51–60 of 137 posts
I remember buying a Nike Tshirt in the early 2000s: good quality, and still looking decent today. Nowadays most of the Nike/Adidas/etc stuff is very low quality fabric and not necessarily cheap (at least in Western Europe)
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The opposite is actually true in reality. More people can afford X than ever before, for nearly any X that doesn’t involve directly paying for someone else’s labor.
What doesn't involve paying for someone else's labor? You mean things that are pure profit?
More people can afford to buy a toilet than ever before. The same may not be true of affording a plumber to install it.
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They are not knockoffs. Ugg boots are a generic product. The Australian manufacturer does not have exclusive rights to the design either.
A generic Australian product. But however Deckers owns Ugg as a trademark everywhere but here and NZ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugg_boots_trademark_dispute
I didn't realise the trademark holder is a US company.
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This is an intentional policy choice btw. You could just legislate the horseshoe company pays 90% of each displaced blacksmith decreasing by 5% per year.
And hey, almost a million blacksmiths displaced is a huge block of voters that any elected politician would be glad to capture! Although I struggle to recall any of the examples of something like this happening in the real-world history.
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A generic Australian product. But however Deckers owns Ugg as a trademark everywhere but here and NZ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugg_boots_trademark_dispute
Yes. In contrast to Mozzarella, Champagne, and many others which are generic products in the USA, and protected trademarks in their region of origin. I didn't realise the trademark holder is a US company.
While some California wines were and still are sold as "California Champagne", there was a court decision back in 2006 which affirmed the same protected trademark for Champagne as in the rest of the world, with the caveat that wineries already using the "Champagne" name would be grandfathered in and permitted to continue doing so.
A bottle of Champagne made in the US will be labeled with its origin, and no one can start a winery and start selling Champagne in the US. That's not the same thing as "generic".
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The centralisation is abnormal. Used to have one blacksmith in each village making clone horseshoes and earning a living. Now there's one company in South Korea that makes all the world's horseshoes and earns a million livings while each village has minus one living. And the guy who invented the horseshoe is sleeping under a bridge.
Well, the guy who invented the horseshoe died thousands of years ago. And the idea that one location making all the horseshoes means each village is minus one living is ignoring the other effects. Now, all the villagers can get cheaper horseshoes, so they don’t have to spend as many resources on shoes for their horses, and can now invest more into what their village is best at, and sell those goods to other villages.…
And for a village that had 50 such specialties... they can make do with 49 specialties. Then with 48. And 45 as well. 25 eventually. But some day in the future, their great-grandchildren wake up, and there are no jobs. That Korean factory even ships in tractors, so there's no farm labor work to be had for the 200 who didn't have a specialty. But the food still costs money. And it doesn't matter if the village is gone because those people moved to the city, there's not much work there either. And maybe there are even fewer people to worry about this, because when the moved to the city, those people stopped having children.
Who is this good for? Is it good for you?
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Yes. In contrast to Mozzarella, Champagne, and many others which are generic products in the USA, and protected trademarks in their region of origin. I didn't realise the trademark holder is a US company.
Champagne is absolutely not a "generic" product in the US. While some California wines were and still are sold as "California Champagne", there was a court decision back in 2006 which affirmed the same protected trademark for Champagne as in the rest of the world, with the caveat that wineries already using the "Champagne" name would be grandfathered in and permitted to continue doing so. A bottle of Champagne made i…
https://www.ttb.gov/system/files/images/pdfs/rulings/2008-1....
Dupe might affect the seller, but customer doesn't care much. In the past, people had to go by brand name as an assurance of quality. We have other means now. Reviews from other buyers, detailed specifications, return policies - all reduced the moat of branding. People can now buy any brand that has specifications they want, use reviews for quality assurance and it's easy to return the product if required. Brand is not playing the same role it used to.
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And hey, almost a million blacksmiths displaced is a huge block of voters that any elected politician would be glad to capture! Although I struggle to recall any of the examples of something like this happening in the real-world history.
Just shows how powerful capital interests are.
Ultimately the manufacturer wins the horse-shoe battle because they are cheaper. And the consumers in the village prefer cheap shoes to locally made (expensive) ones.
Fundamentally consumers like cheap stuff. Manufacturing shifts happen because as soon as there's a cheaper output, you've won. Consumers will reliably switch to cheap. At the start there may be some brand loyalty, there may even be a quality difference, but both those erode quickly.
Lots of people promote the idea of buying locally, even if it's more expensive. But it's a hard message to sell, and a tough one to buy. I'm sorry for the blacksmith, but times are hard and I need my horses shod.
It's easy to blame capitalism or factory owners or foreign cheap labor or any other convenient political scapegoat. But the root of the problem is consumer preference for cheap (even if inferior) to the exclusion of everything else.
This is perhaps culturally most evident where the premise above is false. In the US for example food is low quality, but plentiful. In Europe food generally costs more, but is of a much higher standard. Portions are smaller. Quality is more important than quantity.
This is not by accident. Europe has deliberately fostered local food markets, local food production, and promoted a narrative around history and good production. Cheap food is available, but quality food has a strong foothold.