Parable of the Sofa • Hacker News Board

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#291

Post by ghaff » Sun, Jun 02, 2024, 5:42 PM UTC

ginko wrote: post #70

concordDance wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very much an information problem. One needs a company that can go do all the research and tell their readers what stuff is well made and good quality. Things like Consumer Reports and Which are supposed to full this niche but they only assess big brands (and are probably under used by people).

>It's very much an information problem. One needs a company that can go do all the research and tell their readers what stuff is well made and good quality. This role used to be filled by reputable stores.

Small business stores mostly had lousy selection and wanted to sell you what they had in stock for the most part. Yes, you had some niche labor of love businesses, but those were the minority. Information used to be really hard to come by outside of a few sources like Consumer Reports.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#292

Post by bunnie » Sun, Jun 02, 2024, 5:55 PM UTC

geokon wrote: post #189

bunnie wrote: post #42

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".

Damn. I wouldn't expect that pressure give your rep. Is this from people in the industry, or people outside that don't get it? In all honestly, to me you are one of the few people that come to my mind when I think of someone working on a project that's tangible and with "real impact". Precursor is so out of the box and cyberpunk and outside the confines of what institutions are working on Hope in the future you get t…

I get it from all walks of life -- industry peeps, colleagues, academics, concerned friends and family.

I didn't always have a rep -- the first step is the hardest in any journey, and the criticism was just as strong (if not stronger) back then. But, I was also a hardware guy in a software world. I'm stubborn, idealistic, and a rule-breaker, so I didn't fit in to any traditional corporate roles; no boss could manage me. That made it easier to walk out the door.

The most bold critics were always VCs -- not ones that I met with because I needed investment or anything, just folks I would run into at conferences or do an odd job for as a mercenary. You'd wrap up the job, and they'd make some quip about how it's a shame I'm wasting my talent in a "lifestyle business" and how I should consider finding some honest work at one of their companies. It was like some sort of weird negging tactic. I eventually learned to shrug it off but really, thought I was the only one who heard that term applied so pejoratively.

Thankfully, I had a few lucky breaks, and I'm very happy about where I'm at. However, it helps that I found residence in a place with affordable public health care, a functional pension system, oodles of public housing, and low taxes. No way could I do what I'm doing and also be so chill about my future without a functioning social safety net. Unfortunately, "just move somewhere that suits your needs" is not scalable advice; I wish I had a more practical blueprint for others who want to do a lifestyle business, but I don't.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#293

Post by bunnie » Sun, Jun 02, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

etrautmann wrote: post #197

geokon wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn. I wouldn't expect that pressure give your rep. Is this from people in the industry, or people outside that don't get it? In all honestly, to me you are one of the few people that come to my mind when I think of someone working on a project that's tangible and with "real impact". Precursor is so out of the box and cyberpunk and outside the confines of what institutions are working on Hope in the future you get t…

I wasn’t familiar but I assume this is what you’re referring to? https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor

Yah, that's it.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#294

Post by toast0 » Sun, Jun 02, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

brewdad wrote: post #264

bitnasty wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that McDonald’s is literally all over the world, but that doesn’t mean the food is consistent.

McDonalds may have the most consistent food product in the world.

Eh. I have terrible taste, so I've eaten McDonalds around the US as well as in Paris and Bangalore.

Within the US, yeah, it's very consistent. I've not seen much variation, other than the one or two specially decorated locations and the menu is very consistent.

Internationally, the branding is very consistent, but the product isn't that consistent. The fries in Paris were very different (and not very good; my feeling is they probably used the same procedure but very different potatoes), but the burgers were pretty similar. In India, they don't serve burgers, but at least when I was there, they did have the delicious old school chicken nuggets that they replaced with 'all white-meat' bleh nuggets in the US. I didn't try any of their chicken sandwiches, because why when I could have the nuggets of my youth?

I understand there's significant regional differences in all the territories they operate in.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#295

Post by hansvm » Sun, Jun 02, 2024, 5:58 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #288

hansvm wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't just short-term thinking. You alluded to another point yourself: > Looks great on the outside Consumers aren't often equipped to evaluate quality, partly due to skill issues, partly because the corners are cut in places which are hard to spot before purchase. Price doesn't work as a discriminating factor (except to filter out a portion of the worst inventory) because of the number of brands explicit…

> Consumers aren't often equipped to evaluate quality, partly due to skill issues Maybe, maybe not. But regardless, in parallel to this, we have corporations whose modus operandi is at worst to lie to consumers about quality, and at best to mislead. And not just about specific products, but about quality as a general concept.

I'm pretty sure we're in total agreement.

E.g., with the right training you can tell the difference between the sort of particle board flooring that will balloon up and be destroyed when a drop of water lands on it, the sort of particle board flooring that resists minor water infiltration, and various grades of "real" floors, but most people don't have that training.

Separately (and I _think_ my messaging was clear about this -- talking about the corners being cut being ones that are hard to discover and describing the companies doing that shit as scammers), yes I totally agree; corporations are absolutely not passive participants in consumers being unable to make educated decisions. Even major brands will actively defraud consumers (e.g., Garmin revoking a bunch of lifetime licenses on Navionics software and trying to whitewash public opinion by claiming it was for the customers' own good, or Atlassian blatantly ignoring the CCPA because it's a fairly toothless law), and there exists a plethora of maybe-legal-but-obviously-wrong behavior from most successful companies, including but not limited to "lies, or at best misleadings."

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#296

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 » Sun, Jun 02, 2024, 6:13 PM UTC

Micoloth wrote: post #110

Every time I read takes like this I think people forget why big brands exist? 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…

>when i need a sofa, i want to be able to “just” get a sofa

Which is understandable, and also the whole problem. Everything that used to go along with getting that sofa, like the human interaction, is thrown out in the name of efficiency, and eventually we all end up locked in our houses with nowhere to go but our jobs.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#297

Post by hansvm » Sun, Jun 02, 2024, 6:15 PM UTC

wanderingstan wrote: post #278

hansvm wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't just short-term thinking. You alluded to another point yourself: > Looks great on the outside Consumers aren't often equipped to evaluate quality, partly due to skill issues, partly because the corners are cut in places which are hard to spot before purchase. Price doesn't work as a discriminating factor (except to filter out a portion of the worst inventory) because of the number of brands explicit…

This is a key factor: businesses have learned to “optimize” by cutting corners wherever people can’t perceive the deficit. The product just has to last long enough.

In the off-chance this is a good place to ask, how does a consumer (or, ideally, the existing governing body) fight back? I'll briefly walk through a hypothetical scenario to have something concrete to talk about, then ask about the normal alternatives?

Say you have an IoT device. It's marketed as a device capable of doing a task (e.g., scanning car OBD codes). That task can be done offline. The device initially does that task offline. The app had a backdoor, and the owning company used that backdoor to force logins on previously happy users. Later, they restrict functionality-which-could-be-completely-offline-and-used-to-work to people who pay for a monthly subscription, or maybe they go out of business or otherwise just decide to shut down the servers (see the recent Spotify debacle).

With that backdrop:

- The ToS usually ban class actions and require arbitration.

- The fraud in question is on the order of $20-$200 -- not worth being pursued for most people.

- The ToS are somehow magically invoked when you buy the product, regardless of whether you even saw a warning message suggesting that there might exist a legal agreement which you should read.

The usual outcomes are (1) you get a default judgement and are unable to exercise it because the company goes bankrupt or does some sort of shenanigan which requires a lawyer costing more than the damage in question (a common solution is spinning off a subsidiary owning all the bad debt and responsibilities, keeping the assets elsewhere, kind of like what Johnson and Johnson tried after the talc/cancer debacle), (2) despite the company's best efforts you get a class-action judgement, and the company settles for much less harm than they inflicted, happily pocketing the difference, (3) other more complicated and/or less desirable situations.

What does an individual do to limit their liability in a world where that sort of fraud seems to be condoned, and what options do we have as a society to reduce the overall problem?

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#298

Post by card_zero » Sun, Jun 02, 2024, 6:15 PM UTC

nakedneuron wrote: post #282

card_zero wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah, there's no potential to cheat the environment by pretending to be fit (as somebody already commented), except mimicry is a way to do that (as also already mentioned). But you can be successfully unconcerned about quality, hoping for returns on rare successes, like with the Chinese Santa snowglobes mentioned elsewhere in the comments.

Could you point to the example you mentioned, I couldn't find it.

Seems to have vanished somehow. In short: person visits Greece, finds nasty Xmas baubles on sale among tourist items, mind boggles that people buy these and furthermore that there are enough sales to justify bringing them to Greece from China, postulates some logic like a 1000% profit per sale making it worthwhile even if only 20% ever sell.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#299

Post by financypants » Sun, Jun 02, 2024, 6:19 PM UTC

drrotmos wrote: post #248

photon_lines wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'The point of the article is that the big business model is "continued growth", which depends on constantly increasing sales, which means products necessarily get shittier so that they must be replaced more frequently.' - Sorry to interject here, but this is extremely wrong and nowhere did I find this take-away from the posted article. There are massive businesses that do sell extremely high-quality products - in fac…

> If you allow a person to buy a $800 sofa which looks great on the outside and is made in China albeit with extremely low quality materials vs. a sofa which looks almost exactly the same but is priced at $1500 but is of much higher quality - most consumers will obviously choose the $800 dollar sofa vs the $1500 since that's how the free-market functions. Is this rational though? This is rarely the choice though. In…

There are loads of manufacturers that still do this. Go to any furniture row, you’ll see the Ikea parking lot is full, the rc willey parking lot less so, and the premier quality furniture brands parking lots nearly empty.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#300

Post by _nalply » Sun, Jun 02, 2024, 6:19 PM UTC

It's about incentives.

One example: What if companies rented sofas instead of selling them? Perhaps a weird idea, but humour me. The incentives would shift. Companies would be more interested to give you durable sofas. Because there will be less profit if they have to replace sofas more often.