81–90 of 505 posts
The answer is competition. Quality declines when companies no longer have to meaningful compete in the marketplace. The only other solution is regulation and force quality through punishment for noncompliance. Competition works better.
I personally see two effects that are very detrimental here: 1) "Quality brands", where you pay a premium to get high quality/durability products, are economically incentivized to "sell-out" (cash in the brand name by producing as cheaply as possible). This is because customers take some time to catch on, and short-term financials are too often more important than anything else. 2) Increasing trend towards no-name pr…
Punishment is never a good long term solution. Because punishment is related to revenge. And revenge reinforces the punishment - but on the other side.
Perhaps questioning the underlying assumptions we make about products, money and capitalism is an alternative approach:
- money is just a means, not an end. Allowing faceless investors to pump money into brands and then have them force companies to turn a profit at any price (i.e. by decreased quality at higher prices - it's a brand after all). The euphemism for this is "increasing shareholder value". The only value being increased is money.
- why does advertising build on our fears of being "different" (not belonging to our assumed peer group) or "not being happy" (if you buy this product, you'll be as happy as the person shown here in the advertising). Or missing out on something. The euphemism here is "increasing brand awareness". They that shout the loudness will remain memorable.
- why has everything and everyone become a product to be sold and repackage to fit into the latest trends. Intelligence is now also become a product in the form of AI with folks outsourcing their intelligence to a machine "oh AI can do this better than I could so I won't even bother".
Unfortunately we make too many assumptions that it has to be this way. Science and nature have yet found the unifying law of capitalism or brandism, let allow law of influencism.
So until the next bubble bursts and much time is spent saving large bloated inefficient corporations from bankruptcy because interested parties have their fingers in the pie, the game will continue.
The whole thing is becoming a giant game of monopoly with no end. At least monopoly eventually ends with the winner gloating over their success and everyone else quietly walking away.
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The share of household spending on clothing has gone from 10%+ to under 5% in Western countries. When you're spending that much, it's not a surprise that clothing was "BIFL" both in quality and upkeep (repair rather than replace). The overall revealed consumer preference has been "more and cheaper", not "less and higher quality", which still exists as a niche if you are willing to go down the tailoring route, not off…
The thing is mainly there are no quality options available. It's mostly all cheap shit or slightly more expensive, but still equally shit. So how can this reveal preference if there are no options? I would argue the surge in vintage clothing ecosystems is an indication there is an unmet demand.
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Such is the nature of being part of a global supply chain, whilst living in one of the richest countries in the world.
Then why this supply chain hangs by a thread and progressively produces shittier and shittier results?
For example I believe there is a deeper quality that cannot be easily found in a more quality product. Quality can be expressed in many ways and felt throughout the life. But people don't care for that.
They mostly care for cheap and good enough. I don't want to attack that way of life its simply one with tradeoffs like a life with more quality.
More quality can mean more expensive, the need to engage with something a bit more, etc.
Leibl famously needed over 3 months to just draw the hands of one model for "Three Women in Church" it certainly has some quality to it.
In the modern world seldom you will find one that wants to pay for such work or even spending 3 months of work on painting hands.
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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).
I never bought Vimes Boots Theory. Yes, it can be expensive to be poor, but the rich really do consumer more dollars-of-boot per day, because they can afford it. > There’s some amount of gradient between use-once and fully bespoke clothing [...] Bespoke clothing mostly fits you better. It doesn't necessarily last longer. (But you can ask for harder wearing material or longer lasting manufacturing techniques, of cours…
It’s also possible the situation has changed enough with modern manufacturing that it’s no longer as relevant.
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 wish there was a line of brands and even better shops that focused on quality fabrics and sewing processes for clothing that lasts for ages as it used to. They still exist, at least here in Europe. I quit buying cheap clothing a decade ago, getting quality items is much more expensive but at the same time I've had basic t-shirts that I wear most days last me 5-8 years; trousers that are almost 10 years old and th…
Western working class has spent decades complaining about cheap imports from China... while feeding that market with their own money.
Western frequent fliers keep reminiscing about the grandiose pre-deregulation era or air travel, but cry a river when their low-cost carrier of choice actually enforces the limit on cabin baggage.
Everybody hates ads, but no-one is willing to pay a penny for a service they use daily.
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There's lots of high quality Chinese stuff, too. Why do you say it as if quality and Chinese don't go together?
It's an old stereotype - between 1990 and 2010 or so, Chinese manufacturing was usually seen as of a lower quality. This was often unfair and incorrect even then, but it's clearly mad now. Chinese products run the gamut from the lowest to the highest ends in almost every consumer field. But some people hew to old stereotypes.
Now I feel old - get off my lawn.
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How so? Any sort of profession that warrants high quality service requires certifications (bar exam, USMLE, PE, etc) Same goes for products too. It’s not a reasonable solution for the consumers to perform an exhaustive research to get high quality guarantee. I don’t find non official third party all that compelling. See Amazon marketplace as an example.
My local coffee shop makes excellent coffee. They don't need get a third party certification for me to to believe that. Similarly for eg a local carpenter. Or my tailor. The bar exam merely tells you that someone is legally allowed to be a lawyer or some such. They don't tell you, if she's any good. I don't know what USMLE or PE are. > Same goes for products too. It’s not a reasonable solution for the consumers to pe…