The article completely misses the point about the dating apps. It is not that the inferior product wins, but that if your product is so good that people only need one in their lifetime, you will quickly reach the limit on your sales. Planned obsolescence is a well-documented phenomenon in many fields.
Make product worse, get money
81–90 of 176 posts
Re: Make product worse, get money
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Healthy food, grown naturally, not sprayed with chemicals, harvested in the last week, is just not a cost-effective plan for them. It's also not a cost-effective plan for most shoppers who have enough other expenses in their lives that they can't afford their food doubling in price. Most of us are stuck in globally-horrible local maximums, and we aren't going to get out of them without some external push.
In 50 years, the proportion of the budget allocated to food, halved. I'm not saying everyone can have the choice to eat healthy, but probably a small majority has. I live in an area where small, local, sometimes organic producers are gathered to sell their product to the community in a way it is accessible to every budget.
> In 50 years, the proportion of the budget allocated to food, halved.
Sure. But 50 years ago, healthcare and education didn't cost an arm and both legs. In those 5 decades, every single rent-seeker that you need to engage with to live has dipped his hand deeper into our pockets.
> I live in an area where small, local, sometimes organic producers are gathered to sell their product to the community in a way it is accessible to every budget....
You forgot the "For the brief period of time their produce is in season."
Only selling what you have, when you have it removes a lot of costs from food supply chains. If, like the local grocery, those small, local, organic producers had to keep you fed 24/7/365, their prices would go up - by a lot.
I am also pretty confident that those small, local, organic producers aren't the source of most of their customers' caloric demands.
Re: Make product worse, get money
#83Make product worse, get money, go out of business. It's interesting that this article uses the restaurant industry as an example, because it is rife with examples of restaurants that debut to acclaim, enshittify their offerings, and then go out of business as their clientele evaporates. How many software products have gone the same route? How many were initially good, bolted on too many unwanted features, ignored the…
Is google really a monopoly? You can just use another search engine or email provider. I would say it has a good moat in the minds of consumers, but not a good moat in reality.
Something people rarely think about in these discussions is that google acquires all of its actual value, its search indexes, by spidering third party sites. Lots of these sites only allow google to scrape them. (This was a thing well before LLMs existed).
Also they have a near monopoly on web advertising.
Re: Make product worse, get money
#84Most people just have a very limited economic understanding. They can't comprehend anything more complicated than "product sucks, merchant is evil."
Psychologically, they also never admit they're at fault themselves.
People love swiping, but hate being swiped upon. Renters love complaining about prices they are willing to pay – and so on. How many consumers factor in customer support when choosing a carrier? None. They choose on price and then complain when the support sucks.
Re: Make product worse, get money
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is google really a monopoly? You can just use another search engine or email provider. I would say it has a good moat in the minds of consumers, but not a good moat in reality.
Something people rarely think about in these discussions is that google acquires all of its actual value, its search indexes, by spidering third party sites. Lots of these sites only allow google to scrape them. (This was a thing well before LLMs existed). Also they have a near monopoly on web advertising.
> Also they have a near monopoly on web advertising.
Meta/Facebook made only $47 billion in revenue in 2024 vs Google/Alphabet's's $72 billion in advertising revenue for 2024.
Re: Make product worse, get money
#86The reasons given are all contributing factors, but the central issue is this: Business, particularly under capitalism (where ownership is detached from operation) is about making a profit, not making great products or services So price discrimination, corner-cutting, price gauging, vendor lock-in, planned-obsolescence, monopoly power, are all tools to increase profits.
> capitalism (where ownership is detached from operation) That is a really eloquent way to phrase one of my main gripes with capitalist societies. Thanks, I will be stealing it.
Could this be the moment to start using ultra-capitalism?
Re: Make product worse, get money
#87The article misses the most important factor: the customers have no way of knowing they would be getting a better product or extra 25 millimeters of leg room if they paid 3% more. The higher prices could just as well be for completely unrelated reasons (greed, inefficiency, ...). No one is going around measuring and documenting every single difference between products and services, and, even if someone did, almost no…
> Customers have no way of knowing they would be getting a better product or extra 25 millimeters of leg room if they paid 3% more.
If you search on Google Flights, the seat pitch is clearly displayed, or you can use third party tools like Seatmaps.
But many people use airline sites directly, don't understand or care, or as the article correctly asserts, care more about the price than anything else.
Re: Make product worse, get money
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 50 years, the proportion of the budget allocated to food, halved. I'm not saying everyone can have the choice to eat healthy, but probably a small majority has. I live in an area where small, local, sometimes organic producers are gathered to sell their product to the community in a way it is accessible to every budget.
> In 50 years, the proportion of the budget allocated to food, halved. Sure. But 50 years ago, healthcare and education didn't cost an arm and both legs. In those 5 decades, every single rent-seeker that you need to engage with to live has dipped his hand deeper into our pockets. > I live in an area where small, local, sometimes organic producers are gathered to sell their product to the community in a way it is acce…
I live in a part of the world where the healthcare system is also spread across the society in a more equalitarian way than what you describe.
I don't understand your second point. One of my close friends is a farmer, they mostly grow organic apples. They work (insanely hard) across the whole year to prepare the crop and take care of the trees. They are not rich, but it starts to be sustainable. Locally, it's having a community of farmers that grow different things that make you fed across the year, as long as you accept eating exotic food only very occasionally.
Regarding calories, I honestly don't know. What I know for sure is that apples in the 50s had at least an order of magnitude more calories than apples today. Different times, different agricultural practices, different population also, fair.
Obesity has skyrocketed across the whole world. People already eat too much, too much hyper transformed, too much sugar, too many calories.
Re: Make product worse, get money
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In 50 years, the proportion of the budget allocated to food, halved. Sure. But 50 years ago, healthcare and education didn't cost an arm and both legs. In those 5 decades, every single rent-seeker that you need to engage with to live has dipped his hand deeper into our pockets. > I live in an area where small, local, sometimes organic producers are gathered to sell their product to the community in a way it is acce…
I live in a part of the world where the healthcare system is also spread across the society in a more equalitarian way than what you describe. I don't understand your second point. One of my close friends is a farmer, they mostly grow organic apples. They work (insanely hard) across the whole year to prepare the crop and take care of the trees. They are not rich, but it starts to be sustainable. Locally, it's having…
> I don't understand your second point.
When I go to the grocery, food is available to me at any time of year.
Your friend's apples are only available for ~2 months/of the year. The supply chains that feed the world have to work year-round, and all the people that work them expect to get paid. Availability adds to the cost.
> What I know for sure is that apples in the 50s had at least an order of magnitude more calories than apples today
I have a very hard time believing that the average apple from the 50s had 94 * 10 = 940 calories.
Re: Make product worse, get money
#90Make product worse, get money, go out of business. It's interesting that this article uses the restaurant industry as an example, because it is rife with examples of restaurants that debut to acclaim, enshittify their offerings, and then go out of business as their clientele evaporates. How many software products have gone the same route? How many were initially good, bolted on too many unwanted features, ignored the…
As for dating apps... The great thing about the dating app biz is that the competition is universally awful at providing good matches that lead to long term relationships. The same goes for pro match-makers, speed-dating events, etc.. It's a hard problem to predict what makes two people click together, even if you get them to meet face to face. These companies aren't enshittifying their products to make money. They w…
From what I’ve heard, OkCupid’s algorithms used to be really good, then they deliberately made them worse when acquired by Match Group.