481–490 of 506 posts
This is a false pretense. Quality was never the norm. What is no longer the norm is getting first-hand experience with a product before you buy it. Everything comes in the mail and it's a surprise to the consumer after they buy it. That's nuts!
Seriously. Did this person never have to fix relatives' IE6?
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It's a common trope but I think it is a 2020 The Atlantic article being half remembered https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/how-mckins... History shows profit maximizing behavior in letters dating to 1900 BCE Egypt and 1800 BCE Anatolia by Assyrian merchant houses. I appreciate the analysis you're making, again, but it is low resolution. There's a lot more nuance to what you're saying and it definitely…
The cultural shift happened largely because investment banking, venture capital, and leveraged buyout raiders didn't really exist before in any meaningful way compared to today. People should be careful by the way, especially here, trashing "private equity" altogether when they mean the leveraged buyout folks. Venture capital is a type of private equity, too. The Chicago school hadn't yet convinced everyone that fidu…
Besides the circularity in saying that a cultural shift happened because something changed, Investment Banking is a thing since at least 1932 when the Glass-Steagall act was passed to enforce separation of concerns between "commercial banks" and "investment banks".
Venture capital dates from at least the 1950s:
The Venture Capital Revolution https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.15.2.145
"The first true venture capital firm was American Research and Development (ARD), established in 1946 by MIT President Karl Compton, General Georges F. Doriot"
As for Leveraged Buyouts, I highly recommend this analysis of 2000 cases done in 1993 which is far from any categorical conclusions on LBOs being a straightforward phenomenon that can be explained away in four sentences.
The Determinants of Leveraged Buyout Activity: Free Cash Flow vs. Financial Distress Costs https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6261.1993.tb05138.x
It explicitly asks:
1. Do LBOs create wealth, or do they merely redistribute wealth?
2. Does the debt taken on in LBOs cause problems in periods of economic distress?
My point being essentially: don't hand wave historical analysis away. Get into it, read the papers, and the primary sources. History is fascinating and full of interesting questions about why things have come to be how they are in society. Whenever I feel intrigued by some historical question, and I decide to question the facile explanations that come to mind, I am endlessly fascinated by how complex and nuanced things are, and by how much analysis has been published starting out with the same questions as I asked myself.
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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…
One signal (not fool proof, but often a good signal): what length of warranty do they offer? If some brand has a warranty significantly above the average for the product type, that can be a good sign. And I'm not talking about offering extended warranty programs or such here. Just the basic warranty everyone gets when they buy the product.
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Absolutely. And it’s a trade off that doesn’t necessarily go against Ikea. Frankly, I think it’s one of the top reasons people choose Ikea furniture. One of the genius things Ikea did was have little staged rooms in their store. They do a great job of these and lots of them look like rooms I’d want to spend time in. You see how that various pieces can be combined into something very inviting.
The subject was “you should buy quality items with longevity”. My point is that’s not a reasonable demand on consumers, or even producers, until the restrictions on creating accessible , quality items have been resolved.
200 years ago, you could buy a table from that guy or the other guy or make one. Today there are endless choices (including local craftspeople and DIY) and sometimes the right choice is a $10 table made from cardboard and glue.
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I recommend using a calculator rather than a chatbot. (Speaking of quality.)
It wrote a program and used publicly available numbers as the inputs. We're not in the "how many r's in strawberry" era anymore.
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.)
The same forces that we can see as plain as day in U.S. healthcare are affecting... everything.
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The cultural shift happened largely because investment banking, venture capital, and leveraged buyout raiders didn't really exist before in any meaningful way compared to today. People should be careful by the way, especially here, trashing "private equity" altogether when they mean the leveraged buyout folks. Venture capital is a type of private equity, too. The Chicago school hadn't yet convinced everyone that fidu…
> The cultural shift happened largely because investment banking, venture capital, and leveraged buyout raiders didn't really exist before in any meaningful way compared to today. Besides the circularity in saying that a cultural shift happened because something changed, Investment Banking is a thing since at least 1932 when the Glass-Steagall act was passed to enforce separation of concerns between "commercial banks…
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There’s a special place in hell for people who would buy a dog food brand only to make worse dog food…
The steelman is that by lowering the cost, more pets can afford better food than what they currently eat. No comment about whether that is reflected in the consumer facing price or in profits.
At a certain point you're just asking the consumer "how much are you wiling to suffer before you go without? Let's find out."
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If you watch The Price is Right episodes from the 80s, it is clear that household items have only had mild inflation. Many items are prices a little lower than today but not outrageously so. On the other hand, the quality of the items is often much nicer. So someone might win a $500 desk, but that desk is hand-made out of hardwood. Today you can still buy a $500 desk but it will be IKEA quality. A product of comparab…
For my household I built my own cartoonishly big 200×80×4cm oak desk. The oak was €350 at the hardware store and only needed finishing. The height adjustable legs add some extra cost, but the whole was maybe €700 tops and a day of work.
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There's two Henckels listed: https://ledger.worseonpurpose.com/brands/henckels-internatio... https://ledger.worseonpurpose.com/brands/zwilling The first one is on their watchlist and probably the brand you're thinking of?
The first one, "Henckels", openly says that their stuff is from China. But the second link, "Zwilling" says "Approved". But boy was I disappointed that their "Zwilling Peak" branded ceramic hybrid frying pan for $100 says "Made in China".
Also...
> But boy was I disappointed that their "Zwilling Peak" branded ceramic hybrid frying pan for $100 says "Made in China"
But does it work? My twenty year old B&W speakers were built in China but they do the job and do it really well.