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The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

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Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#271

Post by theptip »

baq wrote: post #240
bamboozled wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I break this promise from time to time, but every time I buy an IKEA product lately, I vow never to do it again.

IKEA has some of the best quality cheap furniture. To get something noticeably better you need to spend at least 2x for any given item; 3-5x is common for not at all fancy stuff.

It’s true, but they used to have some of the best quality cheap-mid priced furniture.

They changed their target market segment to lean into the “discards their furniture in less than 5 years” ICP, and they also heavily optimized for shipping (eg their bottom-end Kallax is now actually made of corrugated cardboard instead of plyboard, strength-to-weight is amazing, but still less durable).

So both are true, that they still represent “good value” in a dollar-per-value sense, but also lowered their absolute quality. (This is the exact point OP is making.)

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#272

Post by ants_everywhere »

jonplackett wrote: post #233
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…

Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm? I don’t think it’s ‘efficiency’ in the same way spaceX is run. Yeah they cut costs, but they got better quality results. With clothes / appliances etc we have reduced quality at our expense - while the companies doing it make more money than ever.

> Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm?

If that were the explanation then you'd need another explanation for declining quality issues in communist countries.

A test claim that some problem caused by "capitalism" should always backed up by a proof that the problem doesn't exist in the many other economic systems the world has tried. If only because this forces people to actually think about the economics instead of just using words to evoke an emotional reaction.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#273

Post by ARob109 »

bsenftner wrote: post #243
trial3 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly! i came to this thread to smugly type “capitalism” in a comment. but i’d like to, less smugily, posit that it’s really just enshittification. MBA-driven physical-goods enshittification. It’s cheaper to use cheaper glues. To slightly change the fabric blend towards polyester. Thinner gauge wiring. There are tradeoffs towards more complex devices being made, sure, but that’s not exactly what “quality” is, to me…

I think the "MBA-driven physical-goods enshittification" is a simplification and a cop-out because this is not just MBA-driven. This is across the board in all of society, and I believe the reason being that people, in general and enmass, are not being taught how to live with active critical analysis, and as a result when they choose an enshittificating decision, they do not realize it. They are not connecting the ra…

Making physical goods low quality, cheap, and therefore disposable is the equivalent of rent seeking.

Instead of growth and innovation, it’s how can the Company get recurring revenue after first sale.

The balance for the Company is finding a quality to price point ratio where either 1) the customer doesn’t care if it breaks because it was cheap and they know it’s cheap or 2) it’s cheap and breaks but the utility of it to the customer warrants (or with some goods, necessitates) them buying a replacement.

In the second case, the trade off would also include brand risk, but in the world of Amazon and TEMU, you can just sell the same thing under a new random name, there is no brand identity.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#274

Post by ta8645 »

markx2 wrote: post #241

January this year a water pipe burst in the kitchen directly over a Belling Range cooker (some 13+ years old). Switched it off at the mains and awaited a visit from an electrician once the place had dried out. The sparky that arrived had worked for Belling, was very familiar with their products. He checked it over, tested, declared it safe. He then added that if something had been wrong I would have been better to ge…

Had almost the exact same thing happened here with our clothes dryer. Tech said it was worth replacing the motor on our 20-year-old model, even though it was 70% the price of a new dryer. Said the new ones just aren't built to last, and our restored one would last another 20 years.

We also still use the same 40 year old Coleman camping stove every summer, while other campers only get a few years out of much newer models.

But recently we found a happy exception, when we replaced our Contigo spill-proof coffee mugs (with a button you press to drink). They were always prone to the mechanism getting gross with milk scum, and were very hard to clean. The new models have an updated design that encloses the mechanism and keeps it much easier to keep clean. The metal seems heavier and high-quality, and the top lip has been folded over so it's not sharp like the old model. They've actually improved them a fair bit, for about the same price as the older ones.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#275

Post by bravesoul2 »

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…

Key point is for many their real wages have decreased, adjusted for inflation.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#276

Post by rob_c »

bsenftner wrote: post #237

Do not discuss "content" of this article, discuss the reasoning behind and the effect of this article. The author many not even realize this is a propaganda article, using a well known mechanism of "spray to dismay and therefore cripple". This article is a coordinated series of arguments that sum to the statement "you are powerless."

Not far off.

The author either submitted to the inevitable. Or, decided that they don't want to make change.

Hate the cheap fashion, make a choice, buy proper products they just cost more and require the slightest of effort to care for.

Hate bad writing, move on read something else.

Dislike the quality of product X buy Y.

Frankly if you had told me the quality of product you would be and to buy for example in the MacBook air for And that's just the beginning. The moaning about China, AI, people is just the same "I can't do anything to improve my lot in life" you see too much online.

Stop reacting to things happening to you and start doing things.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#277

Post by Gigachad »

steveBK123 wrote: post #247
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…

This is far more prominent in women’s clothing. My wife always says how buying from the same brands over the years that materials get thinner and thinner, as well as becoming more and more synthetic blend %s until it’s practically disposable.

I have noticed that woman’s clothing seems incredibly poor quality a lot of the time. Incredibly thin, and just looking at stuff on the racks and stores it was extremely common to find minor defects and loose threads.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#278

Post by ericmay »

wiz21c wrote: post #260
ericmay wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - the term Late Stage Capitalism gets thrown around a bunch as a scarecrow for anything seemingly bad going on, but in this case it’s more likely a symptom of lack of education of materials and/or people not caring, and resource depletion/competition due to overpopulation and rise in living standards across the world. > With clothes / appliances etc we have reduced quality at our expense - while the companies doin…

> resource depletion/competition due to overpopulation and rise in living standards across the world. Interesting take. Any source ?

Nope just personal observation. There are only so many lobsters and marble quarries, and we can only raise so many sheep for high quality wool. Most of the hardwood trees are gone too. That’s why we have switched to plastic and other industrial materials to keep building suburban houses and we spend all day on Netflix.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#280

Post by aiisahik »

Quality comes at a cost. That cost has gone down for some types of products (iPhones, TVs) but gone up for other types of products (housing).

Clothing cost after accounting for inflation has actually not increased. There are many of high quality textiles companies that only produce hand made organic cotton sourced from sustainable farms etc. Some of them are actually not too expensive - check out Isto from Portugal. Yes, i'm willing to pay $50 for a tshirt instead of the usual $25 from Uniqlo or Zara but most people are not.

The article is from Spain - the birthplace of Zara, Inditex and fast fashion. Spain is also known for sitting on cheap plastic chairs outside drinking cheap beer for hours. The quality of housing interiors is pretty poor - despite wood parquet flooring being no more expensive than in other parts of the world, almost every house here (even after renovation) has laminate, concrete or ceramic flooring. Yet plenty of people here have the top of the latest Playstation or iPhone.

Which we all get - if housing start costing close to 40% of your paycheck which is typical for a young person in Spain, is that $50 high quality tshirt or $80 / sqm parquet really what you should logically do with your left over money?

High quality items has traditionally been a luxury good - one reserved for the rich. Back then we simply did not have the choice to buy low quality items which allowed us to shift more spending on things that we actually cared more about. The real lament is that most of us actually care less about the quality of clothing and furniture than we would like to believe.

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