[mattmaroon]

I just don’t understand why a company with $95m in sales would steal $200k. That’s a fraction of a percent of sales for the year.

There’s now a boycott against them that will easily cost them more than that.

If the case is as this blog says, it cannot be hard to find a lawyer to do this one pro bono. Breach of contract is one of the few things in America where you can sue for your legal fees. If you take over a business you assume it’s contracts even though your name wasn’t on them. You gain anything the business owns but a consignment shop doesn’t own the inventory.

BAM is going to lose millions and for what? Is this article just wrong on substantial facts? Simple greed wouldn’t explain this as it will almost certainly lead to far less money, even in a short period, than returning it.

Something must be missing.

[jmcgough]

I have a family member who works in estate planning. From all the stories he's told me, a lot of wealthy people compulsively screw over people / refuse to follow the contract they agreed to / etc, simply because they can and know that it is too expensive for most people to file a lawsuit.

[archon810]

Heck, our current president is a fine example of this behavior, according to numerous accounts.

[fancyfredbot]

I agree with you. It makes no rational sense for the corporation to act this way. I can see how they end up losing a court case but can't explain why they don't pay up.

It sounds like the first franchise collapsed owing money. I expect the company had created strong incentives for employees to claw that back. Someone has followed those incentives against the interest of the corporation. This happens all the time although in this case they break the law.

Eventually there's a lawsuit and a lot more people get involved including people without any incentive to do illegal things. However those involved originally present some varnished version of the truth (to avoid getting fired!) the company trusts this version of events. They decide to fight the case in court.

Then they lose the case. Those who decided to fight it realise they made a bad choice and they now look bad too. It's at this point that the weirdest thing happens. Why do they choose to close the store instead of paying up? My guess is that it became personal for someone.

[amiga386]

> It sounds like the first franchise collapsed owing money.

It did not, the franchisees simply wanted out because they were offered better paid work overseas.

They told corporate they wanted to sell the franchise back to them, as they say they wanted to recoup their investment in the franchise before they left the USA.

Corporate arrived the same day and started saying the franchise owes them $200,000, didn't inventory the franchise, terminated their franchise that day, seized the franchise that same day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14ktgvoH4Mc&t=590s

I don't have the facts about who's right about that, but that corporate behaviour seems remarkably aggressive and fishy to me.

[K0balt]

It’s a farcical notion that people are uniformly rational actors, as well as the notion that rational is adjacent to just.

It’s an unfortunate fact that many people in positions of wealth and power default to “F-you my lawyers will drown you and I will win” in every single case, regardless of merit.

Many times, that is the singular strategy that has put them in that position of wealth and power. Many times, they apply this strategy to every situation where they already possess an asset or service for which they have not paid, and that asset or service is valued higher than an ongoing good faith relationship with the person or entity that they owe for the asset or service that they received.

It’s a wholly predatory strategy but it can be a very rational calculus, and it can propel you to the very pinnacle of wealth and power. Its continuously surprising to plebs because it goes against the fantasy of the fundamental justice of society that they have been inculcated with, a convenient lie that keeps powerless people in their lane and justifies the use of police powers to protect the criminal activity of the owner class.

I say this as a member of the owner class. I try not to be one of those people, but it’s easy to see justice as an unnecessary and frivolous expense. I’d estimate that a significant fraction of my peers are in this category, and nearly everyone else occasionally dabbles, often without even being aware of it as their lawyers push in that direction.

Ultimately, it’s a side effect of obscene inequality. I don’t know how to fix it, much less how to make the world somehow intrinsically just. IMHO there is no justice except the justice we go out of our way to create. Justice is not the natural state of the world.

[fancyfredbot]

I agree people and especially corporations act this way. Indeed many people believe that it's a corporation's fiduciary duty to lawyer up if that's expected to be cheaper than paying up.

Here, they are looking at small amounts of money, but they close a store, which presumably involves writing down an asset and forgoing future revenue. This only gives them a small chance of avoiding payment and risks the reputation of the entire firm.

The earlier decisions all fit the narrative of coldly rational, but I find the final decision to close the store doesn't fit. It's almost impossible to imagine how it ends well for the corporation.

[K0balt]

I agree. At face value it seems reactive and wonky.

[mrguyorama]

It's just classic DARVO bullying strategies by abusers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO

It works extremely well which is why bullies and abusers use the tools they do.

Nobody wakes up as an adult and starts doing these behaviors. They have been these kind of maladjusted bullies for most likely their entire lives.

Since current US police forces are largely made up of these exact kind of people, and these people instinctively back each other up, the police also use these tactics to bully people they don't like.

It really shouldn't be a surprise that this nation loves a bully like Trump so much, we have spent decades supporting and elevating bullies to positions of power.

[kmeisthax]

> Its continuously surprising to plebs because it goes against the fantasy of the fundamental justice of society that they have been inculcated with, a convenient lie that keeps powerless people in their lane and justifies the use of police powers to protect the criminal activity of the owner class.

Even without the propaganda factor, its also surprising to plebs because there are plenty of plebs who try similar schemes and get their ass handed to them in the courts. Thievery is not an exclusive invention of the well-to-do. But being rich enough means you can actually afford a competent legal defense, which will delay the case out until the opposing party capitulates, because the cost of fighting[0] is far higher for you than them. This is the same reason why convicted felon Donald Trump is also on his second Presidential term. It turns out, you can outrun the long arm of the law, and most people are just not fast enough to do it.

It also doesn't help that the law is really out of shape. The US justice system is specifically optimized to get quick judgments against legally inexperienced defendants, mainly because they can't fight back. It's the same reason why housecats hunt and kill mice and small birds, and not, say, capybara or eagles. But all the features that make it really easy to hunt weaker legal prey also make it harder to take on big cases. Things like lawyers being stupid expensive and there being no fee shifting mechanism means weak defendants fold, but also that the government won't bother fighting tough cases. Which, again, shifts the risk of illegal behavior to the poor and unconnected.

[0] Oh no, I've started to channel the Lines on Maps guy.

[K0balt]

lol. Yeah, being an a-whole isn’t the exclusive hobby of the wealthy, by a long shot. Crappy character, unlike the future, is relatively evenly distributed.

[passive]

Because this isn't the first collection they've stolen from someone, presumably.

It's a lot easier to become a really successful company if you can keep your inventory costs down. Perhaps by investing in local law enforcement instead, to make sure no one looks too close at said inventory?

Donald Trump is famous for not paying even really cheap contractor bills, because he knew he could get away with it.

[mcv]

This is the answer. They thought they could get away with it. And from what I understand, they nearly did, because the original victim couldn't afford the risk of a lengthy and expensive lawsuit.

[TrackerFF]

My take is that this all comes down to the stores being franchises.

Yes, franchisor hold a lot of power, and in the big picture the franchisees are small owners and a move like this ($200k of merch they haven't paid a dime for) can affect the PnL quite a lot on the local level. It seems like the average Bricks and Minifigs franchise store has annual revenue of just $600k. At that's revenue. Another search shows that their margins are around 10%-20%

If these franchise owners managed to pull of this, and sell the collection for $200k on top of the expected annual revenue, that would put their store margin for that year around 45%-55%!

I'm guessing Bricks and Minifigs, the corporation, just assumed this would fly quietly under the radar, and let their franchisees.

I think it just comes down to greed. A couple of franchisees figured they could make a killing, and become one of the most profitable franchise stores with no effort.

[JMiao]

if the theft accusation is credible and not a rogue fuck up, then you wonder if a company that authorizes a $200k theft could have some other skeletons in the closet. like the sus $95mm sales claim.