It's not sincere. People in different countries do pay more for local, or ethically sourced, or other principled factors but it has to be a reasonable increase.
Putting a ridiculous, almost 2x raise in such a way and pretending it's a gotcha is disingenuous.
Nobody said the conclusion is "better". Tons of academic papers contain faulty conclusions. But as long as it is not intentional fraud (which does get blurry at times), I appreciate researchers who put in honest work to reach some conclusion, based on evidence.
This article is also an example. You can disagree with their methodology, but I'll choose this article over posts with words like "more", "do", "don't" with no evidence attahched whatsoever.
but these increases in price aren't set arbitrarily - they're calculated based on cost and profit margin. you can't just claim that a 2x price increase is ridiculous with no context.
Well, it seems a little silly of this company to ask whether their customers would willingly bear the entire cost burden of supporting local businesses, while keeping their own profit margins just as high as ever. In a different world (one where the company owner thinks it's virtuous to buy local), they'd split the cost with the customer. That might still correspond to a 40% price increase and the conversion rate might still be zero, but at least it wouldn't be intellectually dishonest on the face of it.
I mean, most physical goods don't have high profit margins to begin with. Those 100% price hikes might still have thin margins if it's all done domestically. That's just the reality of spending decades removing all domestic scales of economy and giving it to China.
Putting a ridiculous, almost 2x raise in such a way and pretending it's a gotcha is disingenuous.