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The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality
511–520 of 824 posts
Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality
#512Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have noticed that woman’s clothing seems incredibly poor quality a lot of the time. Incredibly thin, and just looking at stuff on the racks and stores it was extremely common to find minor defects and loose threads.
Part of it may be matching to the use case. Men will buy a shirt and wear it until its seams break in 2-10 years. Women will buy blouses or dresses with cuts/colors that only work in certain seasons to be worn for a specific occasion that won’t come to pass again soon. Now where women have more trouble is just in the utility work wear shopping space because that clothing is utilized frequently and until it fails.
So many people of HN need to google the terms “raw denim” and “selvedge denim”. Companies like naked and famous make high quality BIFL tier work wear clothes aimed at women.
Normies just don’t know about it cus denim heads are autistic.
Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality
#513Most things are still available at the same quality your parents remember, thanks to ecommerce much more avilable, but sadly also at a similar real price your parents remember which we find extortionary by comparison to all the cheap crap flooding the market. You can have a tailored suit/shirt, hardwood furniture, grass-fed beef, vacuum to last decades, etc, but it will cost around the same in real terms and you're u…
> Most things are still available at the same quality your parents remember Just no. The old reputable brands are enshittifying the same way. I’ve multiple times seen it first hand, with brands like Levi’s and Fjällräven. One year of wear is enough to disform the textile entirely. The fabric from those older clothes are still sturdy and whole, with only discoloration at the folding spots. No holes either from decades…
Yes, you can't get the very same product (Levi's 501s) but you can absolutely get the same thing (straight cut jeans). I don't wear jeans or workwear but heard good things about Bronson Mfg and Red Tornado from enthusiasts.
The price is also quite reasonable (~100 USD) thanks to workwear revival and you can get them in heavier weights (15 oz).
Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality
#514Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bluetooth doesn’t follow the typical quality curve anyway, it is just random whether or not your devices like each other. I bet the sound quality on the Sony buds was better.
Yeah, probably. At least until the Sony's break down and start sounding like trash. But, to be honest, I do more audiobooks and podcasts than I do music, so the audio quality was not the top reason I picked them. The link buds have a fairly unique design with a 2~3 mm hole in the middle of the earbuds that lets outside sound in. I like it a lot better than any active transparency mode I've ever tried. They also have…
I haven't specifically tested it, but my $50 "Backbay Tempo" earbuds have a low-latency "Movie Mode" that sacrifices range to I think buffer sound for ~0 latency.
Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are pointing directly at the philosophical bedrock of western civilization, something which most white collar elites implicitly believe but don't state outright. It shows up right away in the article: > ... quality is an inherently subjective concept, as it depends on the preferences of each consumer. For most of history, people believed the opposite. For thousands of years, people in every major civilization bel…
Good analysis... (Side note: I was looking at your comment history and it appears that most of your comments are down-voted, somebody has an axe to grind)
This "grudge downvoting" shit has been a thing on HN for years, with Dang etc refusing to acknowledge it. Might as well join in on it yourself till they notice :)
Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality
#516Many 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…
As long as there are customers who will pay for low quality, and there is no external [read: "regulatory"] goad, there will be vendors that will sell it. Basic human (and capitalist) nature. Not good, but not evil, either. It's just the scorpion and the frog story. It sucks, trying to actually create things with higher levels of Quality. It's a lot more expensive to add even rather incremental levels of Quality, and…
That boots model is fascinating compared the the actual boot market in the USA. I can get an excellent pair of made in America, vibrax/goodyear welted extremely sturdy boots for 200 USD - maybe less. Redwing, danger, etc other PNW brands all exist and sell at this price point.
Compare to popular fashion boots like timberlands which are also 200 USD and reasonably sturdy but no Goodyear welt or proper sole so they fail in 5 years or less of regular wear.
Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality
#517"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…
I owned a Nokia in 2003. The battery lasted a week and they were virtually indestructible. The phone never crashed or reset, the keys were so reliable and well placed that I could text without looking at the screen. The phone did not get slower with age. None of these things can be said about my current smart phone. Granted it does a lot more, but the quality of the things it does do is much worse.
I owned a 3310. I remember going into the mountains for a week and didn’t even charge the phone beforehand, because the battery would last anyway.
Back then I used to climb, and I remember how it fell out of my pocket from around 30m (100 feet). When I got down, I just picked it up from the ground and put the back panel back on. The phone worked perfectly for at years after that.
Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are pointing directly at the philosophical bedrock of western civilization, something which most white collar elites implicitly believe but don't state outright. It shows up right away in the article: > ... quality is an inherently subjective concept, as it depends on the preferences of each consumer. For most of history, people believed the opposite. For thousands of years, people in every major civilization bel…
I’ve always viewed it as less a discussion about any sort of real defined “quality metric” and more companies asking “what is the least amount of time, money, and effort we can put in before people stop buying it?” Even more simply put: what is the worst version of the product that people are willing to buy?
There is some logic to not over-engineering a product or using more materials than necessary to produce something. I wonder why that seems to have manifested in an anti-consumer application some places.
Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 obje…
I read the “Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” many years ago. What I remember and took away from it is a lot about mental health and about being different and trying or not trying to fit in. The quality idea in the book sadly never clicked. To my defense I have to say I was young and had no philosophical background whatsoever, but maybe I am ready now. I should really re-read the book but maybe you could summarize your…
Agree, the quality part of the book is hard to grasp. I get that some written works are good and some are bad, that it is hard to qualify why yet there is a general consensus around it but I haven't been able to distill any deeper meaning than that.
However, the discussions regarding "gumption" and separating abstractions from reality when needed (i.e. "the carburetor set screw") as well as several other great lessons from the book have really helped me fine-tune my thinking. I think reading this a few times in your 20s is a fantastic time investment.
Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality
#520Earlier 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
Idk. I feel like at some point we have to blame society as a whole for things or things will never get changed. Social change in the past has been hard fought to get public perception to change. When my grandparents were kids, for example, black people were not allowed to use the same facilities as white people and a majority of people supported this. Sure powerful interests in the media promoted this view, but ultim…
Blaming society seems like a pointless exercise to me. It doesn't help solve any problems, and even could make some people give up on trying to do better. Society can change pretty quickly if people make an actual effort to do so and education people to new ideas and realizations.