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Let's make quality the norm again

forbrukerradet.no

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Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#21

Post by jdw64 »

It would be nice if quality became a standard, but the problem is that the world has become too complex. On top of that, I think the disappearance of friction is a big part of it.

In the past, if a garment factory was located in a certain country and the quality was poor, it was often directly tied to that country's reputation. But as the world began to lose friction and entered the era of globalization, much of the work was passed down to subcontractors, and the big problem is that consumer complaints don't get passed down to the subcontractors either.

And within this structure, multiple subcontractors can't survive; as subcontractors grow, they begin to centralize into one. In such a structure, it's not that the original contractor controls the brand quality of the subcontractor. Rather, the subcontractor that has grown huge begins to control the quality ceiling of the entire market.

On top of that, for a company to sustain continuous growth, a given product must not last too long, right? Because a product that can be used for 20 or 30 years means people won't have to buy that product line again.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#22

Post by eru »

PMunch wrote: post #6
epolanski wrote: post #2

There's few things where the drop in quality is astronomical, one of them being clothing. Clothes used to last a life time till few decades ago. Right now you buy stuff that after the first wash already looks worn out, terrible or starts falling apart. Major known brands are guilty of this too, often regardless of price. So people end up with closets filled of junk that they look terrible in anyway. I wish there was…

> Major known brands are guilty of this too, often regardless of price. I think this is part of the problem. Everyone wants high-quality (for the most part), but no-one wants to pay more than necessary. If known brand is no longer an indicator of quality, how do you determine that you want to spend say 2-5x the price on something? Reading reviews and such gets you part of the way, but they often focus on new products…

You can look for reviewer that care about the same things you care about?

> Besides, who has time to wade through reviews for every purchase?

Claude does! And most purchases I make are repeat purchases, so I don't have to read the reviews again.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#23

Post by iamflimflam1 »

austin-cheney wrote: post #11

There are economic impacts to raising quality: 1. Higher quality requires better trained technicians. That means fewer people will be able to participate due to any of missing experience, costs of training/education, and opportunity costs. 2. Higher quality generally requires third party certification, such as the CE or FCC identifiers on electronic equipment. Certification costs time and money resulting in a form ex…

As far as I can see the linked report does not mention software at all. It is all about physical products.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#25

Post by jdw64 »

eru wrote: post #14
juleiie wrote: post #4

The way I see it we all have 30-60 modern slaves working for each one of us. More or less depending on the country and personal consumption. So I don’t have such determination in complaining about the quality of the goods that I participated in exploited labour of. It’s all working somehow more or less. Seems like it could stop any moment. The continuous decrease in quality is rather the least of my worries. What wor…

People in poor countries have gotten massively richer over the last few decades. Especially those that participate in global trade, ie those that you could even call 'your slaves'. After all, some poor soul in North Korea who doesn't trade with you can hardly slave away to your benefit. More specifically, people in PR China have gotten massively richer since the late 1970s. How does that square with your slavery thes…

No. China is a colonial structure of extreme 1-tier cities, 2-tier cities, and the lower cities beneath them. It's called hukou... That's also why ordinary Chinese young people don't want to go down to the provinces.

People in China's first-tier cities live well and are more up to date than almost anywhere, but in the lower cities, they are not free. I usually think that popular literature reflects a country's social conditions, and even in China's xianxia, there are ranks, and people act according to those ranks. To say that all of China has become wealthy would be an overstatement, given that there are many problems starting with the migrant worker issue. Of course, China is a great power, and the wealthy programmers in first-tier cities are extraordinarily talented.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#27

Post by iamflimflam1 »

piker wrote: post #3

While it does relate to price discovery--i.e., some folks just aren't willing to pay for an additional unit of quality at 10x--my theory is that the decline in quality is another hidden form of inflation. Thing continues to cost X even though regulations have increased costs Y, ship production to China and scrimp on the inputs. (Or have market forces do that for you.)

To me, this is why we have regulation.

The CE mark in Europe and the UL mark in the US is supposed to provide a floor on quality.

That floor can be increased if we as a society decides that this is required.

You might be unwilling to pay for this increased quality, but you don't have a choice.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#28

Post by eru »

altern8 wrote: post #18
eru wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's lots of high quality Chinese stuff, too. Why do you say it as if quality and Chinese don't go together?

When I go to any store, the Chinese version is ALWAYS lower quality. I've yet to see the opposite.

Where are you going to shop? And how do you know something is the 'Chinese version'? It's not like for example Apple advertises where they assemble their products.

For a concrete example, we get very good rice varieties specifically from certain parts of China. (But here in Singapore people also really care about rice. You generally can't buy good and fresh rice in the middle of the Polish countryside for example.) And, yes, for this product the 'Chinese' variety is superior to eg generic Thai rice.

I put 'Chinese' in scare-quotes, because just like you don't just drink 'French wine' when you know what you are doing, you don't just eat 'Chinese' rice.

For a lot of tea drinking paraphernalia, the most top of the line items also come from China. Even if you are into, say, Japanese tea.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#29

Post by clan »

epolanski wrote: post #2

There's few things where the drop in quality is astronomical, one of them being clothing. Clothes used to last a life time till few decades ago. Right now you buy stuff that after the first wash already looks worn out, terrible or starts falling apart. Major known brands are guilty of this too, often regardless of price. So people end up with closets filled of junk that they look terrible in anyway. I wish there was…

I thought I "knew" this but this T-Shirt video let me down the rabbit hole: https://youtu.be/CMoZjcpgivM

Which means I now feel obligated to recommend:

https://youtube.com/@theironsnail

https://youtube.com/@shiftfashiongroup

Both have great videos on garment quality. But with the inevitable caveat that they are in the business themselves. I take it as an insiders perspective and watch out for content marketing (while being tainted!).

It seems to be easier to find better clothes if you are a bit of a hipster type. Those kind of stores still care for quality. My friend has such a shop and tells me that even for them it gets harder to source good vendors as it is a continuous race to the bottom.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#30

Post by Sharlin »

eru wrote: post #12
epolanski wrote: post #2

There's few things where the drop in quality is astronomical, one of them being clothing. Clothes used to last a life time till few decades ago. Right now you buy stuff that after the first wash already looks worn out, terrible or starts falling apart. Major known brands are guilty of this too, often regardless of price. So people end up with closets filled of junk that they look terrible in anyway. I wish there was…

You can go to a tailor and get custom stuff, if you want to. In fact, thanks to the internet it has never been easier.

There’s some amount of gradient between use-once and fully bespoke clothing, and most people’s economic means are positioned somewhere on that gradient. Indeed it’s a U curve of sorts – cheap clothing can be surprisingly expensive (see also the Vimes Boots Theory).
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