Post #1189661
2026-03-13 12:32 UTC
Replies (2)
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@booly@sh.itjust.works 2026-03-13 15:30
But lots of things can be pre ordered before they're actually available. Services are an obvious example: I can buy tickets to a movie or a live event that will happen at some point in the future. Same with really any tickets or prepaid reservations, like plane tickets or hotel reservations or certain types of restaurant reservations. But it can happen with all sorts of consumer goods, too. I can put in orders for stuff to be made to order: handmade/custom jewelry or shirts or mugs or commissioned artwork, a pizza that won't be made until I order it, etc. For businesses, their supply chains require advance planning and ordering. The people who make peanut butter generally have the peanuts ordered before the start of the growing season, so they're buying peanuts that might not have been planted yet. The grocery store chain might be buying peanut butter before it's made. When pork futures prices drop low enough, McDonald's will snatch up those contracts and take delivery of a bunch of pork to make McRibs and make them available for a limited time. At the time they buy the contracts (that is, order the pork), the pigs might not even be alive yet, much less slaughtered and processed. None of this is defending the memory contracts, but the idea of buying things in the future is pretty common in the economy.
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@chaotic_ugly@lemmy.zip 2026-03-13 12:44
The peanut butter you buy a month from now hasn't been manufactured yet but the grocery store already has their order in. The grocery store is borrowing money to pay wages for shifts that haven't been worked yet. The peanut butter manufacturer is placing orders to peanut farms for peanuts that haven't been harvested yet. The shipping truck manufacturer is putting in orders for tires, wheels, locking mechanisms, and trailers that don't exist yet, so on and so forth for almost everything in the supply chain. No great injustice, just business as usual.