[rzwitserloot]

... and it costs society more to process the destroyed waste, and it costs society more to then deal with the fallout of shelters not having enough clothes.

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.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I'm not sure everyone in the conversation is understanding each other. Saying the waste is pointless implies to me that it has no value, that companies could eliminate it with small costs and no other tradeoffs and they just don't want to bother. That's not accurate; a system with no oversupply is necessarily a system with fewer choices and more shortages.

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.

[Dylan16807]

"it would be a small cost" and "there are tradeoffs" can both be true at the same time!

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.

[loeg]

The waste is relatively inexpensive and already being paid for.