Why is it hard to buy things that work well? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#181

Post by elil17 » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:45 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #101

cyounkins wrote: post #91

Great article! As a consumer that cares a lot about buying long-lasting quality products, here are a few resources: Project Farm (youtube.com/projectfarm) - Great independent reviews of tools Mcmaster.com - Higher quality products than you can get at your local hardware store and excellent customer service. When I've gotten the rare incorrect or damaged item, 1 email gets me a refund and a replacement overnighted. Wi…

McMaster also has the best ecommerce tech stack I've ever seen. It should be the case study. It is incredibly fast. The checkout flow is different from anything I've ever used before, it's so fast, you don't even feel like you should be done. And, if you type plain text in the search box, it will translate that to a parametric search (for example, try '1/4"-20 screws', and you'll see that it takes you to the "screws"…

At my workplace, we have what I call "McMaster syndrome" - employees design things around parts available on McMaster because that's the easiest website to order from.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#182

Post by Jensson » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:45 AM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #110

The problem here is actually very basic - markets do not enforce efficiency. Period. The efficient market hypothesis is simply wrong. Strong form efficiency was already formally disproven quite a while ago. Weak form efficiency has been show to only true if P=NP. There is not really a strong need to go into why inefficiencies can persist, etc, because at a baseline, it turns out there is no provable theory that marke…

It isn't about market efficiency at all, people are just incompetent. If people could create good products they would and they would become rich, but they can't. If Samsung suddenly started delivering the same quality as Apple they would make a lot of money long term, everyone knows this and even if it isn't true the people who manage Samsung actually believes it and they try to get there. The reason they can't isn't that they aren't trying but that they don't have competent enough people to get it done. Leaders are a part of "people" btw, so if you say it is structural or organizational bloat, well you fix structural and organizational bloat issues by having competent leaders, so those problems are caused by lack of competent people.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#183

Post by unlikelymordant » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:46 AM UTC

IncRnd wrote: post #177

> There's a cocktail party version of the efficient markets hypothesis I frequently hear that's basically, "markets enforce efficiency, so it's not possible that a company can have some major inefficiency and survive". That's not the efficient market hypothesis but a complete misunderstanding. The hypothesis is that the market (not products as you assume) are efficient, leading to the optimization of share prices to…

Your quote does say its a "cocktail party version" which sort of implies its not going to be very good

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#184

Post by elil17 » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:47 AM UTC

jotm wrote: post #39

chrisweekly wrote: post #4

... or things that work at all? (eg humidifiers, at various price points, maybe 40% of which are even functional when first unboxed)

Boil water on a stove - boom, humidity increased!

Unless you have a gas stove, in which case prolonged boiling could lead to indoor air quality issues (unless you turn your fan on - but then you're drawing in cold air.

If you have an electric stove, boiling water will be less efficient than evaporating water and letting your heating system make up for the loss in sensible heat unless you have an electric furnace.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#185

Post by elil17 » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:49 AM UTC

astrange wrote: post #157

giantg2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or through the erosion of real wages over the past 50 years, consumers have been more or less forced into buying lower priced items. And was this not the promise of free trade and globalization - cheap stuff? Edit: why downvote?

"erosion of real wages" isn't actually calculable since the price of your house doesn't really have anything to do with how many electronics you can own, but it's most likely not true - houses are much bigger and higher quality than 1970, cars are incredibly safer, you can buy infinitely more computing power, most importantly you don't have lead poisoning now.

Economists (imperfectly) take this into account when calculating inflation. In cars, for example, economists estimate the price of individual features (e.g. a power steering wheel, ABS, a cup holder) so that they can accurately account for increases in quality.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#186

Post by turkishlurker » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 3:53 AM UTC

One explanation would be that if you are an "extreme" user, you are bound to find fault with all the offerings on the market. The need to tweak/customize/adapt naturally arises when you have reached a certain level of sophistication and when it does, you can only be satisfied by a product/service appropriately tweaked/customized/adapted.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#187

Post by wittycardio » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 4:00 AM UTC

balaji1 wrote: post #154

Strilanc wrote: post #88

It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article. In particular, the comments seem mostly focused on consumer product build quality whereas the article is more focused on e.g. businesses trying to outsource something (like same day delivery) and getting a worse result even when they pay more than doing it internally. And the cultural obstacle…

You are depressed for other reasons. People read the title and connected more with the title than the hard-to-read and dense article. If anything, call it a click-baity title. It is hard to buy consumer products that work well also. Look at the number of things you order on Amazon, and see how satisfied you are with stuff. All the synthetic material low-quality stuff.

So not only did you not read the article , you are offended at the idea that you should have to read the article at all ?

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#188

Post by wittycardio » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 4:02 AM UTC

emtel wrote: post #139

Maybe I missed it, but I don’t think Dan even attempts to answer the titular question! The article, while quite good, is just a very long list of things that suck, and anecdotes about people who tried to make things suck less. I’ve thought about this question very often, and I think the answer does come back to the market efficiency argument that Dan ridicules at the beginning. I think in many cases, what the market…

The title should probably be something like , "Why are so many successful products so bad ?"

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#189

Post by klodolph » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 4:11 AM UTC

Centigonal wrote: post #176

klodolph wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO It serves a useful purpose! I have to disagree! I simply do not understand what useful purpose it serves—IF we are allowed to assume that our readers have a proficient level of prose literacy. The default assumption, when someone is talking or writing, is that they are communicating their own opinions and thoughts, experiences, anecdotes. I don’t know about you, but when I think back to taking writing classes i…

I feel like I'm missing something here. > The ability to sort out opinions and anecdotes from factual claims and evidence is… well… something you’d expect from a proficient reader! How does a proficient reader separate facts from opinions if good writing doesn't disambiguate facts and opinions? Do they just assume? e.g.: Butter is about as healthy as vegetable oil. Arugula is healthier than lettuce. I can cite a meta…

> How does a proficient reader separate facts from opinions if good writing doesn't disambiguate facts and opinions? Do they just assume?

Facts and opinions are not different qualities of the same claim, but different claims to begin with. “Butter is about 18% water, by weight” is a factual claim and “butter is about as healthy as vegetable oil” is probably opinion because the word “healthy” is, well, often vague and not something people agree on, at least in this context.

> Side note: I went through the original blog post again, and there are lots of examples of Dan Luu doing exactly what I'm writing about, to the point where I'm confused why the original commenter thinks he's not using a different tone based on uncertainty.

Yes, I get a sense that there may be some more cogent complaint that the original commenter has, a complaint which provoked the comment, but I can’t figure out what that complaint is from the comment.

Just that people who complain about tone often have something else to complain about, but tone is more obvious.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#190

Post by ketzo » Tue, Mar 15, 2022, 4:12 AM UTC

Centigonal wrote: post #176

klodolph wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO It serves a useful purpose! I have to disagree! I simply do not understand what useful purpose it serves—IF we are allowed to assume that our readers have a proficient level of prose literacy. The default assumption, when someone is talking or writing, is that they are communicating their own opinions and thoughts, experiences, anecdotes. I don’t know about you, but when I think back to taking writing classes i…

I feel like I'm missing something here. > The ability to sort out opinions and anecdotes from factual claims and evidence is… well… something you’d expect from a proficient reader! How does a proficient reader separate facts from opinions if good writing doesn't disambiguate facts and opinions? Do they just assume? e.g.: Butter is about as healthy as vegetable oil. Arugula is healthier than lettuce. I can cite a meta…

Nothing in Dan Luu’s writing is ever ambiguous. Quite the opposite.

He just writes in the same voice for both researched facts/studies and personal anecdotes. But it’s always very clear which is which, and an informed reader should (IMO) not have a problem differentiating.

The commenter you’re replying to is objecting to unnecessary couching and cloaking of opinion/anecdote. And I think there’s very, very little of that in Dan Luu’s writing — and it comes off as a “matter-of-fact tone.”