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The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

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Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#281

Post by bravesoul2 »

shakna wrote: post #245
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…

> 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. I don't think you actually can get the same quality, today. Even if you are paying more. The spacing of seats has changed. [0] Yo…

I think it might in other countries. JAL is an example where I felt they had a great economy class experience. Excellent food and service. Great legroom. I am average height male and can fully stretch out my legs.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#283

Post by jcgrillo »

moffkalast wrote: post #199
nfriedly wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

Along that line of thought I've noticed this recently: I can buy an expensive tool for say $200 that will last me 10 years. Or I can buy a cheap tool that costs $20 but will only last me two years. But if I want to use that tool for the duration of 10 years it then makes more sense to buy five of the cheap tool and save half in costs. Which one is really providing more quality over time? For some things this doesn't…

Does the tool degrade gradually over time or is it sudden? If the former, you're much better off over the 10 year span with the high quality tool, because the time you spend dealing with its degraded performance is much less. IME it's almost always better to go for a high quality, old, used tool than to buy a low quality new one. Usually the wear parts are replaceable or rebuildable as well.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#284

Post by Gigachad »

AndrewDavis wrote: post #248
bamboozled wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also interesting, as you said, that everyone seems to want to defend crap. It's like corporations keep spreading the idea that you're always getting more for your money and everyone just seems to parrot that verbatim. My life is a constant struggle when it comes to finding nice things.

I gave up and started buying $4 rshirts. Why? Because each year the clothes I'd buy were were on quality than my previous clothes. When buying a $4 shirt I know the price:quality ratio, it's cheap:crap. Whereas majority of the time buying more expensive it might be slightly better, but it's still expensive:crap.

Try Uniqlo. Their $20 shirts have lasted me years. I haven’t thrown a single one out yet and I just have got around 90 uses out of some of the older ones so far.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#285

Post by xattt »

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.

BILLY quietly slid from mid-tier to cheap tier in order to keep the nostalgic momentum. The twist is that there are certain products that people use as benchmarks of quality (like Arizona iced tea).

If the tier changes without some sort of inflection, you perceive it as degradation of quality.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#286

Post by ants_everywhere »

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…

When I worked at a big tech company, the life quality of software engineers was undergoing what old timers perceived as a significant decline.

The official response of the CFO was that the quality can't be declining that much because people aren't quitting an an accelerating rate.

This is the same phenomenon as your suspicion. There's some metric (e.g. people keep buying our widgets) and you stress test demand for it by making it cheaper to produce. If demand holds up there's no problem from the company's perspective.

From the consumer's perspective, every project is doing this and the entire world is declining in quality but prices aren't going down.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#287

Post by joenot443 »

deadbabe wrote: post #168
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…

Most 2020s cars are completely unaffordable or overpriced and over engineered but maybe by 2040s this will be largely solved. The 2010s was peak car.

Since 2018 every new car needs a rearview backup camera. Since 2022, AEB's been included, too. Fuel economy and emissions standards are also considerably stricter than they were 10 years ago. The list goes on, and on, and on.

I think it's completely fair to say we haven't gotten worse at making cheap cars, we've just legislated them out of existence.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#288

Post by thomassmith65 »

The argument that customers are demanding lower quality products only makes sense if they have a choice. That isn't really the case (not without a lot of rhetorical contortions, anyhow).

When the iPod first appeared, customers did not see its enclosed battery as desirable. They put up with it. Soon enough, no batteries are replaceable.

Few car buyers wanted touch screen controls, but the entire auto industry transitioned to them, almost at once. Customers put up with them.

The problem is not that companies focus on customers and reluctantly provide crappy products. The problem is that customer focus died shortly after the year 2000.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#289

Post by nicoburns »

trial3 wrote: post #222
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…

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…

Do you not think it's capitalism driving enshittification? It's captialism that's the driving force pushing companies to reduce costs or be outcompeted. It's captialism that means that "it's cheaper" (in the short term) is what ends up driving decision making.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#290

Post by bsenftner »

ARob109 wrote: post #273
bsenftner wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

You make my comment's point without realizing, emphasizing my point.
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