This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
How would you accomplish this, per legality? Are trademarks only to be licensed to a single point of production? Otherwise how do you tell the difference between a knock-off factory and a simple expansion of the business?
The way a trademark is supposed to work is by tying a company’s reputation to a product. If the product doesn’t meet standards, the consumer learns to distrust the trademark. In this case it sounds like Asahi made the assumption that American audiences would be satisfied with Peroni and, present company excluded, were right on the mark. If people like you become a meaningful market share, then expect Asahi Select (or whatever name) to find its way from a Pacific tanker onto your grocery store at a significant mark-up from the regular.
You could come up with a system similar to PDO that protects how the product is actually made.
Check if the new product is substantially similar to the old one, versus something completely different. Companies shouldn't be able to sell something completely different under the exact same name and mark.
We don't have a counterfactual for this, so we can't really saw how satisfied the consumers are. The market share in the US is absolutely miniscule though, but I find it hard to check the exact numbers. On walmart.com Corona beer has 3550 reviews, while "Asahi" has a grand total of ... 3.
Anyways for companies that abuse brand value at the expense of consumers, it takes time for consumers to learn that the brand is fake, and stop buying it. During that time they can cash out.
Asahi Select isn't even real. It's just something that a domestic brewery that licensed the Asahi mark (in the old days) dreamt up to slap on some other domestic macrobrew. There was never a day in history that an Asahi owned brewery brewed a drop of product ever sold under the name "Asahi Select." Literally "Brew some coors, call it Asahi Select."
Unfortunately when the execs decide on a strategy of plunder, this isn't going to happen. The more they devalue their mark selling completely different stuff, the less likely they are to bring in the genuine article in the future.
Oh, is Asahi Select an actual thing? Whoops, my mistake. The point was that an actual market share would encourage actual importing.
Anyway, I’m not sure how the “completely different” clause is expected to fly. PDO works by obsessively dividing products that are actually quite similar, such that only a few dry sparkling whites are champagne. Something on the same level of granularity would be factory-by-factory, which to be honest would be fairly interesting to have printed on every product, although I suspect that this would be ignored by most consumers if there’s anything more recognizable. Substantive difference, on the other hand, sounds like a 10-year court case with expensive expert witnesses and piddling awards. I’m not sure there’s a convenient bright line there.
Your second point, about brand raiding, I would say is more about the modern high-liquidity stock market rewarding various pump-and-dump schemes. At that point I’d wonder whether allowing shareholders to sue executives for fraud following one of these events would move the needle any, or whether you need different financing plans altogether.
Due to the way the import market works for alcohol, there's almost no grey market. So if the corporation doesn't want to specifically send the real stuff to you, you're not going to get it any way you go about it. I don't believe it's possible for a private citizen in the US to legally get a can of Japanese made Asahi even if he had a blank check.
So you take Peroni beer. Something with a hundreds of years old recipe, from even before Italy existed, made with Italian ingredients, in an Italian factory, just like Mussolini liked it. Then you slap on the label "Asahi" and some Japanese looking characters and bam you have "Asahi." Should be an open and shut case honestly. Maybe there are other cases that are more borderline, and maybe the court can err in the favor of the company in those cases, but really there are tons of cases that are very black and white.
Maybe I'm just living in fantasy land, but trademarks are too important to trade for consumers as well as producers to simply be treated as chattel that can simply be bought and sold like buildings or cars.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link