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The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

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Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#181

Post by jltsiren »

jstummbillig wrote: post #115
mayas_ wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite sure about the affordability part. Cars are becoming prohibitively expensive. Housing is becoming a luxury. Even consumer products are becoming increasingly expensive. Safety largely improved but not craftsmanship.

> Cars are becoming prohibitively expensive. Adjusted for inflation, car prices are actually lower now than decades ago, especially factoring in huge safety and tech improvements. Entry-level models remain affordable, while buyers voluntarily pay more for SUVs and tech-heavy EVs. > Housing is becoming a luxury. Rising housing prices are mostly driven by land scarcity and zoning. The actual cost per square meter of co…

Cost per square meter is a misleading measure. A model that assigns a fixed price to a 0 m2 home and an additional price for each square meter is a better match for both construction costs and subjective utility.

Or maybe the additional price should be based on the number of rooms instead. Adding empty space by making the rooms bigger is cheap, but extra rooms are usually more valuable to those on a limited budget.

Where I live in California, construction itself has become unaffordable. Even if the land were free, construction and permits are now so expensive that it's impossible to build affordable housing without subsidies.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#182

Post by whoisyc »

mayas_ wrote: post #96
jstummbillig wrote: post #39

Quality has improved across many dimensions in nearly every domain I’m familiar with. In fact, I’d argue there are very few products or services that couldn’t be made today to a higher standard than at any point in the past, if we chose to prioritize that. But what’s often mistaken for a decline in quality is really a shift in priorities: toward affordability, efficiency, and accessibility. And that’s fantastic. Prod…

Not quite sure about the affordability part. Cars are becoming prohibitively expensive. Housing is becoming a luxury. Even consumer products are becoming increasingly expensive. Safety largely improved but not craftsmanship.

Car prices are affected by ease of financing and a huge second hand market. The former make it easier to “afford” a fancy vehicle (whether or not you actually afford it is another question) and the later means fierce competition in the lower parts of the market making cheap cars less profitable.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#183

Post by [deleted] »

weinzierl wrote: post #160

People fall largely in two categories: Those who condemn the past and those who glorify it. Of course the reality is between. Whenever something experiences mass adoption, of course quality will decline, e. g. airplane seats with mass adoption of flying. But so, so many things improved dramatically in quality. I could give you endless examples but just think about cars. Despite anecdata to the contrary the reliabilit…

[deleted]

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#184

Post by anthk »

panick21_ wrote: post #87
djfivyvusn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced the widening access to American consumerism is a moral win. The amount of fossil fuels we're dependent on as a species is obscene. I worry for our children. There is no offramp, only growth.

This is one of these philosophies that I hate more then almost any other. The idea that is bad that poor Indian and Chinese people now have access to anything from clean water to planes is absurd. You can sit there in your luxury house and cry about consumer culture but for millions of people its basic stuff that they have access to for the first time. And in Europe, despite increasing quality of live, both total ene…

Fossil fuels will crumble down when the ITER gets working well. China already did some experiments on salts based nuclear plants, but no fusion jet.

Still, the days for the uber-polluted Beijing are numbered. It will change drastically.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#185

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

raspasov wrote: post #43

"Following his reasoning, it cannot be stated in absolute terms that an iPhone 15 is of “better quality” than a 2003 Nokia." This statement suffers from either viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses or from total cultural relativism in the most pejorative sense. I'm not sure about 2003, but around 2009, I owned a Nokia N900, which was arguably the flagship Nokia phone at the time. I can confidently state that c…

> I can confidently say that today's flagship iPhones (or even Androids) are significantly better quality than the N900, in every way possible.

Having owned both, no. The N900 was programmable, none of the current crop of phones are.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#186

Post by nradov »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #57
nradov wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. If you want really nice, high quality furniture then you can just pay a local craftsman to make it for you. This is always an option regardless and some of us are not easily manipulated by ads. Of course good furniture will be expensive.

You can’t do this for a washing machine of a tv or a phone. Even if you can now, it is getting more difficult. And there doesn’t seem to be any way to avoid it as every washing machine is becoming “smart”, worse at actually washing clothes and using internet to send your data so it can be sold for more profit.

You can buy a dumb washing machine on the commercial market.

https://speedqueencommercial.com/en-us/products/top-load-was...

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#187

Post by bluedino »

weinzierl wrote: post #160

People fall largely in two categories: Those who condemn the past and those who glorify it. Of course the reality is between. Whenever something experiences mass adoption, of course quality will decline, e. g. airplane seats with mass adoption of flying. But so, so many things improved dramatically in quality. I could give you endless examples but just think about cars. Despite anecdata to the contrary the reliabilit…

Cars still rust what was solved?

These days the bigger problem with cars is one piece breaks and it isn't made anymore so you total it when 90% of the rest of the car is still good.

https://youtu.be/e7c2_JMxR0s?si=diMVZ_YBXtW48LOy

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#188

Post by nfriedly »

simianparrot wrote: post #149

Airplane tickets used to cost a lot more for economy class, even adjusted for inflation and fees. To get the equivalent service and quality today you simply have to pay more, you just have the choice of paying very little for very low quality because there’s more flights and more planes. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/even-with-fees-the-miracle-of... Same can be said for most electronics and even clothes. I’m not say…

> I'm not saying that a high price label guarantees high quality, just that the spectrum of cost vs quality has broadened, even within big name brands.

I think this needs to be repeated. People tend to think more expensive equals higher quality (I want this to be true!), and I think brands frequently take advantage of that to increase margins without significantly increasing quality.

For example: I've been through three or four pairs of my $180 Sony link buds hitting various issues before giving up on them entirely. Meanwhile, my $5 Auki bluetooth earbuds keep on chugging.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#189

Post by rob_c »

>declining quality

Just like this article I'm afraid.

If it's making a point it's lost by meandering to too long.

If it's point it's simply longevity then it's missed the point about how LLM are simply here to stay, the genie is out of the bottle with regards to that tool.

If the point is some anti hyper-capitalist rant then it's a thinly veiled option piece.

If the point is the breakdown of the social contract/elevator. Then why when you're interviewing experts who study this aren't you asking poignant questions like "when do you think this happened?" or "can this be fixed?". Rather than ranting about the dreams of the nuclear (pub intended) family to China and "AI".

If it that if you're not chasing these answers you're either afraid to admit you know them or are scared of them?

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#190

Post by xattt »

layer8 wrote: post #176

Many comments here are arguing that quality has actually gone up over the past decades. However, a common experience for me is that I own something of good quality from 5/10/15 years ago and now buy the successor model from the same brand, but the product has gotten worse, being cheaper made. And I have a hard time finding a replacement that matches the quality of the old version. It’s a regularly reoccurring frustra…

E.g. the race to the bottom of the Billy bookcase. In the last 5 years, IKEA has started using plastic fasteners to secure the backing.
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