Our most esteemed economic mind wrote that businesses exist solely to maximize profit for shareholders. So that is the right business model for our economic system.
And it is not "the" right model, just a possible and I would argue short sighted one.
What they did was model up a rental business and seeded it as if it were an ownership type one.
That is predatory, depending on what experience level people are buying. They run a very real risk of not understanding what they are buying.
And that, along with better ways to value externalities, would render that model higher cost and risk, as it should be.
Anyone with sufficient experience sees those costs, risks and also sees them as external to the enterprise, and that it all comes at their own expense.
That expense renders the value proposition far less compelling.
Exactly why this bait and switch happened too.
Just because it is legal, does not make it right or ethical.
Given the rise in these trends, yeah. Time to revisit what is legal.
Yup. The current economic model encourages the path that maximises profit, ethical or otherwise. That might mean predatory behaviour and then blame shifting or just moving on to the next brand and dumping the company with the rotten reputation and its workers.
Until enough people are willing to adopt a different value system, we're stuck with this.
And it is not "the" right model, just a possible and I would argue short sighted one.
What they did was model up a rental business and seeded it as if it were an ownership type one.
That is predatory, depending on what experience level people are buying. They run a very real risk of not understanding what they are buying.
And that, along with better ways to value externalities, would render that model higher cost and risk, as it should be.
Anyone with sufficient experience sees those costs, risks and also sees them as external to the enterprise, and that it all comes at their own expense.
That expense renders the value proposition far less compelling.
Exactly why this bait and switch happened too.
Just because it is legal, does not make it right or ethical.
Given the rise in these trends, yeah. Time to revisit what is legal.