101–110 of 357 posts
It's weird how many people here will shout against any (assumed) critic of capitalism. "So you want to live in North Korea???". No, I don't. What I want is a system where we can get quality products that are not manufactured by slaves on the other side of the world, and that didn't require burning 3 bathtubs of gasoline. And our system definitely ain't it.
Wow, you're spending $420 on shipping? How far away are they keeping those slaves?
Quality (or the lack thereof) as a hidden property seems to be a man-made artifact. Are there any examples in nature (excluding mankind) coming up with this? Evolution doesn't seem to choose this path. Why do we?
It's weird how many people here will shout against any (assumed) critic of capitalism. "So you want to live in North Korea???". No, I don't. What I want is a system where we can get quality products that are not manufactured by slaves on the other side of the world, and that didn't require burning 3 bathtubs of gasoline. And our system definitely ain't it.
Sure you could imagine something better. But such a system could very easily have fatal flaws you didn't imagine. In fact, North Korea started as just such a utopian ideal.
You could also argue that we used to have a system that was better than this. But if that system ultimately became this one, than reverting to the previous state would likely at some point result in the current state occurring again.
So in a sense "Do you want to live in North Korea?" is the only valid question.
This is like people complaining about how air travel sucks compared to the time you could get a rib roast carved in the aisle in the 1960s. Markets have determined that people prefer cheaper, shoddier sofas compared to expensive high quality sofas. If you don't believe that, then go into business as a high quality sofa factory.
You can't, because your competitors have well-staffed marketing departments that can convince people their shit sofas are actually quality, sell them significantly cheaper than you could sell yours. They have more experience at this, much wider reach than you or any other upstart. It's hard to compete on quality when dishonesty is legal.
How is "modern capitalism" to blame? Modern capitalism allowed a small business to sell you the higher quality option, and you were able to direct your purchasing power to the product you wanted. If you convince more consumers to do the same (like you are) big brands will loose money and change. That's capitalism. The best term I can come up with to describe the phenomenon you dislike is _modern consumerism_ (althoug…
The capitalist part is that the new options aren’t even cheaper anymore, but the manufacturer has cheapened out on material quality “because it earns more money”. However, one can blame capitalism, but the soviets also used to cheap out on material quality, shops, distribution, wages and maximize bribery.
The wonderful thing about the free market is that consumers have choice. There is indeed a large market for high quality products at a higher price. Old brands become shitty, and new brands pop up. Bernie Sanders, a famous modern-day socialist, is famous for saying we don’t need so many brands of deodorant: https://fortune.com/2024/02/12/too-many-products-bernie-sand... This is where I fundamentally disagree. Only th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine that is why he called out "late capitalism" rather than "capitalism".
The twenty-first century did not invent cheap goods of dubious quality.
If you get out of the US bubble, the prices are simply insane fix a sofa: it's equivalent to a month's salary/stipend here in Asia. 200 bowls of noodle (if it's a cheap noodle then it's more like 500) new sofa: "new leather sofas of the “not flat-packed sawdust and glue” variety quickly get into five figures" So like a year's worth of stipend/expenses Could be that just the US dollar is crazy - but until the economic…
Post-socialist countries still have an absolute shit ton of these lifestyle businesses or even medium sized firms instead of monopolist megacorps which results in a very competitive market and has turned out to be quite an upside for the end consumer.
The bit about "lifestyle business" always being uttered in contempt resonated with me. I always assumed it was just me being overly sensitive to folks expressing concern over my life choices, urging me to snap out of my "mid-life crisis" and do something "useful" like raise money and scale up, or "apply myself" at famous institutions with "real impact".
Small business (or “lifestyle business”) vs big brand is often framed about being high quality vs cheap price, because in practice it often is. But in theory the two things are completely unrelated.
Yes fixing stuff is good for the planet. But big brands could offer customer service just fine if people wanted it.
Small business vs big brand is a problem of predictability. If you have many independent small businesses, NOT all of them will be good. It will be a mixed bag what you get in your area. OP has felt so fortunate with his local highly-skilled asian-owned small business that he felt compelled to write about it on the internet. Not everyone will be this lucky.
And in a world where information travels very fast (this is really the key point) this system is unsustainable, as there are really only 2 options: either people accept the fact that some neighbourhoods are served worse than others, or the take the car and make the travel up to the nice asian shop they read about on the internet, because that’s apparently worth it.
But, surprise, this second option doesn't scale. Because as soon as the nice asian shop goes viral, they realise they can’t keep up with the demand at all. And so they will probably refuse lots of customers. (Note, I’m not even considering the option they might increase prices)
In this sense, the derogatory “lifestyle business” comment makes sense, since I think it’s meant to highlight how elitist it is. It doesn't scale in the sense that it creates a race for who is able to cop the best option. When I need a sofa, I want to be able to “just” get a sofa. Simple and predictable. If the sofa is good quality, even better.