The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality • Hacker News Board

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#421

Post by jcgrillo » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 1:51 PM UTC

potato3732842 wrote: post #325

jcgrillo wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the tool degrade gradually over time or is it sudden? If the former, you're much better off over the 10 year span with the high quality tool, because the time you spend dealing with its degraded performance is much less. IME it's almost always better to go for a high quality, old, used tool than to buy a low quality new one. Usually the wear parts are replaceable or rebuildable as well.

Your comment is just nit picking. Point was there's a lot of situations where the math hugely favors the cheap tool. Used tools of the brands that anyone screeching about nice tools would consider to be of repute are going to generally be priced at equivalent to new tools of unknown brand. Specialty tools frequently aren't available on the used market. Anything that spins or plugs into the wall tends to be finicky af…

I can't think of a single case where it has actually been true that the cheaper tool was better somehow apart from jackstands. I got some pretty decent 6 ton jackstands from harbor freight. Don't know that i'd actually trust them to hold 6 tons though. Shop press? Not really. Had to put a bunch of time and money into it to make it halfway decent. Should have just gotten a good one. For power hand tools I have all Makita stuff either bought new or remanufactured, wouldn't go near harbor freight for that stuff. My welder is a Miller, wouldn't dream of going with off brand stuff there. Torches however are northern tool (i think?) victor knockoffs which are ok apart from the orings, hoses, and regulators... should have just gone for the quality tool to start would have been cheaper in the long run. My machine tools are all antiques and work outstandingly well. Literally irreplaceable--could not buy something new that does the same job.

I guess all that is to say in my experience the cheap crap breaks and ends up being more expensive either in opportunity cost or cost of replacement/modification.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#422

Post by bradly » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 1:51 PM UTC

Ygg2 wrote: post #368

hliyan wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's how I see it: in the absence of growth in market share or cost-reducing innovation, the only remaining strategy for profit maximization is the delivering of progressively lower quality products for progressively higher prices. This obviously destroys the brand over time, but brands can be recycled/reinvented. A purely rational and self-interested (i.e. unencumbered by moral sentiment or empathy) economic agent…

Then from a purely rational and self-interested citizenry would hold any economic agents on the hook for future cleanups of land, water or air.

Turns out a large enough number of humans can be controlled by ads that cost less money than the money they generate by controlling these humans.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#423

Post by specialp » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 1:52 PM UTC

One factor around this is private equity buyouts. PE has been snapping up a lot of well established smaller companies and squeezing more profits out of them. Part of this is value engineering the products and offerings. These companies have built up names over a long time based on good products so you can ride the name and existing customers for a bit and maximize profits. By the time people get fed up the investment has paid off.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#424

Post by an0malous » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 1:52 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #348

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…

> Many comments here are arguing that quality has actually gone up over the past decades. Yes, many people confuse technological development with quality improvements. Technology can improve quality, but it can also be used in other ways. My personal view is the west, especially North America, never recovered from the oil crisis of the early 1970s. Prior to that energy was almost seen as disposable, at least compared…

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#425

Post by Ylpertnodi » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

joduplessis wrote: post #377

This is one of the reasons I do like Apple products. I've owned many PC's/Android phones/etc. - none of them come even close the longevity of Apple hardware (the exceptions are real, for sure).

My atari STE (4mb upgrade) is still going strong, and is stll rock (and roll) steady for music.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#426

Post by eps » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

xattt wrote: post #285

baq wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IKEA has some of the best quality cheap furniture. To get something noticeably better you need to spend at least 2x for any given item; 3-5x is common for not at all fancy stuff.

BILLY quietly slid from mid-tier to cheap tier in order to keep the nostalgic momentum. The twist is that there are certain products that people use as benchmarks of quality (like Arizona iced tea). If the tier changes without some sort of inflection, you perceive it as degradation of quality.

> benchmarks of quality (like Arizona iced tea)

Not a good example. Arizona tea is held in high esteem only because it never went up in price. The beverage itself has always been of a clearly dubious quality.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#427

Post by teiferer » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 1:54 PM UTC

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 suspicion is that when products are successful and mature but reach market saturation, profit growth pressure leads to cutting some corners on every iteration, and hence to a slow decline in quality over the years.

I'm sure that's one component. I can also imagine that another component is that in order to broaden the customer base, there is cost pressure as well as the pressure to appeal to more people. The initial market may have consisted of more quality focused nerds who were ok with spending a little more to get a robust thing with more knobs to tune behavior, while the mass market is fine with buying new stuff all the time, given that it's cheaper, and they don't care about fine tuning things, just want it to work out of the box, until they anyway buy a new thing in a year or two.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#428

Post by next_xibalba » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 1:54 PM UTC

This is very simple. Growth has declined. When growth declines, you can’t rely on scale economies to expand your margins. So you have to take cost out of your product or service. And if you do that long enough, you start cutting not just fat but then muscle, then bone.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#429

Post by __turbobrew__ » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 1:56 PM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #247

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…

This is far more prominent in women’s clothing. My wife always says how buying from the same brands over the years that materials get thinner and thinner, as well as becoming more and more synthetic blend %s until it’s practically disposable.

LuLuLemon is guilty of this. Their quality was pretty good about 10 years ago, but since then all the materials have gotten thinner and less durable. I have some LuLuLemon clothes from 10+ years ago which outlasted things I bought 3 years ago.

Now the quality is objectively bad and things get holes right away or are not even tailored correctly, but hey $7 billion wasn’t enough for Chip Wilson so he is going to keep sucking the brand dry.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#430

Post by danaris » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 1:56 PM UTC

ants_everywhere wrote: post #286

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…

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…

Your former CFO needs to read about the Trust Thermocline.

https://therightstuff.medium.com/the-trust-thermocline-expla...