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Parable of the Sofa

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Re: Parable of the Sofa

#31

Post by Lio »

roughly wrote: post #12
sokoloff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High quality furniture is still being made and sold, just not for $300 for a couch. Cheap shit is going to be cheap shit. Growing up, furniture was something that was expensive, carefully shopped for, and hand delivered fully assembled. I see the availability of cheap (to make and to transport) furniture as filling a gap in the market previously not addressed, but if you’re in a position to buy a piece you’d like to…

The challenge right now is that even the expensive stuff is cheap shit. It’s goddamn near impossible to actually assess the quality of an item you’re purchasing, and the only guarantee is that if it’s a good quality product today, someone will recognize the brand has equity and financial engineer it into crap tomorrow.

This is the MBA curse. Some bright spark will recognise that they can make a short term profit by cheapening the product but retaining the high price.

...but if they don't then other firms selling crappy (but "good enough") products cheap will still drive quality products out of the market. To stay even slight competitive quality manufacturers will avoid investing in new processes or equipment so that they can sell what they currently make slightly cheaper.

Either way the products go to shit.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#32

Post by refulgentis »

lordnacho wrote: post #29

This is something that has bothered me for a while. When we're discussing capitalism, people seem to get it in their head that it's either what we have now, or you can fuck off to North Korea. How I would characterize my ideal economy is one where the feedback loop works: people can make reasonable guesses about what a product is, how long it will work for, and what its cost is. They can adjust their purchases accord…

This sort of thing is satisfying to write and even more satisfying to read and nod along to.

But it's paper-thin histrionics.

"an ad said I'd value something and I didn't" and "I didn't read the license agreement" are trans-mutated into "abuse" that should obviously be illegal, and somehow become grist for all sorts of grand invocations, GDP, capitalism, MBAs, North Korea...

You're free to check what joins your sofa has. In fact, we all seem pretty well-informed on that. God bless the info markets.

It is legal to make cheaper sofas than artisanal leather couches with joins approved by a FAANG employee. God bless the sofa market.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#33

Post by XorNot »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #24
XorNot wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He spent $1100 CAD getting his sofa reupholstered, and the sofa itself cost over $3,000 CAD in 1999 according to the article (so about $5,000 today). Cheap things are cheaply made isn't news. But being able to have them at all, is for a lot of people, very valuable. What is not in the article is what would $5,000 buy him today? He doesn't know because he didn't go looking. The linked article in the article is someone…

He does have some idea what $5k would get him. He mentions that a new, well-made, leather-upholstered sofa would run 5 figures, so, at least $10k. That makes re-upholstering the economically rational choice over both a new $5k sofa and a hypothetical, same quality version of the 1965 Sears sofa. I don't see what your point is.

That the entire context you posted for the conclusion doesn't seem to be based on even an attempt to understand whether the market has truly changed.

For that matter, it's also not clear if his sofa is particularly well made (we never see the frame in the article) or just expensive enough that it's worth re-holstering for the price he was quoted...because the article in question is someone who's $1,200 sofa would distinctly not be worth paying $1,100 to re-upholster.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#34

Post by condiment »

roughly wrote: post #12
sokoloff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High quality furniture is still being made and sold, just not for $300 for a couch. Cheap shit is going to be cheap shit. Growing up, furniture was something that was expensive, carefully shopped for, and hand delivered fully assembled. I see the availability of cheap (to make and to transport) furniture as filling a gap in the market previously not addressed, but if you’re in a position to buy a piece you’d like to…

The challenge right now is that even the expensive stuff is cheap shit. It’s goddamn near impossible to actually assess the quality of an item you’re purchasing, and the only guarantee is that if it’s a good quality product today, someone will recognize the brand has equity and financial engineer it into crap tomorrow.

There's plenty of good furniture out there, made by plenty of good brands that haven't sold out. We seem to have forgotten that brands build cachet for a lot of reasons, quality being only one of them. The main issue today is that we've inadvertently traded off quality for variety - there's a huge variety of furniture being made, in every conceivable style, size, and texture. But if you want good stuff, you have to pay in time and money to get it, and you might not be able to get exactly what you want.

Which is why it's strange to see people surprised that their $3,800 CB2 sectional isn't built to the same standard of quality as a $13,000 Roche Bobois sectional. Especially when they could have easily gone to the showroom and lifted a section up by a corner to learn exactly what they were buying. Or gone online and searched for clones, or called up any interior decorator in the region and just asked "where do I get a good couch?"

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#36

Post by portaouflop »

MeImCounting wrote: post #22
roughly wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge right now is that even the expensive stuff is cheap shit. It’s goddamn near impossible to actually assess the quality of an item you’re purchasing, and the only guarantee is that if it’s a good quality product today, someone will recognize the brand has equity and financial engineer it into crap tomorrow.

Its not as hard to recognize good craftsmanship in furniture as in other types of products. https://www.thosmoser.com/

I don’t see why that should be the case.

As someone who rarely/never buys furniture I have no idea what good craftsmanship looks like in the finished product.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#37

Post by GolfPopper »

monero-xmr wrote: post #21

The wonderful thing about the free market is that consumers have choice. There is indeed a large market for high quality products at a higher price. Old brands become shitty, and new brands pop up. Bernie Sanders, a famous modern-day socialist, is famous for saying we don’t need so many brands of deodorant: https://fortune.com/2024/02/12/too-many-products-bernie-sand... This is where I fundamentally disagree. Only th…

The framing of 'government bureaucrat' vs. 'consumer choice' is at best misleading. As lordnacho pointed out, such a free market only works for consumers when the consumers have real agency. We exist in a state of immense information asymmetry, where vendors have immense advantages over the buyers. (Immense resources focused on highly misleading marketing vs. individual expertise, with attempts by consumers to organize frequently hijacked.) I shouldn't need to be a domain expert in order to make an informed choice. The level of acceptance of a "free market" overwhelmingly dominating by deceptive marketing is insane.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#38

Post by lordnacho »

refulgentis wrote: post #32
lordnacho wrote: post #29

This is something that has bothered me for a while. When we're discussing capitalism, people seem to get it in their head that it's either what we have now, or you can fuck off to North Korea. How I would characterize my ideal economy is one where the feedback loop works: people can make reasonable guesses about what a product is, how long it will work for, and what its cost is. They can adjust their purchases accord…

This sort of thing is satisfying to write and even more satisfying to read and nod along to. But it's paper-thin histrionics. "an ad said I'd value something and I didn't" and "I didn't read the license agreement" are trans-mutated into "abuse" that should obviously be illegal, and somehow become grist for all sorts of grand invocations, GDP, capitalism, MBAs, North Korea... You're free to check what joins your sofa…

There's always someone who writes the rebuttal you're writing here. I used to do it all the time as well.

It's always the same rebuttal, "why don't you just check this then", along with "well all the information is out there".

In isolation, it is true. You could spend a day going out on the internet to try to learn what kinds of join your sofa might have. I suspect you would never even have considered the problem, and that is a rather major problem.

There are a LOT of products in the world. You will not know the unknown unknowns of every item. Even the known unknowns are often not worth your while to spend time on, because a scale manufacturer can provide an item at a price below which you will not bother to check.

The fact is we're all dependent on people making the honest choices when they're offering us stuff, you can't check it all.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#40

Post by saagarjha »

refulgentis wrote: post #32
lordnacho wrote: post #29

This is something that has bothered me for a while. When we're discussing capitalism, people seem to get it in their head that it's either what we have now, or you can fuck off to North Korea. How I would characterize my ideal economy is one where the feedback loop works: people can make reasonable guesses about what a product is, how long it will work for, and what its cost is. They can adjust their purchases accord…

This sort of thing is satisfying to write and even more satisfying to read and nod along to. But it's paper-thin histrionics. "an ad said I'd value something and I didn't" and "I didn't read the license agreement" are trans-mutated into "abuse" that should obviously be illegal, and somehow become grist for all sorts of grand invocations, GDP, capitalism, MBAs, North Korea... You're free to check what joins your sofa…

I have literally no idea what joins my sofa has. I own far too many things to check the seams and joints on everything I have ever bought.
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