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The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

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Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#351

Post by cantor_S_drug »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #32
bitter_michael wrote: post #27

This article's thesis is all over the place, but the discussion here brings up an interesting topic: the decline in quality is relative to your evaluation function. If you want long lasting products, then maybe the cheaper furniture is of lower quality. If you want something light weight and affordable, then ikea is higher quality. Assuming there is a uniform product evaluation function seems like lazy journalism. Th…

But we are not in control of the evaluation function. It is heavily manipulated by ads and other patterns. You can control your own evaluation if you are actively working on it but market moves based on majority so it doesn’t matter

Ads can be sometimes good, I got recommended the ad for Zeiss SmartLife lenses. Then I did my own research on youtube and I took the shot. I must say I am liking my pricey purchase.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#352

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

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…

As long as there are customers who will pay for low quality, and there is no external [read: "regulatory"] goad, there will be vendors that will sell it.

Basic human (and capitalist) nature. Not good, but not evil, either. It's just the scorpion and the frog story.

It sucks, trying to actually create things with higher levels of Quality. It's a lot more expensive to add even rather incremental levels of Quality, and companies that try, usually (but not always) get ground into the dirt.

If we deliberately create substandard quality, it can really eat at our souls. I think many folks are able to work out a deal with their conscience, but I was never able to do that, so I worked for most of my career at a company that was all about Quality.

This whole thing brings to mind the Vimes Boots Theory: https://terrypratchett.com/explore-discworld/sam-vimes-boots...

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#353

Post by boomlinde »

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.

I'd argue that they both represent a kind of efficiency. If your product or service has an unacceptable quality, demand will decrease and you will lose money that way. On the other hand, if in the pursuit of higher quality your production costs become too high, profit will decrease and you will lose money that way. Somewhere between these is a sweet spot where the level of quality and demand are in balance so as to maximize profit.

The difference between cheap rocket launches and cheap clothes in those terms is just where this sweet spot is: there may not be a high demand at all for more failure prone rocket launches, while poorly constructed clothes and appliances have evidently come to seem perfectly acceptable to a lot of consumers.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#354

Post by nfriedly »

bee_rider wrote: post #315
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…

Bluetooth doesn’t follow the typical quality curve anyway, it is just random whether or not your devices like each other. I bet the sound quality on the Sony buds was better.

Yeah, probably. At least until the Sony's break down and start sounding like trash.

But, to be honest, I do more audiobooks and podcasts than I do music, so the audio quality was not the top reason I picked them. The link buds have a fairly unique design with a 2~3 mm hole in the middle of the earbuds that lets outside sound in. I like it a lot better than any active transparency mode I've ever tried. They also have much better controls than any other earbuds I've tried.

The problem with the Sony's is that they either get something messed up inside the speaker and start sounding like crap at medium to high volume, or the case's open/closed sensor breaks and they wake up and start discharging in the case, and then they're dead by the time I try to use them.

I occasionally try watching videos on my phone, but the latency that Bluetooth adds throws me off, so I don't really enjoy anything with dialogue because the lips are moving out of sync with the words. I've tried lots of different Bluetooth earbuds - from Sony, Aukey, Jlab, even the "gamer" ones from razr - and all of them seem to have noticeable amounts of latency.

I'm not sure if I'm more sensitive to it than most people or they're just all shit, but the latency is the big reason that I'm annoyed that nearly all the manufacturers removed headphones jacks from flagship phones. (Sony actually deserves some credit here, I think their flagship Xperia phone still include a headphone jack and a MicroSD slot!)

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#355

Post by Forgeties79 »

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…

My favorite example is the GoPro Hero 4 Black, which I still have and regularly use.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#357

Post by CommenterPerson »

Few observations over the past few decades (my paycheck went up by slightly less than the US inflation rate during this time):

Air travel is much more affordable to me. It has become psychologically nasty which makes the overall deal feel worse, while it is actually better in $ terms.

Housing build quality is worse, things need more frequent repairs, cost is higher probably due to increase in land value.

Much more trashy food in the grocery store aisles, one needs to be aware and shop carefully.

Politics especially in the US has gotten FAR worse.

The internet after the early promise has gotten FAR worse (better in bandwidth and far worse via enshittification).

Cars improved till around 2010 and now worse for the dollar (too much electronics, and repairs are prohibitively expensive).

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#358

Post by nehal3m »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #326
ants_everywhere wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are pointing directly at the philosophical bedrock of western civilization, something which most white collar elites implicitly believe but don't state outright. It shows up right away in the article: > ... quality is an inherently subjective concept, as it depends on the preferences of each consumer. For most of history, people believed the opposite. For thousands of years, people in every major civilization bel…

I think this is a great insight. Also, from a personal perspective, one of the problems I regularly experience as a consumer of goods is that it is very difficult for me to judge quality, meaning I can explicitly not intuit value. For example, two years ago I bought 3 identical pairs of Levi’s jeans at considerable cost. Granted, they’re all I wear, but given that I follow the washing instructions and don’t put undue stress on them I’d expect them to last 5 years. Two are busted already. I am looking for replacements and apparently buying from what I considered to be a reputable brand at a high price (which I foolishly believed to be an indicator of quality which it no longer is) is not a viable strategy anymore.

I am faced with a choice, do I join the problem and go for fast fashion crap or do I risk being burned again? Who do I believe when I’m researching quality? Google and Reddit have long since been astroturfed and small scale forums are dead.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#360

Post by Forgeties79 »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #326
ants_everywhere wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are pointing directly at the philosophical bedrock of western civilization, something which most white collar elites implicitly believe but don't state outright. It shows up right away in the article: > ... quality is an inherently subjective concept, as it depends on the preferences of each consumer. For most of history, people believed the opposite. For thousands of years, people in every major civilization bel…

I’ve always viewed it as less a discussion about any sort of real defined “quality metric” and more companies asking “what is the least amount of time, money, and effort we can put in before people stop buying it?”

Even more simply put: what is the worst version of the product that people are willing to buy?

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