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Let's make quality the norm again

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Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#181

Post by ryathal »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #145
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.)

Video games are a good example of an area where the pricing makes no sense. Inflation has risen, and they make like $20 or whatever off a brand new game in 1990s bucks. Video game prices will go up more and more, it also kind of explains to me why prices rarely drop below $59 anymore, used to be on Steam some AAA games could be snagged up for $20 after a year, now you can barely find them on reasonable sales, they ho…

Video games are just another example where the pricing is mostly greed. The market is massively larger than it was in the 90s, digital distribution has massively cut the cost of goods sold, new games are sold with tiered pricing, recuring revenue is now a huge part of a games viability. Game sales aren't the primary income anymore, it's all about keeping whales buying in game items, discounts are only offered when there needs to be a new influx of players to keep whales happy.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#182

Post by autoexec »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #179

Consumers, fundamentally, care about two things: * Price * Features Those are tangible, obvious things. They are not subtle. They do not take months or years to discover or become obvious. They are (mostly) not vague or ambiguous. Does this car have lane assist? Yes or no. Will this car last me 20 years? ...maybe? That's a very hard question to answer. It's messy and complicated and has a lot of clauses to it. So, co…

> Consumers, fundamentally, care about two things: * Price * Features

Consumers also care about accessibility. It doesn't matter to me if product X is amazing and affordable if I can't find it in any store anywhere near me or if amazon never shows it in search results because all they want to push is amazon basics and products made by FSLHVHSLR

If no company anywhere sells what I want, then I have no choice but to compromise and today there is a whole lot of compromising going on. Companies are more interested in selling what is most profitable to them, not what consumers actually want. Very often consumers are forced to buy what little is offered to them. The consumer "voting with their wallet" will always lose when companies also vote with theirs because theirs is much much bigger.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#183

Post by platevoltage »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #145
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.)

Video games are a good example of an area where the pricing makes no sense. Inflation has risen, and they make like $20 or whatever off a brand new game in 1990s bucks. Video game prices will go up more and more, it also kind of explains to me why prices rarely drop below $59 anymore, used to be on Steam some AAA games could be snagged up for $20 after a year, now you can barely find them on reasonable sales, they ho…

On the other hand, Silksong.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#184

Post by platevoltage »

altern8 wrote: post #7

I think about this a lot because I try to never buy anything Chinese or low quality unless I have to. Unfortunately, from my experience artisans aren't willing to do the work anymore, even if you pay them premium. For instance, a carpenter here in Poland that decided to be a carpenter would rather cut up pre-made cabinets to your specs than make them from scratch using wood, even if I pay them 10x. Then, people aren'…

Its not the 90s anymore. China can make stuff, and they make most of your stuff.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#185

Post by hilbert42 »

IslandRebel wrote: post #74
hilbert42 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Now consider what that means for software, a fully unregulated industry. It means some form of credentials…" So what! Until the 20th Century pharmaceuticals/medicines were unregulated (eg: buy laudanum (opium) anywhere without regs and instructions said it was fine to give it to kids). After deaths, disasters and addiction regulations tightened—especially so after birth defects and thalidomide. Now the industry is t…

Existing regulations should cover software in their respective industries. Outside of that what you are asking for is simply onerous and isn't something that can be regulated in a meaningful manner. We've already had opensource projects threatened by the age-check legality nonsense (which cannot be enforced). If you regulate what features can/can't be in an OS you will end up negatively affecting opensource and/or ho…

That's fine; as I've often repeated, we don't necessarily need tight(er) regulations but sophisticated and intelligent ones.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#186

Post by jolt42 »

testdelacc1 wrote: post #180
xingped wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is quite common and is usually referred to as "it's expensive to be poor". That said, unfortunately these days it's very difficult to know which brands are still actually quality anymore and which are the ones still coasting on previous good engineering reputation while currently shipping substandard crap to make an extra buck for the bean counters in charge before the ship sinks.

> it’s expensive to be poor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But…

It really pisses me off there are used car lots that obviously prey on the poor. I asked for their cash price and they wouldn't give me one, or it was ridiculously priced. They just want for people to pay off a debt and all the interest that goes with it.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#187

Post by jolt42 »

testdelacc1 wrote: post #180
xingped wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is quite common and is usually referred to as "it's expensive to be poor". That said, unfortunately these days it's very difficult to know which brands are still actually quality anymore and which are the ones still coasting on previous good engineering reputation while currently shipping substandard crap to make an extra buck for the bean counters in charge before the ship sinks.

> it’s expensive to be poor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But…

I'll admit sometimes I like there is a cheap-o version as I'm not sure how much I'll end up using it.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#188

Post by thereisnospork »

Den_VR wrote: post #164
maxglute wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well skimpflation, with caveat that a remarkable amount to R&D is spend into value engineering to lowest price points, like you don't get to 50 cent FOB tshirt trivially. And frankly it's revolutionary - enabling developing country wages to buy clothing on a single day wage. That said, it's 2026... if you want quality and only want to pay marginal increment, there's tons of Chinese ODMs turn direct to consumer, i.e.…

The world needs more tariffs until there’s non-chinese ODMs selling top quality

The world needs better economic policy and regulation so non Chinese ODMs can compete on price/quality.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#189

Post by StilesCrisis »

ryathal wrote: post #181
giancarlostoro wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video games are a good example of an area where the pricing makes no sense. Inflation has risen, and they make like $20 or whatever off a brand new game in 1990s bucks. Video game prices will go up more and more, it also kind of explains to me why prices rarely drop below $59 anymore, used to be on Steam some AAA games could be snagged up for $20 after a year, now you can barely find them on reasonable sales, they ho…

Video games are just another example where the pricing is mostly greed. The market is massively larger than it was in the 90s, digital distribution has massively cut the cost of goods sold, new games are sold with tiered pricing, recuring revenue is now a huge part of a games viability. Game sales aren't the primary income anymore, it's all about keeping whales buying in game items, discounts are only offered when th…

That's why the industry is thriving, right?

"COGS" for games has absolutely nothing to do with the plastic box on the shelf with a DVD issue. Sony wasted almost the entire PS5 generation chasing GAAS and having almost nothing to show for it.

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