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Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

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Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#31

Post by bitmasher9 »

theturtletalks wrote: post #30

I call this the cycle of disruption. A company makes a really good product as first challenging incumbents. They get so big, they eventually become the incumbent. All this time, they’re probably losing money on the product or breaking even. Eventually, investors will want returns on their investment. This will first happen with prices increases to save the quality of the product. Once they can’t raise prices anymore,…

Once a product becomes so big it cannot increase in market share the only way to increase the total amount of profit it generates it by reducing the cost to produce the product or increasing the price.

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#32

Post by Urahandystar »

LtWorf wrote: post #28
bsenftner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a little research study back in 2003 where I went to various grocers and purchased the same product at these grocers and compared. Walmart has larger boxes, and less contents, universally, for pretty much everything in a box, and they charge 1/3 more for their 2/3rds of what you get everywhere else. They make nearly 50% more profit from that little slight of hand. And try discussing this with any shoppers and t…

I've met CS PhD students in AI (a field that almost exclusively uses python) be completely unable to start a python script on their machine.

Well obviously you just ask an LLM.

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#33

Post by fifticon »

inigyou wrote: post #2

I've come to the conclusion this proliferates because it's very hard to start a business. If there was tons of competition the market would decide.

It makes sense to ask WHY this is hard. People can disagree endlessly on why. But a big part is, that antitrust/monopoly legislation has been almost completely dismantled and detoothed within the last 35 years, starting back with Reagan, and accelerating through the 90's when Clinton was at the wheel. The tiny bit that is still left, is only enforced either when parties fail to pay the bribe, or are bribed to enforce it, by other actors. Once you allow markets to consolidate into a single monolith, any new competitors will only be allowed to live, until they become big enough for the established incumbent to notice and then squish, with their unlimited access to resources. There is little incentive to start a competing business, if you know the trajectory is "IF SUCCESS THEN SQUISH".

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#34

Post by bbqbbqbbq »

inigyou wrote: post #2

I've come to the conclusion this proliferates because it's very hard to start a business. If there was tons of competition the market would decide.

I don't think you can just say the market would decide when it is so easy to hide corner cutting and sell the thing cheaper.

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#35

Post by ramgine »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #31
theturtletalks wrote: post #30

I call this the cycle of disruption. A company makes a really good product as first challenging incumbents. They get so big, they eventually become the incumbent. All this time, they’re probably losing money on the product or breaking even. Eventually, investors will want returns on their investment. This will first happen with prices increases to save the quality of the product. Once they can’t raise prices anymore,…

Once a product becomes so big it cannot increase in market share the only way to increase the total amount of profit it generates it by reducing the cost to produce the product or increasing the price.

This seems like what he said but less words

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#37

Post by skeater15 »

I find it odd how corporate greed is always the focal point. But its never consumer greed. The consumer is the one who dictate's a market. So cheap, low quality products are the direct result of consumers paying for a less expensive product. The consumer has proven it doesn't care about quality. So as much as corporations are greedy so are consumers.

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#38

Post by mosburger »

comrade1234 wrote: post #3

I read years ago about a drill which was sold at Walmart with the same sku as in higher-end stores but the Walmart version had plastic gears. This was due to pricing pressure by Walmart on the manufacturer. Me, personally, I seek out first Swiss brands then German brands when buying most things. I'm willing to pay extra. In fact I'm a little pissed off this week because I ordered some oxygen absorbers off a Swiss web…

I'm pretty sure that this sort of thing happens for stuff in big box home improvement stores like Home Depot and Lowe's, too. Things like plumbing fixtures that appear to be identical to counterparts in smaller stores will have off-by-one or suffixed product numbers, and are made with cheaper plastic internal parts than when purchased elsewhere.

Re: Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality

#40

Post by brookst »

skeater15 wrote: post #37

I find it odd how corporate greed is always the focal point. But its never consumer greed. The consumer is the one who dictate's a market. So cheap, low quality products are the direct result of consumers paying for a less expensive product. The consumer has proven it doesn't care about quality. So as much as corporations are greedy so are consumers.

Exactly this. Oh no, these airline seats are cramped and miserable and were backed in like sardines, what’s wrong with these airlines, but I’ll buy whatever ticket is the cheapest.
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