241–250 of 269 posts
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Every couple of days on HN, I learn of something else you can't do in California. That, plus absurd rent, makes me really glad I don't live there.
Have you seen some of the things people do on their mattresses? I certainly wouldn't want to sleep on one secondhand without having it cleaned first.
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I can't parse this-- yes, a TV failing after 5 years is bad. Did you mean.. the equally low end TVs were a lot better than the black friday no-name deals? (which, from what I've seen is not true.. often black friday deals ARE brand names). Or are you saying the replacement after 5 years, a low end, was much better than the previous one it replaced? But you said they were both better, not the newer one was better.
I left off a crucial statement. I bought two lowend 32 inch TVs five years ago. If I remember correctly, they were about $350. I replaced them with TCL Roku 32 inch TVs for $169 (regular price). The Roku TVs were much better - smaller bezel, better pictures, and the Roku smart TV platform is the best you're going to find as far as features, interface, etc.
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Regions that spend more money on healthcare have little if any benefit from that investment. http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Report%20File... ~50% of all medicine prescribed in the US is useless to harmful. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/many-commonly-u... So, no US healthcare is very much dominated by Lemons. PS: Modern medicine delivers most of it's benefit from fairly inexpensive treat…
Not only are half medications useless to harmful, most of the time side effects aren't ever disclosed. I'm still bitter about this due to being prescribed medication I would have never had taken if the potential side effects we're disclosed.
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You can easily test TV brands by going to a store and looking at them. You can't really test different mattress brands in a store; yes, you can lie on them, but in my experience at least, that doesn't give a very good prediction of what sleeping on the mattress long term will be like. The result is a standard asymmetric information scenario: the seller knows much more than the customer about the actual quality of the…
Another small observation - the properties you described (asymmetric information, obfuscation, and a necessary purchase) apply to many parts of the healthcare market. I wonder whether it means that this market is dominated by lemons.
The main problem I see with the health care market is just what I said above: the people who are paying for the services are not the same as the people who are receiving them. This means that the price signals the market is sending are not well matched with the actual value of the services to the people receiving them. Standard microeconomics says that such a market will be highly inefficient, which I think the health care market generally is. But "inefficient" is not quite the same as "dominated by lemons".
Mattress-packing via machine pix: https://twitter.com/machinepix/status/965691925712875521 Instead of merely airing the bed each morning I run a dehumidifer. Hopefully this will reduce mould & mites. Now HN can tell me why my personal mattress hack is a bad idea.
This is why it's hilarious that they offer return policies. You really think you're going to coax your mattress back into the box?
Surprising that an article about mattress in a box companies can be written without mentioning T&N. Tuft & Needle probably was the first one to come out with this concept, and probably is still the best priced one. I have two T&N queen mattresses for more than 4 yrs. Been very happy with these in terms of comfort and durability. Never going back to any of the 4S mattresses. No reason for me to try other mattress in a…
> Tuft & Needle probably was the first one to come out with this concept Nope. That was Nest. Or, at least, Nest came out with it a year before T&N. But they also failed to get a mention in the article.
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Regions that spend more money on healthcare have little if any benefit from that investment. http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Report%20File... ~50% of all medicine prescribed in the US is useless to harmful. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/many-commonly-u... So, no US healthcare is very much dominated by Lemons. PS: Modern medicine delivers most of it's benefit from fairly inexpensive treat…
Not only are half medications useless to harmful, most of the time side effects aren't ever disclosed. I'm still bitter about this due to being prescribed medication I would have never had taken if the potential side effects we're disclosed.
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I bought the wrong size $250 Zinus mattress from amazon and tried to return it. They refunded my money and told me to just keep the mattress.
Serious question - how were you planning to ship it back? If it's a foam mattress, it doesn't exactly go back in the original box, because it's vacuum packed and expands after opening.
So stupid question. Are mattresses in a box actually viable? What changed in recent years that make it work? I assumed you'd just end up with a mattress with messed up springs.
The mattresses are memory foam and/or latex and don't have springs in them.
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You can easily test TV brands by going to a store and looking at them. You can't really test different mattress brands in a store; yes, you can lie on them, but in my experience at least, that doesn't give a very good prediction of what sleeping on the mattress long term will be like. The result is a standard asymmetric information scenario: the seller knows much more than the customer about the actual quality of the…
> The result is a standard asymmetric information scenario I think you nailed it with that. But now the question is: can we do something about it?
Note that branding is not necessarily a solution to this problem, except possibly in the short term. That is, a seller can work to establish a brand reputation--which, btw, will generally (by standard game theory arguments) include costly signaling, such as expensive advertising, that sellers of lemons cannot duplicate. But as soon as the brand reputation is established, the seller has an incentive to take advantage of it by gradually reducing quality. Buyers know that this incentive exists, which limits the degree to which they are willing to believe even costly signaling; and therefore establishing a brand reputation is not a long-term stable solution to asymmetric information.
The other potential solution is for credible third parties to exist who give unbiased and accurate quality ratings to the various sellers. But this, of course, is vulnerable to being gamed: sellers have an incentive to offer rewards to the third parties in exchange for more favorable ratings. This then becomes just another version of the brand reputation situation above: buyers know that the third parties will be tempted to sell better ratings to sellers, which limits the degree to which those ratings will be believed.