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3 comments

[–] Sarcastaway 1 points (+1|-0)

This is an interesting one. I don't think there's necessarily a conspiracy there though. I'll cover a few reasons why I think so.

1) Sales industries don't lend themselves well to money laundering. They're too easy to spot out. If a mattress store is making up sales, its pretty easy for someone monitoring the store to see that their stated sales don't match up with the number of mattresses actually entering and leaving the business. Service industries on the other hand are easy to launder money through. A physical therapist's office could easily write up a cheep procedure as a more expensive one, and put the difference in cash into the register.

2) Game theory explains why businesses within the same industry tend to open up across the street from one another. This is a great, simple explanation. Mattress firm's decision to put two franchises in the same immediate area is simply their way of monopolizing, and discouraging new competition in the area. If a new store opens in that same area, it would only be one third of the competition, rather than half. This means that all other things equal, it will always be more profitable for a new competitor to choose a location outside of mattress firm's local monopoly.

3) Finally, mattress sales is a safe business model. Commissioned salesmen mean that slow sales periods don't hurt the business as much as an industry where employees are paid hourly. Safe business plans mean business loans are easier to get, which makes a few mattress stores a great long-term strategy to get a foothold in a local real estate market with some high sqft units.

Even considering all of that, they still might be laundering money. Its just not the optimal business plan to do so. This might actually be a smart cover though, since investigators usually look at the service industry for that sort of activity.

I see you didn't watch to the end. :)
He starts off explaining the conspiracy, and why it makes sense to some. But then spends the rest of the video debunking it, and concludes that it is unlikely to be a conspiracy.

[–] Sarcastaway 1 points (+1|-0)

I actually did watch to the end, though its possible I ended up repeating what he said when I dove into the business model stuff. I didn't mean the comment as a counterpoint to his argument, just expanding on some of the stuff that he omitted (probably because most people would find it boring lol). Though in a way I suppose it might be a counterpoint, since I do think that industry would be one of the hardest to hide laundering in, and therefore the least likely to attract attention.

Another potential conspiracy here is the mass purchase of US land by foreign nationals, but I won't drag you down that rabbit hole.