Meditations on Moloch[0] explains why this is impossible at scale--too many defectors, asymmetric information, and no way to police defection.
[0] https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Meditations-On-Moloch
Let's make quality the norm again
261–270 of 506 posts
Re: Let's make quality the norm again
#262Quality 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…
> Everybody hates ads, but no-one is willing to pay a penny for a service they use daily.
I wish they would price the service commensurate to what they earn with ads.
My ad watching gives them a few cents, and yet they want $8.99 for a month or some gems.
Re: Let's make quality the norm again
#263Earlier 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.
Up in my neck of the woods, it depends.
I paid cash for the last two used cars I bought. As used cars go they weren't particularly expensive and it wasn't a big deal. Both purchases came from dealerships that also sold and serviced things like brand new Hondas or Chevrolets.
For one of those cars, the paperwork was completely finished and I drove off in that new-to-me car without me even giving them a dime. (I did promise in writing that they'd have a check in a few days, and I did make good on that promise.)
There's also used car lots that work with real financing companies. They broker the financing deal and get paid for it. That works, too. (I've financed cars at these places, too; this also went smoothly.)
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But then, too: There are buy-here, pay-here used car lots. These are traps for the poor, and they love their particular financing game.
At these places: The loans are designed to be very upside down and they therefore hold all of the cards. They'll sell a used car for years of weekly payments of $120, and if/when the payments stop then they just turn the car off remotely and have someone go pick it up.
After that, it's cleaned up and sold to the next guy for $120 a week.
It's a very profitable way to conduct business and nobody of any substantial means and sane mind would ever buy anything there at all.
But they don't check credit, and they don't report credit. So as ugly and expensive as it is, for some folks that's the only way they can get the car they need to try to survive in the society that they were born into.
Re: Let's make quality the norm again
#264While 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.)
Problem is, you pay 10x for shirt that is made in the same factory as the cheap shiry, just has a different logo.
Not always.
I got a pair of T-shirts from These Glory Days. Wore them like 20% of time last two years and they look better then some others after 2 washes (albeit changed from them after coming back to work, and use work clothes at work, so not like they were used THAT much. So it's not always the expensive stuff that's equal to the cheap stuff. And funny thing, got them on a sale because they were pretty cheap, not really because I knew that they were quality.
Though had my wife with me when shopping and she might have "felt" the material and said that it was good for that price. Her mum is a seamstress if I remember the word correctly as somebody who sews clothes.
Re: Let's make quality the norm again
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think 10x is quite rare. Quality ends up actually curtailing costs to some degree (eg. fewer returns, cheaper marketing - word of mouth). Buy a Weber grill, I had 2 grills before my Weber that lasted 3 seasons between them. I bought the Weber at about 2.2x the cost of the bargain grills and 17 YEARS later it's still going strong, built like a tank. Saved a lot not buying more cheapo grills.
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.
If you want one I continue to really trust almost blindly: Genelec (Finnish pro audio). Not even that expensive for what it is.
Re: Let's make quality the norm again
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had to switch from levis jeans to carhartt pants because my levis would rip after 5-6 months, almost like clockwork. No, I am not at all overweight. Carhartt just makes more durable pants, and I hate shopping.
The 5-6 months is in line with other slop brands I’ve tried, e.g. H&M. Sad to see Levis join them in the gutter.
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Re: Let's make quality the norm again
#267Earlier 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.
> difficult to know which brands are still actually quality anymore I haven't verified its accuracy, but I had a tab open for this from HN a while back: > The Brand Ledger tracks 397 brands, from the tools in your garage to the pans in your kitchen. Who owns them, what they used to be, whether they're still worth buying. https://ledger.worseonpurpose.com/
Yeah, not sure I would rely on that.. Sure, they have Knipex and Klein on the approved list (which, AFAIK, is true), but then they list Warby Parker (read reddit - has gone WAY downhill), Cutco (by all accounts, a total rip-off and super low-quality knives requiring you to constantly get them sharpened) and Henkels, which also makes some pretty suspect knives, AFAIK.
Re: Let's make quality the norm again
#268Earlier 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.
> difficult to know which brands are still actually quality anymore I haven't verified its accuracy, but I had a tab open for this from HN a while back: > The Brand Ledger tracks 397 brands, from the tools in your garage to the pans in your kitchen. Who owns them, what they used to be, whether they're still worth buying. https://ledger.worseonpurpose.com/
It's fully LLM-written. You can trust it if you want, but there's stuff in there that's clearly wrong or nonsensical.
Re: Let's make quality the norm again
#269There’s a horizontal body overflow bug on this page on mobile. The irony
Re: Let's make quality the norm again
#270Quality 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…
> Everybody hates ads, but no-one is willing to pay a penny for a service they use daily. I wish they would price the service commensurate to what they earn with ads. My ad watching gives them a few cents, and yet they want $8.99 for a month or some gems.
You're experiencing market segmentation. You won't pay $8.99 a month, so you don't get an ad-free product like the people who will pay. The service would rather get less than $8.99 from you than nothing, so you get ads.