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The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

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Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#41

Post by vdupras »

littlestymaar wrote: post #30
vdupras wrote: post #17

In inflation calculation, is quality taken into account? I guess not, given the inherent problem stated in the article. If that's the case, even if it's true that we can say "sure, quality is declining, but it's fine, just fine", it would follow that inflation is actually much higher than reported. When you buy a fridge today, it buys you the "fridge service" for a much shorter time span, forcing you to invest a lot…

It is, in theory (hedonic price adjustment can go both ways), but I don't know how accurate their measurement is. Edit, now that I checked it looks like hedonic price adjustment measurements are performed on only 7.5%[1]of the goods in the CPI basket, and the main goal seems to be to avoid overestimating inflation by tracking quality improvements better. [1]: https://www.nber.org/digest/20239/correcting-quality-chang…

The examples that the article give are "memory size and CPU speed for computers or horsepower and miles per gallon for cars", that is, technological improvements that would be a reason to adjust inflation value further down because "quality" went up. Without, of course, taking overall lifetime of the product.

So this would in fact make the inflation misreporting problem even worse.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#42

Post by nradov »

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

Nonsense. If you want really nice, high quality furniture then you can just pay a local craftsman to make it for you. This is always an option regardless and some of us are not easily manipulated by ads. Of course good furniture will be expensive.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#43

Post by raspasov »

"Following his reasoning, it cannot be stated in absolute terms that an iPhone 15 is of “better quality” than a 2003 Nokia."

This statement suffers from either viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses or from total cultural relativism in the most pejorative sense.

I'm not sure about 2003, but around 2009, I owned a Nokia N900, which was arguably the flagship Nokia phone at the time. I can confidently state that current iPhones are _way_ better than that phone. On paper, the N900 phone was amazing: it had GPS, Wi-Fi, multitasking, a camera, a touchscreen, and (!) a hardware keyboard, and more. It had a desktop-class browser, on paper. But nothing quite worked well. It was far too bloated for the hardware capabilities of the time. When you came home, it never damn switched properly to WiFi, or it took forever. The same applies to switching off WiFi and switching to cellular when you leave home. The GPS always took minutes to establish a location and easily lost connection due to small obstructions. I recall that I compared it to a friend's iPhone at the time; the N900's GPS was embarrassingly bad and slow.

I can confidently say that today's flagship iPhones (or even Androids) are significantly better quality than the N900, in every way possible.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#44

Post by petesergeant »

zer00eyz wrote: post #19

> According to a 2024 report by the software company Salesforce, 62% of these services in Spain are already automated. Today, it’s easier to converse with a machine than with a real person. Whats adorable is that the author thinks this has anything to do with AI. Shitty AI is an excuse to get rid of customer service. It's a move that most of tech made a long time ago. How many times BEFORE AI have you heard the lamen…

As you point out, speaking to a human rather than AI is no worse than speaking to a human who isn’t empowered to do anything. Certainly ten years ago in the UK, if you called a customer service number and ended up speaking to someone with a thick Indian accent, it was unlikely — through no fault of their own — that they were empowered to do anything to solve your problem.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#45

Post by littlestymaar »

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…

> If you want something light weight and affordable,

Affordability has nothing to do in the quality evaluation, it is already taken into account in the quality/cost ratio.

Also, where did you get this idea that particle board furniture were particularly lightweight?

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#46

Post by ozgrakkurt »

ath3nd wrote: post #38
navane wrote: post #6

It's called inflation guys. Most innovation is selling an inferior product for a lower price. Most of us can only afford that. It's the same old inflation, but repackeged to keep the official inflation number down.

This is not inflation, it's divorced from all factors, these companies are raking in record profits, and they still squeeze out price increases, smaller seats, worse customer service, just because you have no alternative, you gotta take it. It's called "Enshittification": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification . It's just the free market and the corporations giving a big middle finger to its clients. It's the…

On one side you have companies that are working hard 24/7 to have more money at any cost. On the other side you have average Joe who can barely work, have time for family and have time for relaxing.

Also it is expected for the company to have absolutely no care for ethics unless it affects their bottom line. And there are many blockers for the average Joe like ethics, feeling guilt etc. etc.

It is only natural that companies are pushing more and more as time goes on. And there is no reason it should stop other than companies messing it up?

Maybe if gains were huge, the regular people would get some benefits but it seems like the gains are just not enough for that to happen anymore?

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#47

Post by jcgrillo »

frereubu wrote: post #9
phtrivier wrote: post #2

Begs an interesting question : some people can still afford quality items that last (namely, the people that sell throwaway shit to everyone else ; or, more precisely, the people who earn rents from companies that sell throwaway shit etc...) Are things getting shittier for them, too ? Are luxury brands immune to "energy is getting expensive, and corporate needs to buy shares back and increase dividend, so we have to…

This is a great thread about wealth and craftsmanship. Wealthy people used to appreciate craft, which has morphed into spending lots of money on a brand rather than an understanding of what it is that they're buying: https://bsky.app/profile/dieworkwear.bsky.social/post/3lswmj...

Excellent thread, nicely juxtaposed to this utterly insane sentence:

> One is that attributes like durability — which used to be a major factor in how people judged a product’s quality — have lost relevance.

I've noticed this in clothing and vehicles. If you want to own a durable car, you need to get an old one. Mid 1990s seems optimal for most manufacturers, some skew earlier (e.g. Mercedes-Benz which peaked about half a decade earlier). If you want durable shoes, it's very hard to beat a set of custom Limmers which are made pretty much the same way they were in the 1950s. Neither option is cheap, but you get something for it--knowing your car won't strand you with some bewildering array of christmas tree lights on the dashboard, and that your feet will be fine if you have an unplanned 20mi hike.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#48

Post by omeid2 »

nradov wrote: post #42
ozgrakkurt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nonsense. If you want really nice, high quality furniture then you can just pay a local craftsman to make it for you. This is always an option regardless and some of us are not easily manipulated by ads. Of course good furniture will be expensive.

The mass production discount must not be overlooked, whatever most people want becomes the most cost effective, and it appears that most people want cheap, and so anything beyond the absolute minimum costs a lot more relative to the quality.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#49

Post by AndyMcConachie »

raspasov wrote: post #43

"Following his reasoning, it cannot be stated in absolute terms that an iPhone 15 is of “better quality” than a 2003 Nokia." This statement suffers from either viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses or from total cultural relativism in the most pejorative sense. I'm not sure about 2003, but around 2009, I owned a Nokia N900, which was arguably the flagship Nokia phone at the time. I can confidently state that c…

This author doesn't really understand quality and starts out by defining it purelt in subjective terms. Then makes the mistake in the rest of the article by following this subjective reasoning by talking about perceptions of quality as a stand in for actual quality.

Go read Zen anf the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for a decent, if not weird, introduction to thinking about quality. Quality is both subjective and objective and therein lies the rub. This author does not understand that.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#50

Post by joegibbs »

For public services, every year people get older, more of the economy has to be reallocated towards looking after them. More spending on pensions rather than education, more old people using all the health services (since they use up so much more than young people).

The upper-middle class in the US is also bigger than ever, and all those upper-middle interests are getting saturated: AMEX lounges, expensive resorts. Air travel is also a lot more affordable for the common person than back in the golden age.

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