Hair trimmer set to shortest length will make your face like shaven 2 days ago. Costs nothing. Needs no foam, no aftershave gel, creates no irritation or red skin, just splash of water and optional facial creme. My condolences to those who must have a clean shave every day of their life.
Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money
41–50 of 982 posts
Re: Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money
#42I’ve never understood shaving. Why not just buy a trimmer and trim it down to 1mm? Much more convenient, faster and cheaper. Also there’s very little visual difference - especially now that everything is remote.
I like the feel of my skin after a close shave, and past partners have had a marked dislike of my prickly stubble when it is at that level
Re: Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money
#43I’ve never understood shaving. Why not just buy a trimmer and trim it down to 1mm? Much more convenient, faster and cheaper. Also there’s very little visual difference - especially now that everything is remote.
Hair density and growth rate and skin sensitivity is going to matter a lot. I use an electric razor because I don't have much facial hair and it doesn't grow very fast. But I'll relatively often get irritated skin from it and have to be careful about how I use it in advance of eg a wedding. Getting a close shave still requires maintenance of the electric razor, cleaning it and occasionally replacing the foils.
Re: Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money
#44This will probably sound weird but, what is the point at which are you changing blades?
I am using mine with just water and I always make sure that I clean/ shake off everything afterwards. My first proper blade lasted for 4 years. Then I changed just because I clicked on ad to receive free razor from Gillette. That one is already working for 2 years.
So I get that new blades are bit nicer to your skin, but as blade getting dull is gradual I never see the tipping point when I should get a new one. My skin is perfect by the way.
Re: Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money
#45I use safety and very non-safety straight razors for trimming my beard. The converse of the TSA thing is also true: using a straight razor allows you to travel anywhere with a very, very dangerous weapon in your bag that nobody will look twice at. I just check my bag like a big ol grownup who doesn't need to Tony Stark it directly off the plane to get into my caravan of black SUVs.
Re: Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money
#46I don't understand why people think it is so important a thesis to convince people that a person sells something to get as much profit for his product. Much as it is important to educate people of loss leaders, subscription models, brand marketing, and other newer ways profit maximization happens, they aren't really cutting edge concepts either.
I make a decent living now, and I use Harry's razors. Could I use and change the cheaper disposable ones more often? Sure. Is Harry's quality worth paying for so that I nick my face less? Very much so. I don't really need to be told they're "out to get me". I'm a big boy who can do simple price math.
Re: Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money
#47Shaving is like an Inception-level hierarchy of waste and affectation. It's easy to feel superior because you ditched the biggest brands, and still be wasting your money on unnecessary and crappy products because you were tricked by marketing. Those hipster shave-by-mail clubs are not really better than Gillette. And the safety razor market-disguised-as-a-community is also full of waste disguised by hipster affectations. Specialty soaps, exotic animal hair brushes, elaborate rituals, etc. Underneath it all is the fact that you CAN buy a cheap, adequate, no-name safety razor somewhere, and you can buy cheap adequate blades in bulk with some trial and error, and you can find some combination of products that will work on your skin without going for specialty and prestige. Don't buy these things as tokens of a lifestyle, buy them for utility.
Re: Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money
#48I've used a straight razor for almost 20 years. Vindicating to read that the price of a Dovo pays for itself. I think my bar of shaving soap is probably the better part of decade old as well. In the interim, a whole peculiar subculture around shaving has developed, but you don't have to be a part of it to just use a razor. Makes you unreachable by corporate marketing as well, which is itself its own reward.
Aside from differences in cost, do you find anything about a straight razor compellingly better than e.g. a Gillette Mach 3?
I go through Mach 3 cartridges pretty slowly, so price isn't a big concern. And I don't notice anything deficient about the quality of my shaves. But one thing I really like about safety razors is that there's zero risk of serious injury.
Re: Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money
#49Yes, modern razors are a scam; they have AMAZING marketing teams. You still can buy old-style razors and blades cheap from Amazon because there's still a healthy demand.
As for the rest of the article:
> Cooking equipment: essentially indestructible Cast Iron skillets transition into teflon pans. The newer pans perform worse, and must be replaced on a shockingly regular basis. They also seem to be poisonous.
No, no, and no. Teflon pans perform wonderfully, are replaced maybe every 10-20 years depending on workmanship if you don't scratch them up with metal utensils, and are not poisonous unless you're eating the flakes from your scratched up pans.
> Nespresso machines, and other coffee pod brands, replace many styles of coffee brewing. Provide much worse coffee, at a higher price but are superficially convenient.
They produce good coffee in many styles that would normally require a lot of work, and are MASSIVELY convenient. Press a button and a couple of minutes later, your cup of coffee is ready to drink.
> Televisions moving from being screens which accept input, to self contained 'smart' devices that require software updates and thus have a shortened useful lifespan.
Their lifespan is unchanged. You can continue to use them as "dumb" screens using HDMI input and plug in an external device. You can also buy a smart TV and never connect it to the internet.
> In many inner city shops it is now hard to buy an individual piece of fruit.
For some fruit maybe, but if the point is saving money, why are you buying individually?
> Subscription services like Hello Fresh, where you can pay well over the odds to have some vegetables delivered to you.
So buy them from the market like we've been doing forever. If you're lazy and rich, use these delivery services. You have choice.
Re: Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money
#50Semi-serious cyclist chiming in about this part of the article:
"Well understood mechanical bike shifting transitions to electronic shifting which requires you to pay more and charge your pedal bike (Not sure about this example, as in theory a bike derailleur needs not be a repeated purchased)"
One of my bikes has a Shimano electronic shifter. The others are a mix between mechanical SRAM and Shimano components. The electronic shifter has two advantages that mean something to me. First, you never have to deal with "cable stretch" whereby the alignment gradually shifts off-center and you have to use the micro-adjustment knob to re-align. It starts out perfect, and it stays perfect. Second, "oops" shifting (i.e., failing to shift before you've hit a hill and have to shift at low a RPM while applying force to stay moving) is much smoother. Those are both real advantages to me.
The problem I've run into, at least with the Shimano electronic shifter, is durability. Both the front and rear derailleurs have failed on me mid-ride for different reasons. The front because there's a part that pushes against a plate when up-shifting, and that fatigued to the point of snapping off completely after a couple of years of use. The rear because of a minor slide-out. Some sensitive part broke in the mechanism, and the entire thing had to be replaced. I've slammed plenty of mechanical rear derailleurs into the pavement or a tree stump or whatever, and they've all survived just fine, so long as the hangar was intact. I've even subjected a mechanical rear derailleur to the dreaded "get caught in the rear wheel spokes" abuse, and it came through just fine after replacing the hanger.
I've never forgotten to charge the battery, but I've heard of people on longer group rides (think 70+ miles) losing the ability to shift when they're 40 miles out into the countryside because their battery died.
The electronic shifter just seems much more fragile to me. But it's a really nice shifting experience while it works!
All that said, my N+1 bike I just picked up last weekend has mechanical shifters. I'll adjust the knob when the cable stretches and deal with the occasional "oops" when I hit hills in the wrong gear because I value durability and robustness more.