461–470 of 824 posts
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you proposing as an alternative? Spend a fortune on a high quality tool, and then either have it sitting in my garage unused for years or waste a bunch of time trying to sell it online?
Borrow, rent, pay someone else to do it, or throw your hands up in the air when you've tried nothing, are all out of ideas, and fuck the externalities.
Do not discuss "content" of this article, discuss the reasoning behind and the effect of this article. The author many not even realize this is a propaganda article, using a well known mechanism of "spray to dismay and therefore cripple". This article is a coordinated series of arguments that sum to the statement "you are powerless."
We as part of a collective are incredibly powerful beyond imagination. When our concerns and our world start to become bigger than just our individual needs, we find strength in numbers. Only then can our individuality truly shine.
Seeing us as part of a group, a class and building that sense of community and collective action is long and difficult work.
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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 think it's more of late stage consumerism. Why do middle class people spend $1000 on a phone that's, for every single purpose they use it for, basically identical to a phone that would cost a fraction as much? Why do low class urban people buy sneakers for hundreds of dollars that, again, for every single purpose they use them for - are essentially identical to some no brand sneakers that would cost a tenth as much…
I just made the mistake of buying cheapo flipflops a few weeks ago. One stroll through the park and they are full of gravel stuck in the sole that left holes when I removed it. A few a days I replaced them with 7x as expensive ones. Already walked around 10x as far distance, no sign of issues. A reminder that buying cheap ends up more expensive. I don't need crap in my life and maybe that holds too for the folks you are thinking of?
Quality has improved across many dimensions in nearly every domain I’m familiar with. In fact, I’d argue there are very few products or services that couldn’t be made today to a higher standard than at any point in the past, if we chose to prioritize that. But what’s often mistaken for a decline in quality is really a shift in priorities: toward affordability, efficiency, and accessibility. And that’s fantastic. Prod…
I'm not convinced the widening access to American consumerism is a moral win. The amount of fossil fuels we're dependent on as a species is obscene. I worry for our children. There is no offramp, only growth.
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I noticed you excluded my entire post except for the parts about communism, which nobody brought up except you. I'm not interested in rehashing the team game of "capitalism vs communism vs whatever" for the millionth time here, and nobody but you brought up the latter, so you might safely conclude nobody else is, either. Do you think you can take off your team hat and have a discussion about what we were talking abou…
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I'm further confident that you can do it without bringing up "the other team". Give suggestions here. Look inward. Again: look inward. A third time: look inward.
Wait! I worry what you heard was, "rant against communism yet again, argue over the meaning of terms yet again", etc. I did not say that, so please don't feel like you need to keep doing that. Instead, try to participate constructively.
For example: you might suggest ways to motivate companies to stop enshitifying things for profit within the confines of late-stage capitalism, without changing the topic to how much you dislike a given ideology. But you'll have to actually do that. So let's look inward: how can we fix the issue?
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…
https://www.gojiberries.io/advertising-without-signal-whe-am...
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…
A major problem with the whole model of production is that if you make a good product and saturate the market you die. It’s not the result of some conspiracy to make shit products. It’s a simple outcome from the fact that purchases are one time while businesses are ongoing, combined with shareholder demands to boost growth. Those demands in turn come from things like pension funds that have promised a return to their customers.
One “solution” is to build subscriptions into everything but there’s already a customer revolt against that for obvious reasons. It’s obnoxious.
I think the best solution is to decouple and unbundle production. Have small design houses (or even individuals) that design products and have low ongoing costs and big manufacturing concerns that make things. Something always needs to be made so they always have business. Design products around commodity parts as much as possible to make retooling affordable.
This kind of already exists in the form of boutiques with kickstarter and Etsy products, or at least those folks have trailblazed this model.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 think it's more of late stage consumerism. Why do middle class people spend $1000 on a phone that's, for every single purpose they use it for, basically identical to a phone that would cost a fraction as much? Why do low class urban people buy sneakers for hundreds of dollars that, again, for every single purpose they use them for - are essentially identical to some no brand sneakers that would cost a tenth as much…