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Let's make quality the norm again

forbrukerradet.no

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Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#411

Post by account42 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #402
edmundsauto wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The steelman is that by lowering the cost, more pets can afford better food than what they currently eat. No comment about whether that is reflected in the consumer facing price or in profits.

> The steelman is that by lowering the cost, more pets can afford better food than what they currently eat. No comment about whether that is reflected in the consumer facing price or in profits. For your steelman to be relevant it would have to be reflected by lowering the price, otherwise they're just making the product worse for no customer benefit whatsoever and hoping customers take a long time to notice. And if…

And that's before you get into whether selling something as food which is low quality enough to make dogs sick is ethical at any price. It's not like only dogs who would otherwise go unfed will end up eating it.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#412

Post by account42 »

ElProlactin wrote: post #308
techpression wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a special place in hell for people who would buy a dog food brand only to make worse dog food…

> There’s a special place in hell for people who would buy a dog food brand only to make worse dog food… And yet countless millions of people basically say nothing about how the food they eat is produced.

I agree that we shouldn't treat humans worse than animals but one important factor here is that humans are much better at expressing themselves when their body badly reacts to some food. Animals often lack the ability to tell you that something is wrong and some may even be genetically inclined to actively hide any issues from you as showing weakness would have gotten their ancestors killed in the wild.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#413

Post by Barrin92 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #145
piker wrote: post #3

While it does relate to price discovery--i.e., some folks just aren't willing to pay for an additional unit of quality at 10x--my theory is that the decline in quality is another hidden form of inflation. Thing continues to cost X even though regulations have increased costs Y, ship production to China and scrimp on the inputs. (Or have market forces do that for you.)

Video games are a good example of an area where the pricing makes no sense. Inflation has risen, and they make like $20 or whatever off a brand new game in 1990s bucks. Video game prices will go up more and more, it also kind of explains to me why prices rarely drop below $59 anymore, used to be on Steam some AAA games could be snagged up for $20 after a year, now you can barely find them on reasonable sales, they ho…

it made sense because just as with software the marginal cost of production per unit tends towards zero. You have a largely fixed cost in production so each additional copy sold makes you more profitable, and that's why game companies focused on player growth.

Problem is gaming is now relatively mature and competing with other media for attention and so you either need to cut production cost or raise prices.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#414

Post by account42 »

Thlom wrote: post #257
jerf wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything has become a lemon market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons Even if a brand stays solid for 100 years, for all I know as I'm standing there in the store deciding whether to buy something, private equity bought them two quarters ago and hollowed them out. Harvard MBAs/private equity sees brand reputation as just another resource to be converted into money. If I were a billionaire my dream…

Yeah. On various "Buy it for life" forums it's a daily occurence that someone mentions a brand they bought 5 years ago and then someone chimes in that they were sold or restructured last year and now it's no longer "buy it for life". Some brands kind of split up so products sold in one market is cheap knockoffs while products sold in the home market is still high quality manufactured at the old factory with 100 years…

Perhaps selling a company should mean the trademarks are lost. After all, the entire point of trade marks is to protect consumers.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#415

Post by mitxela »

jolt42 wrote: post #186
testdelacc1 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s expensive to be poor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But…

It really pisses me off there are used car lots that obviously prey on the poor. I asked for their cash price and they wouldn't give me one, or it was ridiculously priced. They just want for people to pay off a debt and all the interest that goes with it.

I heard the advice was to not mention the payment method until the very end when you're about to pay, because they won't cancel a sale they've invested into just because you're paying them with actual money. I don't know whether that still works or if they now will cancel the sale.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#416

Post by mitxela »

nradov wrote: post #201
testdelacc1 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s expensive to be poor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But…

I don't know why people keep posting that silly quote. Outside of fantasy novels, in the real world the most expensive footwear is often the least durable, and you can get decent boots at Walmart for <$50 on clearance sales.

my local-Walmart-equivalent The theory might've used to be true when prices were related to costs. In current year they'll sell you the $10 slop for $50, and sell you the exact same $10 slop for $300. Someone else will sell you the $200 amazing product for $300, but they won't sell the $200 amazing product for $50. Paying a lot of money is (usually) necessary, but not sufficient, for getting a quality product.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#417

Post by mitxela »

_moof wrote: post #360
piker wrote: post #3

While it does relate to price discovery--i.e., some folks just aren't willing to pay for an additional unit of quality at 10x--my theory is that the decline in quality is another hidden form of inflation. Thing continues to cost X even though regulations have increased costs Y, ship production to China and scrimp on the inputs. (Or have market forces do that for you.)

Walmart used to be (and maybe still is?) known for doing this. They would get companies to produce lower-quality versions of products under the same name as the standard versions available elsewhere. They could sell them for cheaper and consumers were none the wiser - or so the theory went, anyway. Obviously people caught on.

I've noticed this at Aldi too. Boxes of muesli that look 30% cheaper than at other supermarkets... but when you look closer, the box is 3/4 the size and it's only 3/4 full. I don't regularly shop at Aldi.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#418

Post by mitxela »

chairmansteve wrote: post #148
piker wrote: post #3

While it does relate to price discovery--i.e., some folks just aren't willing to pay for an additional unit of quality at 10x--my theory is that the decline in quality is another hidden form of inflation. Thing continues to cost X even though regulations have increased costs Y, ship production to China and scrimp on the inputs. (Or have market forces do that for you.)

Problem is, you pay 10x for shirt that is made in the same factory as the cheap shiry, just has a different logo.

Same factory isn't the issue as a factory can make both good and bad products. But it's the same bad product both times.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#419

Post by Dylan16807 »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #408
Dylan16807 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, streaming services usually don't have ads. But you're paying a lot of money for specific content there. I'm talking about normal web page stuff. And if you're not seeing ads there, then either you go to very few normal web pages or you're using an ad blocker. Ad blocking is useful but it's not a solution. I want a way to distribute a reasonable amount of money across the sites I visit in exchange for no ads, bu…

Well depends on your idea of “a lot of money”, but guven advertisers make a profit from me I suspect I’m actually saving money. Personally I value the time saved far more than the 2% of my income I spend on streaming subscriptions.

Those streaming services don't have free options for the same content. You're not primarily paying to get rid of ads, you're paying for access. So for that and other reasons I'll say again I'm not talking about those services, I'm talking about the state of normal web pages.

Re: Let's make quality the norm again

#420

Post by slumberlust »

saturn8601 wrote: post #302
jerf wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything has become a lemon market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons Even if a brand stays solid for 100 years, for all I know as I'm standing there in the store deciding whether to buy something, private equity bought them two quarters ago and hollowed them out. Harvard MBAs/private equity sees brand reputation as just another resource to be converted into money. If I were a billionaire my dream…

Worker owned cooperatives could be a reliable indicator however i'm not sure there are many examples of this being scaled upwards, like could an airline do that? Could they even have an option for a worker owned company provide an alternative for everything in the economy? You need capital to make a competitor and all the capital is rapidly being sucked up by the people enshittifying everything. The answer probably l…

Would Publix count as a co-op?
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