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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

#112
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FYI you don't seem to be aware that you are shadowbanned.

there is no such thing here

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

#113

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.

Or like made for Costco Levi's, Adidas, etc. Cheaper made in many ways, but looks OG from 2 feet away.

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

#114

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.

Consumer behavior is absolutely the problem, but it's not just greed, it's also factors like blind brand or retailer loyalty. I have friends that own pick up trucks, tools, sporting goods and clothing that express a personal brand but barely get used.

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

#115
post #112
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI you don't seem to be aware that you are shadowbanned.

there is no such thing here

Yes there is. Shadowbanned users have all of their comments automatically dead until they get at least 1 vouch.

You can verify this. Create an account using Tor and post a comment. All accounts created with Tor are shadowbanned. Go to that comment link with your main account, which must have showdead=yes in the options.

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

#116
post #105
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a capitalist fund something that will obviously not make money, like a random Finnish dude's operating system, when there's already Microsoft Windows?

Jorma Jaakko Ollila didn't seem to have that problem. (Explaining the joke: Finnish CEO of Nokia, responsible for the Symbian operating system)

There was nothing like it on phones though.

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

#117
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can only choose between what is made available to me by the market The existence of that desire is an untapped market opportunity. And yes there are ranges of quality in almost every product you can think of from fishing rods, to furniture, to diapers. And theses brands clearly compete with cheaper options and still have strong businesses.

> The existence of that desire is an untapped market opportunity. Only if you can outcompete the giant mega-conglomerate incumbents. And you can't. If you start trying to sell in an area, they can drop the prices on their competing products in that area to below cost until you run out of money. Or they can just buy you for more than you'd ever get in profit, then take advantage of your reputation for quality to sell…

> giant mega-conglomerate

Is this supposed to refer to a specific noun? Or is it just a signifier for “powerful bad things out of my control”?

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

#119
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not challenging your marketing presumption; I've noticed, and seen pointed out, the same thing. As a side note, years ago Häagen-Dazs was better (high milk-fat, etc) than the other widely-available brands. It's now owned by Nestlé, so I don't buy it anymore. How much has it been enshittified?

Just from the base ingredients they still look fine. >cream, skim milk, cane sugar, egg yolks, ground vanilla beans, vanilla extract Compare that with Ben and Jerry's which lists sugar water third on their ingredients list and water fourth.

Ben and Jerry's enshittification makes me sad. Interestingly enough, I was told when I visited the Vermont (original, and now theme-park-ish) plant that they still use the original recipes there.

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

#120

One massive unmentioned counterexample: High quality Chinese tools continue to proliferate and sucker-punch these brands for being so egregious with quality. They are now the high quality standard if you know what brands to look for, and not because their competition got worse as mentioned here, they are simply iterating and improving and making better tools and designs than they did 10 years ago. Sometimes you are g…

Your example is nonsense.

So someone cloned the market quality leader and you are suggesting that means the design, engineering and QA in the original isn’t valuable?

Show me those tools in 10 years.

The process of working out how to make them great is what you pay for.

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