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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

#251

Post by AlexandrB »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #91
Gigachad wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition partially causes this though. When you have 100 brands selling the same thing it became a race to the lowest price.

My experience is competition invokes two races happening at the same time, one for lowest price and one for highest quality. You can get a cheap car or really high quality car. Same goes for clothes, restaurants, basically anything where there is lots of market choices and competition.

The upper end of a lot of these product categories is often populated with overpriced junk that's popular for conspicuous consumption reasons. Clothing is the prime example, but a lot of modern fine dining is also trash (who actually enjoys eating flavoured foam?). So there's actually three races: lowest price, highest quality, and highest brand value.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#252

Post by asdff »

myrmidon wrote: post #49

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…

Something I've noticed is every maybe 3-4 years there's a new "hot person athleisure" brand that appears, prices at a premium, bombards social media, drapes every single person you see running outside in your city in full sets from it, before getting turned out and replaced by basically the same exact thing with a different name.

So they've gotten quite good at the pump n dump of getting everyone in the spin class on some new $300 polyester outfit every two weeks. It is probably brutally formulaic how refined the playbook is for these sorts of companies.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#253

Post by nayuki »

In certain personal projects, I have the opposite philosophy where I don't want quality. I got addicted to designing models and 3D-printing them a year ago. Over time, I learned to reduce the amount of safety factor and make items just strong enough for their application - which saves material and printing time. I wouldn't skimp on something like a carrying handle for the printer, where failure would mean damaging the printer. But I would reduce the amount of plastic used in things like art pieces (3DBenchy - who needs structural strength?), end caps for various objects, prototypes for dimensioning. Moreover, sometimes I'm happy to see my parts break because I was thinking of redesigning it or did so already, hence I would be itching to print the new version. Aside from that, just knowing I can reprint a part anytime (without modifications) makes me much less worried about breaking or losing a part.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#254

Post by pasc1878 »

Animats wrote: post #210
pydry wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demand collateral

That's what bonds are for. US customs requires prepaid bonds for other things. Importers who don't have enough assets would have to post a bond to cover repairs for the product. They get it back at 10 years.

A way to get the right to repair for the rest of the world.

Apple/MS/Google would have to keep their products working for 10 years.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#255

Post by Maxatar »

narag wrote: post #144
pif wrote: post #88

Quality was never the norm: cheap always beat quality with a hand tied behind his back! 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. E…

Even if you don't buy from China directly, you can't prevent local brands outsourcing their production, because all of them do It.

This is entirely untrue. Almost anywhere you live in the U.S. you can find local brands with local production.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#256

Post by asdff »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #166
nradov wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make any sense. The most expensive cars are also the least reliable. Rich people have multiple cars so when the Bentley has an electrical glitch they just drive the Porsche.

Quality means different things to different people. But the fact that Bentleys and Porsche exist support that case that not everything in a competitive markets drives things to the lowest cost product.

At the end of the day, people still end up sucking it up and buying it, so the market can only be so efficient. Every hobby I've had, all sorts of different stuff only anchored in the fact you have to buy gear, the common theme is everyone is constantly pissed off at the companies making the gear. It is very much an abusive relationship.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#257

Post by Thlom »

jerf wrote: post #169
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.

Everything has become a lemon market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons Even if a brand stays solid for 100 years, for all I know as I'm standing there in the store deciding whether to buy something, private equity bought them two quarters ago and hollowed them out. Harvard MBAs/private equity sees brand reputation as just another resource to be converted into money. If I were a billionaire my dream…

Yeah. On various "Buy it for life" forums it's a daily occurence that someone mentions a brand they bought 5 years ago and then someone chimes in that they were sold or restructured last year and now it's no longer "buy it for life".

Some brands kind of split up so products sold in one market is cheap knockoffs while products sold in the home market is still high quality manufactured at the old factory with 100 years old machinery and experienced workers. If you want to buy quality you've got to do deep research first.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#258

Post by budman1 »

jolt42 wrote: post #186
testdelacc1 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There are two kinds of lots. 'normal' lots will sell a car, and the financing comes from a finance company. could be a bank, could be a credit union, could be a business that provides money to car purchasers. the normal lot has markup on the price, and also gets a kickback from the finance company. the car buyer does not pay, the finance company has a problem.

'buy here, pay here' lots sell a car, and do the financing. They buy cars at auction, fix them if they have to, then sell them. The down payment money usually covers the auction cost of the car. Then every 2 weeks, the buyers drops by with a payment. The buyer stops paying, the car is repossessed. And then it is sold again. The dealer wins in both directions; the buyer pays a lot of money in finance charges, and if it is repossessed then you don't have to buy new inventory at the auction.

Poor people with bad credit way over pay for cars both ways. One a little worse than the other.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#259

Post by zelphirkalt »

pif wrote: post #88

Quality was never the norm: cheap always beat quality with a hand tied behind his back! 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. E…

I don't think it is true, that no one wants to pay a penny for services they use. I know at least one counter example, because I pay for search (Kagi), LLM usage (Kagi assistant), VPN, and support various good causes and content creators.

But I think your point is the vast majority, and that point probably stands, and indeed is a huge problem.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#260

Post by maerF0x0 »

throwup238 wrote: post #198
tombert wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should do that. I have almost 900 Steam games, the vast majority of which I have never touched. Over the years with sales and Humble Bundles, I've just hoarded the games because I might someday want to play it. Instead all I seem to do is replay Donkey Kong Country 2 and Streets of Rage 2.

Just have AI agents play them for you and have Opus write a summary. AI to the rescue!

Steam is in big trouble the day I can tell Claude to make me a game, and it can for few $ of tokens than the title would be on Steam.
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