Is Black Friday even worth it to our society/economy?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/-walmartfights-sparks-a-trend-on-twitter-193622540.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%28shopping%29

As we know, scheduled promotions like "Cash for Clunkers" many not generate new transactions, but merely shift them to a specific date (i.e. I would have bought a TV for Uncle Bob at some point before Xmas, but I might as well go on B.F.). Sure, while you are frantically trekking through Walmart, the mob mentality and "holiday spirit" make you less responsible with the wallet, so you might be inspired to get some other items (which is incremental revenue), but it's really hard for businesses to measure if those purchases are totally due to B.F. With the "arms race" of fierce retail competition, and marketers whipping consumers into a frenzy (and now mobile broadband and social media make it even easier to learn about "great deals"), companies have to take a loss or break even on certain products just to earn some eyeballs (they likely will have to pay more for ads due to more competition). Of course they may only have 5 super-cheap TVs per store, but clearly they are pricing competitive items lower than they'd ideally want to, and likely below what the customer's normal willingness-to-pay is (sans B.F. expectations).

That is a risk too - customers are expecting great deals, so if they are sold out by the time they get to the shelves (even for folks who waited for hours in the cold), that will cause a lot of anger, and the retailer runs the risk of creating a detractor who badmouths them on social media. And that's if they're lucky - shortages may lead to riots and deaths, as we've unfortunately seen in the past. Imagine all the man-hours of extra associates, police, and other emergency responders needed to handle the B.F. madness and possible incidents. Imagine the carbon footprint of all the traffic jams and the utilities from the extra hours that stores are open (and it's getting earlier and earlier - some stores opened at 8PM ON THANKSGIVING... by 2020 Black Friday will be on Labor Day). B.F. may not drive many purely incremental sales, but it sure as heck will create many incremental traffic accidents, injuries, etc. The employees that have to deal with the insanity may get overtime pay, but they also will experience elevated stress and possibly employer resentment, which are documented to affect workplace productivity, personal relationships, and health (not to mention all the stress and panic behind the scenes where non-store employees have to rush to meet the B.F. related logistics, marketing, product launches, and other deadlines). I am pretty sure some folks at Sony and Microsoft would have liked a few more weeks to iron out the bugs associated with their new gaming consoles, but they had to get them on the shelves in time for B.F. And as far as I know, no one is getting B.F. or Xmas bonuses anymore for their extra efforts.

On the consumer side, the post-Great-Recession US shopper spends on avg. $400 during B.F. weekend (with 200M+ unique shoppers). People may not behave very rationally during B.F. (understatement of the year), so they may make inefficient and imprudent purchasing decisions that will have negative consequences on their economic viability (and that of their dependents). There are socioeconomic costs associated with frivolous spending: credit default, back taxes, late rent payments, etc. Some opportunists make money off things like that, but there will be preventable economic losses too. Also, the more we spend on shopping, the less we have to donate to charities (or even buy more medicine and healthier food). The fatigue, emotions, and sleep deprivation associated with B.F. shopping will affect shopper health, relationships, and productivity for weeks - especially during the winter time of bad weather and virus spreads. Adding all this up, I can imagine that the social costs of B.F. could easily top $1B in the US. I am not sure how much incremental profit B.F. generates (for scale, wiki says WM gets $5B from B.F., and it is ~3% of all US retail sales), but clearly it should be discounted if we want to make a fair, holistic value calculation.

Even Cyber Monday could have social costs by reducing workplace productivity and tying up bandwidth that could make pageload/latency times worse and important/emergency messages slower.

Brazil: where are their priorities?

http://sports.yahoo.com/photos/photo-finish-relive-the-weekend-in-sports-1372640894-slideshow/confederations-cup-photo--1751219419.html

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/20/world/americas/opinion-brazil-simoes

Two-and-a-half years have passed, and [President Rousseff] is still popular among the poorest, but the recent protests were led by a different bunch: The traditional middle class. On the streets, well-educated people, from central, urban areas, shouted that they had been sold a lie [about their lives getting better].  

Inflation is once again a major concern, violent crime is on the rise, cases of corruption fill the press, healthcare is in a precarious state, infrastructure projects have not materialized and street traffic is depressingly worse than ever.


While TV showed the inaugurations of costly, lavish football stadiums, people felt their lives were getting worse by the day. After all, the World Cup will cost the nation some $15 billion, and the promised legacy in infrastructure is still nowhere to be seen.

- CNN

So they won a soccer tournament tonight, big deal (it has no real consequence except raising their FIFA ranking from their current #22, just ahead of Mali). They did wipe out Spain, whose squad is believed to be one of the greatest in history according to some. But it's just sport - what about jobs, infrastructure, accountability, and gov. services?

The match took place in Rio as crowds tried to march on the stadium but were blocked by riot police. You've probably heard that a combined million Brazilians have been protesting their government recently - first sparked by something so mundane as a planned bus fare hike (like how the Turkey protests started over a park closure, or the Tunisia protests starting over the frustrations of one small businessman). But these "minor complaints" are part of a larger theme of 2nd world governments reaping the rewards of increasing int'l prominence, but not passing much of it down to the people.

Brazil is part of the sexy BRICS economies, and barely felt the recession. The Economist projects a healthy 3-4% real GDP growth rate through 2017. Yet public opinion of Brazil's president and legislature are much lower now vs. 2003. Wealth inequality in Brazil is one of the worst in the world (worse than the US), by Gini and other metrics. 5-6% inflation is a problem and the Real is expected to lose value against the $ each of the next 4 years. The current and former presidents come from a leftist labor party that capitalized on the support of the poor to win. But it is the middle class that is key for Brazil to become a true global power, and it is the middle class that is currently really pissed off (same with Turkey, and the US - though we are too cowardly to protest).

Occupy was a manifestation of this, but all around the world people are rising up because they are tired of putting up with gov'ts that claim things are going great and they are making your life better, yet people are hurting more and more. From Greece to China to Brazil, citizens are fed up with corrupt leaders who have their priorities all backwards, and are in office just to enrich themselves and serve the elite.

We know what the Olympics did to Greece's economy (and China violated all sorts of civil rights to make their Games happen), and now we have Brazil proud to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. They're building fancy billion-dollar stadiums, yet basic services, rule of law, and such are terribly lacking (a successful int'l sporting event needs those things too!). There were concerns about the 2010 South Africa World Cup partly because that host was also in BRICS, and crime/poverty is endemic in parts of SA. FIFA even planned to use Brazil as a backup host if conditions in SA were too poor for the Cup. But now it seems Brazil is in worse shape. Of course a big int'l event is a way for the host to show off to the world that they have arrived. They sweep their national ills under the rug for a month while foreign revelers cheer, drink, and spend money. The Olympics didn't make China stronger (and didn't really boost their global prestige IMO), and Brazil shouldn't expect any better. Honor your commitments to your people first, then worry about stupid ballgames. Same goes for the US... but "bread and circuses" are effective distractions so the masses forget how their leaders are abusing them.

-------

You probably heard about the criticisms of the BRA gov't and FIFA leading up to the World Cup, but here is a humorous/pathetic summary too:

http://www.businessinsider.com/john-oliver-fifa-2014-6

Like the IOC and NCAA, FIFA is another corrupt, egotistical, short-sighted "nonprofit" sport mafia that is only interested in its finances (often at the expense of all other parties) - maybe to a more pathological level than some for-profit corporations. It's not about "the good of the game" or the players/fans. The sporting events themselves are entertaining and almost universally beloved, but the governing bodies are just immoral leeches capitalizing on our passion/addiction for the sport. Maybe because of that, at some point it has to be justified to boycott.