supply of whey powder.
If your pitch to the general American electorate to solve the affordability crisis is to become vegetarian good luck getting elected.
I actually cook extensively with non-animal proteins but I enjoy the choice to do otherwise and, if it's going to be curtailed, I'd prefer it happen for a reason more meaningful that some idiotic international blunder.
I've seen tofu go down in price in recent years. It's incredible. I think my local store is doing a block of extra firm for under $1.50? It used to be $2
I do not eat meat so I couldn’t say. I haven’t yet seen large increases in Germany for what I buy but I wouldn’t be surprised if the overall prices have been trending up. Not yet to the Covid era, where I could see the rice increase in price every time I would do groceries — and it still hasn’t come down :(
I have personally seen considerable increases in grocery ingredient expenses for everything I buy which isn't meat. Yes, buying beef or chicken breast is more expensive now as well, but not eating meat would not have a significant impact in my family's much greater annual grocery expenses vs. the same number of people and for the same calendar period of time in 2022 or 2023.
I mentioned meat because the person I responded to mentioned it. I really don’t know the price of meat given I do not consume any of it, I wasn’t trying to say going vegetarian would save you from inflation
I have found it most dramatic in meat prices but the gluten-free baking flours my partner needs to use have also noticeably increased and I think those (and legumes, especially lentils) are likely to be some of the hardest hit in the long run. Chickpeas, lentils and green peas are sort of the unsung heroes of gluten free baking.
It really does seem like this war of choice was[1] an absolutely boneheaded idea. It's the kind of thing (and specifically, the lack of consequences or measures to prevent it from being repeated in Cuba or Greenland) that highlights how broken American politics are right now.
1. Not even in retrospect - intelligence agencies knew this was a significant risk and I'd bet your average person on the streets would have come to the realization that it was a bad idea if they thought about it for like a week.
Closure of the Strait of Hormuz is one of the most modeled events in military circles. There are probably thousands of military exercises on it, intelligence estimates, strategic papers and so on. Up until this war, it was unknown if Iran could keep the Strait closed against direct US military pressure. Well, now we know.
There doesn't appear to be a single serious person in the US military, intelligence community or policy support organizations who thought this was a good idea. It was purely political. The administration seems to have listened solely to and relied entirely upon Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad. Israel has been trying to get this war with every president since Reagan [1] and they've all said "hell no". Until this one.
What's more interesting is that it's been clear what a disaster this almost immediately so we've had ~2 months where it was clear that the US has militarily lost and a negotiated settlement was the only outcome. This would mean the end of economic sanctions and, for anti-Iran hawks in the US and Israel, a spectacularly worse deal than the JCPOA that got torn up. Yet the administration seems more willing to let the world ban than split with Israel.
War is never a good idea, but Iran didn't care and they have been waging war for 40 years. Do you just let them perpetually build strength internally while funding terrorism externally? They have been spreading extremism and instability in the region for decades. They surrounded Israel with militants and attacked them.
We knew they could disrupt shipping through the strait, that is a large part of the purpose behind "drill baby drill", stopping Venezuela from invading Guyana where we have oil infrastructure, and increasing oil investment into Venezuela, along with reopening some oil drilling off California.
We also knew we likely couldn't justify the risks and costs of sending in a large invasion force for multiple reasons. If a decent deal couldn't be made, then at least you remove an oil supplier from China and you mow the grass to limit the threat Iran poses in the near future. Even if the strait remains in conflict for years, in the long-term that is a good thing, because it forces an acceleration of bypassing it as an issue which means Iran loses a big button to push in the future.
Meanwhile, with oil prices higher, that is historically good for oil investment which is excellent for Venezuela so more of the fuels that countries rely on come from our hemisphere. We're not new at this game.
- I don't care about removing oil suppliers from China, I don't know anyone who does. I get most of my stuff from them, seems like a bad idea
- I don't care about Venezuela or lies about them being (drug lords|conquering invaders|bad hombres), they are sovereign, the U.S has no right, justification or excuse to be kidnapping their leaders or fucking with their politics.
- The United States has been spreading extremism and instability globally for 40+ years.
- Oil production in the U.S. is not meaningfully higher than it was under Biden, so "drill baby drill" was just another lie that's been lapped up and is now being spit back out
- A decent deal HAD BEEN MADE under Obama, it was pretty good most would say, then Trump tore it up because of his ego and tiny dick/tiny hands syndrome.
- "mowing the grass" sounds like terrorism first and foremost and crimes against humanity second.
- Just because the U.S. and Israel Administrations want to self select into being world police does not make it just or right.
> - I don't care about removing oil suppliers from China, I don't know anyone who does. I get most of my stuff from them, seems like a bad idea
Is that because you don't know what caused World War 2 and you don't have any family who served in World War 2?
> - I don't care about Venezuela or lies about them being (drug lords|conquering invaders|bad hombres), they are sovereign, the U.S has no right, justification or excuse to be kidnapping their leaders or fucking with their politics.
Maduro was an internationally wanted criminal. He was also going to invade his neighbor, Guyana after the UN rejected his claim against it. You don't cross half your hemisphere to arrest someone on legal grounds if you don't have a case. International law is not useful as a concept to keep the world from descending into chaos unless some kind of enforcement occurs. The reasons he was officially arrested for are not the only reasons he was arrested.
> - The United States has been spreading extremism and instability globally for 40+ years.
That is not a strong argument. The US was isolationist until its ships were getting attacked at sea. Then it was isolationist until the world kept descending into wars we had to join to stop. Then we established more world structure that has proven to reduce the occurrence of war. We've been trying to establish the same kind of stability Europe has, in the Middle East.
> - Oil production in the U.S. is not meaningfully higher than it was under Biden, so "drill baby drill" was just another lie that's been lapped up and is now being spit back out
Crude oil - https://www.arescotx.com/2015-2025-us-field-production-crude... shows an increase in 4mil barrels per day. Even in the first term, the Trump administration was pursuing an energy dominance agenda, but it's not all attributable to their policies.
> - A decent deal HAD BEEN MADE under Obama, it was pretty good most would say, then Trump tore it up because of his ego and tiny dick/tiny hands syndrome.
The US has hundreds of millions of people. Trump is not the only person we have. Iran has been seen as a critical threat to the US, to the region and to the world for many decades. The JCPOA did not stop the threat nor sufficiently monitor it. Iran continued building nuclear sites underground and moved their centrifuges underground, meeting with North Korean nuclear missile scientists, etc. The IAEA also requested access to various sites and were denied or delayed by Iran. The IAEA was only reporting Iran's compliance to its commitments under the JCPOA, which was a bad deal and as such, complying with the JCPOA was insufficient.
Iran had a history of breaking international law which continued after the JCPOA. They have never truly established an essential level of trust that would be required to give them the benefit of the doubt that the JCPOA was being complied with, which the inspection process in place could not guarantee. They were also out of compliance with the JCPOA in developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.
> - "mowing the grass" sounds like terrorism first and foremost and crimes against humanity second.
It's just an analogy. The Iranian revolutionaries have dug themselves in to such an extent that going in to change their regime would almost certainly require so much killing that it would practically be genocide. Reducing their military assets and installations is the alternative. This is all a response to terrorism to start with.
> - Just because the U.S. and Israel Administrations want to self select into being world police does not make it just or right.
No, we don't want to. It's simply existential that we do. We would much rather not. I don't care about most of these places halfway around the world. It would be nice if they'd simply live in peace and have their own lives. They do not. History has proven that if we let chaos abroad gain too much momentum, it will eventually lead to some large scale war that we'll get dragged into. Why do we get dragged into them? Why can't we just stay out of the wars? Well, if one country, like Germany, Japan, China or Russia simply continues to expand outward and gain huge power imbalances, they become a threat to freedom. The US had kinds of freedom that even most citizens do not fully appreciate or deeply understand.
Iran, Russia and China deliberately label the US as their enemy. Even Saudi Arabia has effectively referred to Iran as the Nazi Germany of the Middle East. After the communists helped the Iranian Islamic revolutionaries gain power, they killed thousands of communists. Even recently they slaughtered many thousands of their own people. They do not care about human life.
It's very strange to me that you seem to like defending dictators who torture and kill their own people. I guess that's what the globalized internet is these days.
> Is that because you don't know what caused World War 2 and you don't have any family who served in World War 2?
Pretty familiar, also familiar with Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. I can link pictures and articles detailing American Service Members and the women and children they shot, blew up, raped, burned alive, and otherwise mutilated in each of those engagements.
My familiarity with WW2, and it's causes make my deeply uneasy about the idea of going to war with a peer power like China; China who was an ally in WW3, maybe you don't know this and didn't have any family who served in World War 2?
Anyways no idea why you'd bring this up or what point you were trying to make? War is good or something? War can be justified if the orange man on the TV says the (enemy) country is "bigly bad"?
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The amount of delusion here is actually baffling, given https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law I'm not going to respond to all of this. I do think it's incredibly entertaining to watch people/bots defend the convicted felons leading the U.S. by saying it's absolutely imperative we stop crime everywhere else!
Most statements you made are fabricated or right wing talking points not based in any type of reality (JCPOA bad not complying [all evidence is against this]; "Iran is an existential threat" - Not to me or anyone I know of have ever met, not a single day of my life has gone by that I felt directly under threat by anyone in Iran).
It's all the same with you people, try and propagandize the rest of us with threats and doom about the death and destruction that will certainly come from these places half way around the world, while completely ignoring the death and destruction that the U.S. exports globally every single day. It's sickening.
There's a difference between soldiers stepping out of line in war versus behaving according to policy. War is never good. It's not really a strong argument to say hey, I've got all these disturbing photos that show the US is bad. Well, you could also show disturbing photos that make any country look bad. The point is the context and how it got to be that way.
China is sometimes referred to as a peer power, but in many ways they remain extremely far behind. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. Weak countries go to extremes. Strong countries who think they are stronger than they are, could potentially go to similar extremes to make up for that perception.
Not all crimes are equivalent, and not all crimes are actual crimes even if people call them crimes.
It's easier to dismiss people than to engage, but then you stop challenging yourself and navigating the differences to understand the world better. Sometimes I'm wrong, but I try to be correct and not purely for emotional satisfaction.
1. The British were stealing Iranian oil (ie the Anglo-Persian Company, which is now BPl;
2. Iran democratically elected Mossadegh who said Iranian resources would be for Iranians;
3. The British freak out. MI6 twice goes to the newly elected Eisenhower administration to get them to intervene. They are rebuffed the first time so the British come back with a fabricated story about how this is communism somehow and the Eisenhower administration takes the bait;
4. Eisenhowever overthrows the democratically elected government of Iran to install the Shah as an autocrat (he was previously a figurehead pretty much);
5. The Shah takes the oil and basically gives it to the Americans so the British didn't even get what they wanted;
6. The Shah was a brutal dictator that included Savak, a secret police that had a history of violence, represseion and disappearing people;
7. By the late 1970s it was becoming clear that the Shah's regime would fall. The Americans were worried that the Communists would win and Iran would fall into the Soviet sphere of influence so got their puuppet in the region, Saddam Hussein, to expel Khomenei from Iraq in the hopes that the Isalamic fundamentalists would win;
8. The fundamentalists did win. Iran was punished for expelling the American puppet with crippling economic sanctions. Additionally, Saddam Hussein was armed and prompted to go fight a war with Iran. The Iran-Iraq war lasted years, killed over a million people (iranians and Iraqis) and basically had no other change in borders or regimes in the region;
9. After 9/11. Iran gave material aid to the US including rounding up hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters;
10. Despite 15 of the 19 hijackers being Saudi, Osama bin Laden being Saudi and al-Qaeda getting material support from Saudi princes and Saudi madrasses (religious schools), Iran got lumped in with Iraq and North Korea as the "Axis of Evil". The reason for this were the hawks in the US administration who believed that George HW Bush messed up not overthrowing Saddam Hussein in 1991. They had prior to 9/11 urged the Clinton administration and Congress to invade Iran;
11. Iraq was invaded because the neocon hawks, particularly Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, won the policy debate. It is highly believed they thought they would be overthrowing Iran too;
12. North Korea managed to stave off attacks by developing a nuclear weapon. That was the true lesson of the Global War on Terror: only a nuclear weapon will guarantee your survival;
13. Despite that the second Ayatollah, Khamenei, issued a fatwa against developing a nuclear weapon, something which still stands to this day, in 2003;
14. Obama negotitated (with European allies) the JCPOA, a program to inspect Iranian nuclear sites, in exchange for sanctions relief. There is no proof the Iranians ever violated the agreement. They even kept abiding by it for up to a year after Trump tore it up to appease Israel;
15. Israel committed too many hostile acts to enumerate, including the bombing of an embassy in Damascus, targeted assassinations within Iran, the murder of Iranians overseas, etc, pretty much all of which Iran just took on the chin;
16. The US and Israel started an unprovoked war last year, which included killing the Iranian negotiators. This war went so badly that hostilities ended after 12 days. It was widely suspected at the time that supplies of anti-missile munitions were getting critically low. Iran basically acted in good faith here that the Americans would negotiate in good faith; and
17. The Iranians were wrong. America did not act in good faith and started another unprovoked war at Israel's urging that included, for some reason, blowing up a middle school with almost 200 10-12 year old girls in it and killing an 87 year old man who had refused to develop a nuclear weapon (ie Khamenei) who also refused to go into a bunker because his people didn't have the same protections. That strike also killed a whole bunch of his family and the new Ayatollah's family.
18. This brings us to today. From Iran's position, the US cannot be trusted and does not negotiate in good faith. The uS will not restrain Israel in any way, which is an issue given Israel's insatiable appetite for blowing up babies. So Iran has concluded that the only way to guarantee their sovereignty is to make the economic pain so dire that th eUS never thinks about doing this again.
This has been clear for months now and Trump is choosing Israel over the economic pain that has been inflicted and is still coming. Millions will likely starve in the coming year.
But sure, keep repeating your State Department talking points.
Very nice pro-Iranian walk down the memory lane while comfortbly forgetting how piece and people loving Ayatollah killed thousands of Iranians for what good reason?
It's not "pro-Iranian" to acknowledge democracy. The Shah is also responsible for the death, torture and disappearance of thousands of Iranian citizens, with the help of the CIA.
As a US citizen, that concerns me far more than Iran's self-determination. I don't want my tax dollars going towards Yet Another Torture Regime.
> 2. Iran democratically elected Mossadegh who said Iranian resources would be for Iranians;
He was not really democratically elected, and he was not serving democracy. He was converting it into a dictatorship.
> 4. Eisenhowever overthrows the democratically elected government of Iran to install the Shah as an autocrat (he was previously a figurehead pretty much);
Overthrows the dictator, to restore the authority of the shah, you mean.
> 7. By the late 1970s it was becoming clear that the Shah's regime would fall. The Americans were worried that the Communists would win and Iran would fall into the Soviet sphere of influence so got their puuppet in the region, Saddam Hussein, to expel Khomenei from Iraq in the hopes that the Isalamic fundamentalists would win;
That misunderstands the concern that the fundamentalists themselves were a threat to Iraq and Saddam hated communists too. He tortured and killed Iraqi communist party members, systematically.
> 10. Despite 15 of the 19 hijackers being Saudi, Osama bin Laden being Saudi and al-Qaeda getting material support from Saudi princes and Saudi madrasses (religious schools), Iran got lumped in with Iraq and North Korea as the "Axis of Evil". The reason for this were the hawks in the US administration who believed that George HW Bush messed up not overthrowing Saddam Hussein in 1991. They had prior to 9/11 urged the Clinton administration and Congress to invade Iran;
> 11. Iraq was invaded because the neocon hawks, particularly Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, won the policy debate. It is highly believed they thought they would be overthrowing Iran too;
Iraq had invaded its neighbor Kuwait, bombed the World Trade Center once before, tried to assassinate the president and more. Saudi Arabia was an ally and Saudi Arabian citizens were recruited partially because they have easier access to the US, but they were trained in Afghanistan. It might be fair that we wanted a better footprint in the region as a hedge against Iran. It was obviously complicated.
> 12. North Korea managed to stave off attacks by developing a nuclear weapon. That was the true lesson of the Global War on Terror: only a nuclear weapon will guarantee your survival;
Russia wanted a foothold in Korea to strengthen its aim of acquiring Japanese islands to use as warm water ports, since its northern shores regularly froze. That has been ongoing since the early 1800s. Japan even assassinated a leader of Korea who was warming up to Russia too much back then. Eventually during World War 1, Japan took Korea, but when World War 2 ended they lost it to the US and the Soviet Union.
Similar to west Germany and east Germany, you had communist North Korea, then South Korea, but not really administered by the Korean people until they formed their own governments.
North Korea then got support from Russia and China to invade South Korea. North Korea started the war. North Korea was also the major aggressor even before the war.
A lot of countries don't have nukes and aren't getting invaded by other countries. We didn't invade east Germany, we waited for the Soviet Union to collapse.
> 14. Obama negotitated (with European allies) the JCPOA, a program to inspect Iranian nuclear sites, in exchange for sanctions relief. There is no proof the Iranians ever violated the agreement. They even kept abiding by it for up to a year after Trump tore it up to appease Israel;
The JCPOA set out the terms for compliance. The IAEA says, as far as we know they're complying. This only means compliance with the JCPOA. The JCPOA was a bad deal, so the fact they were mostly observed to be complying with it does not matter much. You don't say JCPOA -> being complied with -> shut off brain, turn off lights, lets go home boys. It was transparency with limits, but there were many other intelligence signals and behaviors from Iran that demonstrated that Iran did not stop being a threat. It was simply growing as a threat with international political cover.
> 15. Israel committed too many hostile acts to enumerate, including the bombing of an embassy in Damascus, targeted assassinations within Iran, the murder of Iranians overseas, etc, pretty much all of which Iran just took on the chin;
Iran has essentially been at war with the US and Israel for many decades. You can't look at an action from Israel or the US in a vacuum, that's very weak logic. Most actions are reactions to things Iran has already done. Iran has been surrounding Israel with funded militants, plus expanding these groups around the region.
> 16. The US and Israel started an unprovoked war last year, which included killing the Iranian negotiators. This war went so badly that hostilities ended after 12 days. It was widely suspected at the time that supplies of anti-missile munitions were getting critically low. Iran basically acted in good faith here that the Americans would negotiate in good faith; and
Iran provoked it by funding Houthi attacks on shipping in 2023 after also funding Hamas to attack Israel shortly before. They were breaking international law by shipping with dark fleets, funding attacks in the region and continuing to develop their nuclear program which the JCPOA allowed them to get a running start on.
They attacked others, so they legitimized attacks against themselves. It wasn't unprovoked. That is a very unreasonable perspective.
> 17. The Iranians were wrong. America did not act in good faith and started another unprovoked war at Israel's urging that included, for some reason, blowing up a middle school with almost 200 10-12 year old girls in it and killing an 87 year old man who had refused to develop a nuclear weapon (ie Khamenei) who also refused to go into a bunker because his people didn't have the same protections. That strike also killed a whole bunch of his family and the new Ayatollah's family.
The school was part of a military compound that may have been repurposed. It wasn't intentional, but it is very common for terrorists to intentionally put innocent people around military targets. Hamas did this regularly in Gaza. International law says civilian targets like this are not valid military targets, unless they are being used by the military. Unfortunately, it was probably both a civilian and valid military target. We don't make it a habit of intentionally killing civilians.
Iran does not have freedom of speech the way the US does. As a result, when information circulates in Iran or comes out from Iran, it is often controlled by the state. They will spread their propaganda, but the information is useless. They will do everything in their power to direct your emotions against the US, rather than themselves for their own behavior that caused these attacks to come.
Unfortunately this nonsense also now fills the internet and people fall for it.
> 18. This brings us to today. From Iran's position, the US cannot be trusted and does not negotiate in good faith. The uS will not restrain Israel in any way, which is an issue given Israel's insatiable appetite for blowing up babies.
Iran was not negotiating in good faith and has not been following international law to start with which are agreements presumably they should be following if they are a good and nice country that just wants to live in peace, International laws greatly benefit peaceful countries. If Iran was peaceful like most other countries, they could be benefiting from those same laws. This isn't only observed by the US and Israel, but by other Middle Eastern countries and Europe too. So you can't really say this is some crazy US Israel thing and Iran is really just being good. Nobody believes that, yet this message spreads online.
> So Iran has concluded that the only way to guarantee their sovereignty is to make the economic pain so dire that th eUS never thinks about doing this again.
We didn't take sovereignty away from Japan, Korea, Iraq, Germany, or Venezuela and so on. Your argument is very weak. We don't want every country, we just want them to be good peaceful countries that let their people live in freedom and peace. That's why we have so many allies. Nobody wants to be like our enemies, because they build their societies on poor logic and nobody is allowed to fix it.
The store in question was a franchise so potentially the liability will be limited to just the assets of that franchise. But there's a lot of weird stuff here and it looks like the corporation may have (in a legally questionable manner) removed assets from the store to the corporation during proceedings to shield them.
A representative of the corporation, while taking over the store, expressly states that the corporation is taking over the consignment agreement, on camera and with several witnesses.
They absolutely are and a good lawyer, I'm sure, could audit the accounts and find some misdeeds - the issue is that the auditing and even getting access to those records in court is extremely expensive. To my knowledge there isn't a way to trigger that kind of a discovery in small claims so you need to go through the pricey legal system.
The money in question here is the proceeds from selling a collection valued at 200k - the recovery (unless you start to get into punitive territory) is likely to be rather meager... and it's a large risk so there may be few bites on firms willing to take it on purely commission.
In the UK you can make an order of information to compel directors of a company that is in debt to answer questions about company assets, accounts and records under oath. This can be done in County Court and my understanding it is inexpensive. I'm not sure how useful this is for carrying out an audit because I think its meant to be used for seeing if the debtor has the ability to pay. I think generally incorrect trading during an insolvency is meant to be discovered by the receivers during the insolvency process. Also, I'm not sure if there is an equivalent to an order of information in the US system.
the issue is that the auditing and even getting access to those records in court is extremely expensive.
In most cases, the bankruptcy trustee will be doing that work already.
But in a case like this, it's probably not going to be necessary. Courts usually pierce the corporate veil in situations involving the debts of wholly-owned subsidiaries. It happens frequently enough that its actually news when they don't pierce the veil. This is because corporations usually do a bad job of doing all the things that are necessary to maintain the liability shield in court.
In a nutshell: it requires treating the subsidiary as an entirely separate entity, with separate books, accounts, back office, officers/management, etc. As this is extremely inefficient, most corporations don't bother. The only corporations that do are the ones that deal with company-killing litigation regularly enough that it's worth it to absorb the cost of maintaining the liability shield.
Somewhere in one of the long videos, they mentioned that there were unique stickers on each of his items that he was selling on consignment. They had to have known which items were his.
I have absolutely no doubts a court would consider it impossible to transfer goods under consignment to a different entity free of the burden of the consignment contract. So the corporation trying to reach into the franchise to grab these goods without honoring the contract is absolute BS and they should be dragged through the mud over it.
The unfortunate loophole here is that, potentially, by shutting down that franchise in a bankruptcy the corporation may end up being preferred for being made whole on debts relative to the consigner. Bankruptcy is complicated so while I am pretty sure any remaining goods from the consignment would be returned to the original owner the proceeds from sales that were successfully made might end up in the pocket of the corporation.
Personally, I absolutely loathe consignment. It is an incredibly complex agreement with a lot of weird edge cases about deprecation of goods and the duty to seek a good price that get complex quick. If you have goods like this and can find a store that will buy your goods in bulk you should be very careful in considering how much you care about the price difference between that bulk price and the percentage they list for consignment. A single transaction is usually much cleaner and easier for both sides and in this case (trying to pay for medical costs) having the money immediately can be quite attractive.
If you look at the latest stuff from the previous owner where they recorded multiple conversations / pulled security footage... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zedmOopRTm0 1, they were allowed to do consignment deals, 2, when corporate took control, they said they'd take on the consignment liability, 3, BAM outright threatens them with making the legal process too expensive for them.
All of which contradicts the current corporate response
yeah, it’s plain as day they say blatantly they’ll take on the consignment.
the reckless ben youtube videos are pretty clearly laid out with contracts, video evidence, etc..
the crazy part to me is how blatant the executives of bricks and minifigs are in saying go ahead and try to sue us, we’ll drag this out until you’re broke from lawyers fees. we’re a lawyer rich corp and you’re not. they don’t even try to hide it.
bricks and minifigs are just crazy dickens movie tier evil it’s crazy.
Unfortunately this makes every Bricks and Minifigs store a risk to do business with, selling or buying. You're either supporting a criminal enterprise or risking being a victim of one.
"the crazy part to me is how blatant the executives of bricks and minifigs are in saying go ahead and try to sue us, we’ll drag this out "
To my experience this is a common strategy in disputes when the corporate party has people who operate as uncivilized brutes. I think it's part of the McKinseyfication of companies - profits at all cost - and here's the playbook.
My personal experience is from private parking control. Rather than be professional about my reclamation, their first response was "only criminals dispute these and we win all the court cases".
So I think trying to be imposing and villanous to scare the other non-corporate party to back off is a common global corporate playbook in situations in matters where companies enter contractual complex space with individuals.
Very rarely do corporations act like this once there’s any sort of spotlight on them. Especially over such a relatively small number. This is nothing to do with any standard corporate tactics and everything to do with the guys in charge being complete dick heads.
That has always been the goal. There is, has, and always will be a powerful caste system to ensure that they are gods and we are trash. "Stay in your lane" / "Know your place" / etc. have been watchwords for thousands of years.
yeah you cant just unilaterally cancel the contract in which you agreed to hold the goods for sale, and then take possession without any reimbursement.
You either need to pay the sales price of the consigned items, or just give them back.
If you do neither, its the same exact thing as theft. Which is what they did. They took possession of the 200k lego set with no reimbursement. Just plain ol' theft.
This is a dispute about who is the rightful owner of the Lego. That is a civil matter to be decided by the courts. Doesn't matter how clear the evidence, such disputes are for the courtroom.
Absolutely - and there are bad actors here that we should be mad at since they are abusing the law enforcement system but the default goal in situations should always be to de-escalate to prevent violence. I think the cops could have done a better job at explaining next steps and routes to approach a civil resolution but anyone objecting to the police officer removing Ben from the store property after a trespassing complaint doesn't understand how abusive it can be on the receiving end of stalking or harassment.
Separating parties in a civil dispute is always a good idea.
The police are under no obligation to provide service to specific people or businesses, only the public in general. They don’t even have to say “This is a civil matter”, they could just say “Eh, this doesn’t interest us, good luck with that.”
> I have absolutely no doubts a court would consider it impossible to transfer goods under consignment to a different entity free of the burden of the consignment contract.
Reminds me of the whole "disney must pay" debacle.
No, they came up with some legal theory in which they’d bought the assets of some company, including the company’s ownership of some art, but not obligations like paying royalties.
That’s like when I got my shower sealed and then it started leaking within the warranty period. The company claimed that they were the new owners and had purchased the business but not the warranty obligations (!) and I’d have to find the original owner and try to make him honour the warranty. Which was complete BS, obviously, but it wasn’t worth taking to court. :/
There actually are legal ways to do that… instead of buying the company, you start a new company, and just buy assets of the old company (e.g. phone numbers, web sites, trademarks, customer lists). Seems shady but apparently it’s pretty common.
Common doesn’t mean not shady. In Australia there are measures in place (eg. national registry for company directors, personal liability for directors) to combat this kind of ‘phoenixing’.
The problem with consignment is that the consignor wants the maximum price but the consignee wants a quick sale because 10% of a few bucks more means very little and they have to hold the inventory.
Selling on consignment can be an absolutely great deal for shops, under the right conditions.
If I'm a lego trader and I buy your set for $900 hoping to sell it later for $1000, in the meantime that's $900 I can't invest in anything else. And maybe I guessed the set's value wrong and I end up unloading it for $800, taking a loss.
On the other hand, if I agree to sell that same set on consignment? Zero capital outlay, zero risk of me taking a loss - just some shelf space and admin work.
Unless the store owns its building and has too little inventory to cover the shelves, the cost of not filling the shelves with the right goods is quite serious. In a low-margin business like retail, "just some shelf space" reads almost like "just some gold bars".
This is definitely not uniform. I worked on inventory management at Target, and stores had quite a lot of shelf space—to the point where we'd hold large amounts of cheap, non-perishable stuff like cat litter because, well, we had the space for it.
Stores also wanted to look full. We actually had parameters in our inventory management logic to increase inventory just for presentation reasons. If inventory is expensive, having some free, quality inventory can be valuable in and of itself even if it moves slowly.
Bricks and Minifigs stores are like 2000 square feet, much different than a Target. Their overhead per square foot is almost certainly far higher than Target.
If you have no shelf space, of course you can refuse the consignment. And this was a really big one, but the shop was initially very happy with it. Advertised widely with it. Brought in more shelves to display it all. From what I understand, it was a very large part of what was for sale in that shop.
I run a niche retail store and there are two sides to this.
Most of our business is selling low-price, entry-level products. There's a 80-20 distribution of people getting into the hobby versus people upgrading after a couple years. Consequently most of our floor space and inventory is devoted to high margin, quick turnover, entry-level products.
In my experience the floor space is less of an issue for high end products than the capital expenditure to bring in the inventory. On the consignment side we only take products aimed at the remaining 20%. These are specialty items we wouldn't have in regular stock. It's a win-win because we don't have to deploy capital to bring the product in-store, but we do have space to showcase some higher end used product.
Also, from the customer side, people ask at the higher end, don't they? Beyond a certain level, it's more of a search and a quest than just browsing. So you mainly have to show that you have connections for certain things. Why does this sound like drugs now?
I know this from a few friends who are deep into tabletop and boardgames, and they would regularly work with the one or two small stores around to get some special, expensive item (to help keep the shop afloat).
> In a low-margin business like retail, "just some shelf space" reads almost like "just some gold bars".
However, in this particular case, the legos were initially displayed as a customer attraction, and then kept in storage. Presumably there's still some inventory cost in storage, but the shelves are clear.
>> The collection will be on display in the store's party room from 10am till 6pm on Saturday, November 11th, and 11am till 6pm on Sunday. The collection will be available for sale immediately, so the best time for pictures will be Saturday morning. The collection will not be stored on-site after hours for security reasons, and after Sunday the sets will be available for purchase but stored elsewhere.
My wife owns a retail business where some part of their sales is consignment. Taking anything in with only a 10% consignment fee would be laughable, there’s no way that’s a money making deal when you account for all the overhead of a small retail store. My suspicion is the original store owner made a bad consignment deal to sell the Star Wars stuff with only a 10% commission and the new owner didn’t want to live up to it. Of course, at that point they should have just given it all back, but it turns out they’d rather be evil.
It isn't - deprecation of held goods is always a risk and if you're working on consignment then that comes with weird financial liabilities. If there's a flood and you lose your inventory it sucks - if there's a flood and you lose an inventory of consigned values then suddenly you're potentially exposed to paying market value for a number of items in addition to all the site damage you'll need to address. Capacity is one aspect of the costs of holding inventory - but breakage is the much more expensive consideration and consignment just makes it even more expensive.
a large part of the value of secondhand stuff is in the box and packaging, assuming those nice boxes in the image were from his collection - those are a little more fragile than the Lego pieces themselves.
Edit: wait, the whole collection was sealed and new in box. Yea, just water damage to those boxes would cut the value by at least 10%. Collectors are picky as shit.
They were sealed in box? Yeah you'd be right that damage would be easy and could significantly reduce the value.
I didn't realize people bought Lego to leave in the box. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised because it's a common thing for collectors to do in other hobbies.
Even without the box I think you're underestimating how damaging water is. If you're experience a flood it's never distilled H20, sometimes it's sewage and that's just awful, but even if it's storm water or a broken water main the water isn't the difficult portion (though that alone can lead to all sorts of mold issues) it's the sediment. If that sediment is from brown water there are obvious biological hazards which may lead to destruction being the only economical resolution, but even if it's just mud and sand that forces a huge expenditure to actually clean the products and if there's a signficantly misaligned pH it may damage products that you otherwise think of as water resistant.
Given this was a set of full star wars legos with decades of age a lot of those bricks are already going to have degraded somewhat and technix style components are likely to be significantly damaged from internal sediment accumulation. If you drop your water proofed water in a stagnant pond for three weeks it's likely that the internal seal will hold up and protect the delicate components but you'll probably need someone to pull the glue or other sealant out and replace it as well as going over the exterior surface with cleaning solutions to get it back to the quality it was in before being submerged - and flooding is rarely an instantaneous affair.
I wouldn't underestimate just how damaging to goods storage can be - and if you're doing it at scale you're going to be paying that cost constantly just as a percentage of value stored.
Lego survives being eaten by babies and poop back out again (source: my younger brother). They also survive being left out at theme parks (ie the various Legolands) and primary schools under all weather conditions for months and years.
So I don't think I'm underestimating the resilience of Lego bricks to flooding.
There was an article a on HN a while back about the plastics chosen by Lego. They put an exceptional amount of time and effort into choosing durable materials for their bricks.
I believe in this case the consignment contract requires the store to hold insurance on the consigned merchandise, which I assume is intended to address this concern.
Yup, if I worked in a field where consignment was an option I'd refuse to do it - it's a huge headache. So I'd absolutely believe that the corporation has a policy against accepting consignment offers and might have a case to recover damages or something against the original franchisee. But the way they've handled this situation still appears to be atrocious. Lets say you consigned 200k at a 10% commission, 50k sold under the original franchisee and you were paid 30k already. If the franchise transferred and the company wanted out there should be an exit[1] in the contract to pay the additional 15k and then return the goods to the original owner. I think it's important to remember this sort of an option was always on the table.
1. Even if the original consignment contract was poorly drawn up without a clear exit clause I think it'd be reasonable to expect a resolution somewhere close to this in mediation.
I have read that article and a few other sources since the first few ways I heard about this story were heavily biased. I have not yet seen B&M confirm that the contract that was leaked is genuine - it is incredibly unlikely that they would, of course, but it still remains one the facts in this case that I tenatively believe but have some reservations around.
I thought it was interesting to, from the assumption that the corporation actually banned consignments, still work through how it doesn't free them from wrong doing. Even in the best light B&M has acted in bad faith.
Your alternative is that the contract was forged. Something easily falsifiable in court and absolutely devastating to any case brought, not to mention any follow-on charges that may result. Is that what you're putting forward?
I thought I was very clear above - my alternative is that even under the best light there were still clearly bad actions carried out by bricks and minifigs. When there is a grey zone I find it helpful to work out what the most charitable interpretation if it is still negative. Even when given the biggest benefit of the doubt Bricks and Minifigs is clearly acting in bad faith here.
bricks and minifigs is going to lose a hell of a lot more than this 10% in business
regardless of the law, it’s a very stupid move on the company’s part.
if they had half a brain they’d pay double the commission and pretend it aas internal miscommunication. $40k is cheap versus the pr hit they’re taking right now
They can seize assets that belong to the entity. They can’t seize assets that belong to other people just because it happens to be on their premises, in the same way that they can’t seize and sell the cars that happen to be in a bankrupt store’s parking lot.
There are a lot of reasons why you should never sell things through consignment - but one of those reasons is that the goods cease to be yours in several significant ways. If a company is able to sell a good they could sell that good to fulfill debts - if it is a route to liquidate goods to cover debts then it's in the scope of the liquidator (though I think in most cases a sane liquidator would return the goods whole to avoid creating more debt than already exists and destroying non-fungible goods). If we assume the consignment sale was advantageous for the seller it's unlikely there's a way for the liquidator to quickly sell the goods in bulk for a better margin than the consignment contract offered so any sale they executed would likely add more debt than it cured.
"Can't" is a really bad word to use and I am not certain if "they" here are the corporation or the liquidator.
If you're talking about the corporation I think that any sensible neutral party would probably come down on the side that the corporation has no entitlement to those goods.
If you're talking about the liquidator then the goods were held by the franchise so if it went through bankruptcy those goods would be under consideration by the steward - I think they'd usually find that the original owner should be entitled to the goods since they're relatively non-fungible. The proceeds from sold goods are likely a more complicated answer since money is fungible and divisible. I could accept that there would be scenarios where a steward would think that the corporation should recover a portion of the proceeds.
> If you're talking about the liquidator then the goods were held by the franchise so if it went through bankruptcy those goods would be under consideration by the steward - I think they'd usually find that the original owner should be entitled to the goods since they're relatively non-fungible.
IANAA, but I'd say the situation is that while the goods are possessed by the franchise, but they are not owned by the franchise. Ownership title doesn't change until they're sold by the franchise to a buyer.
I could see a scenario in which the franchise contract says that BAM can automatically liquidate the franchise (and how else did BAM get immediate control of the store?), and BAM then says they've executed on that consignment contract (at perhaps not reasonable prices). But without a very well-documented paper trail that this is what they did, including actually paying the consignor the (low) proceeds of the sales, it would seem that the only other possibility here is some kind of criminal conversion.
Which points back to all of the discussion about consignment dynamics really being a red herring. The problem is a criminal conspiracy including by the police themselves, for whatever reasons that might be.
I think if the consignor has not taken the correct steps then there is a risk the receiver would be able to pay other secured creditors using the consignors assets. For example if there are other creditors with liens on the inventory then you are meant to take steps to notify them of your claims on the consigned goods because otherwise the consigned goods could look like inventory to the secured creditor (https://www.lowenstein.com/news-insights/publications/articl...)
We have a durable queue built into postgres to handle some complex notification-ish logic. It's worked excellently and while there are services various cloud providers would love to sell us to do that it's extremely cheap to run.
For that particular usage, the volume we process and business criticality make it a good choice for inventing here - but for other durable processes we just use off the shelf tools since the cost of maintenance would quickly outstrip the value.
Postgres is a great tool to use and far more powerful than most people give it credit for - but there's always the balance of in-house maintenance vs. paying rent for someone else's solution.
You pay for everything you build - the more complexity you put into it the more that costs over time. Dependencies need to be updated, language/framework upgrades usually break something, new features/requirements introduce additional complexity and code to manage. Software just costs money every day - not a lot, our industry is much lower margin than, say, stamping sheets of metal into tools - but it still has operational costs beyond just the money to operate the hardware we run our products on.
I know that. This looks like some lib you update once a year/every new CVE, and it is compared to a lib from cloud vendor and also update once a year/every new CVE, which is why I asked what it costed YOU in this particular case.
I know your mileage may vary in different areas of Europe but in Italy and Spain you'll find a plethora of random general stores that resell Aliexpress sorts of goods at a very low markup over direct ordering. The stock variety is obviously more limited but those stores are amazing and fit a really key need.
The ones in Spain often market themselves with their Chinese-ness: "Hyper China", "Panda Bazaar", "Maxi Barato (super cheap)", etc. would be some representative names & signage you see outside.
They range in size from small shops to things with huge floor space.
One thing I've found is that they seem to sell very low quality stuff: e.g. on aliexpress you can buy a flashlight which is built out of metal, has usb-c charging, for $10, whereas in the physical shop, you get the plastic one that takes AA batteries for $2. So they're not a replacement for AliExpress, Temu & co.
Most of the ones I'm thinking of are just corner stores - it's not a brand or chain to my knowledge. An example might be Bazar Gran Puerto, El Puerto de Sta Maria, CA, ES.
From what I've seen YT takes "Don't show me this channel again" very seriously but the effect appears to be limited just to you. It would be very silly for YT to fail to enforce that preference as a user who is willing to go through an annoyingly multi-step flow to express their displeasure is on who would never monetarily engage in the content anyways - but neither it (nor the reporting system) seem to have a significant impact on the visibility of that content to others since both are often used for brigading or personal preference.
It's a tool. Tools can be used for good or ill. This tool is the hotness right now so it's quite overused in a lot of poorly fitting situations. This particular usage serves no socially beneficial purpose and needs to be regulated into non-existence (we at least shouldn't pay people to do it). The tool is still useful for a bunch of things but some people get irrationally defensive if you critique their favorite tool. It's a good tool and it's a flawed tool - like every other tool.
In your opinion, what is the positive aspect of this kind of AI video/voice generation tool that these videos are using?
In my opinion, AI video/voice generation is being used to scam and manipulate people en masse, without a compelling, good use case besides generating more (slop) content.
When someone uses AI to make a video, they either have nefarious purposes (such as scamming) in mind or they don't. That's not a matter of your opinion. It's not hard to picture someone making a video with innocuous intent to inform or entertain and using AI in the process does not suddenly make their intention a malicious one.
America as an organization needs to stand up and get retributive with robbing government coffers or it'll just breed even more kleptocracy.
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