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The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

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Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#521

Post by dahart »

mayas_ wrote: post #96
jstummbillig wrote: post #39

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…

Not quite sure about the affordability part. Cars are becoming prohibitively expensive. Housing is becoming a luxury. Even consumer products are becoming increasingly expensive. Safety largely improved but not craftsmanship.

> Cars are becoming prohibitively expensive

This isn’t true. There are dozens of car models near $20k today, and most of the base model inexpensive cars in the US have always cost around today’s $20k-$30k in adjusted dollars. Even the Ford model T: https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0512/how-inflati...

Quality of cars today is unquestionably better, and the number of features and conveniences is unquestionably higher. Cars last longer than they used to, a lot longer on average. There’s ample stats on this.

The average price of cars has gone up slowly relative to inflation because there are now better cars to choose from, and people choose to pay more. But you can’t even buy something as bad as a 1930s or 1950s or 1980s car today, and you can get a much better car now for less money than you could then.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#522

Post by ungreased0675 »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #508
robinsonb5 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is there's plenty of crap masquerading as the good stuff, at the higher price point, and telling the difference is not easy. (At least pre-purchase!)

When you learn about clothes and fashion, it’s quite easy to tell the difference. HN is full of computer nerds who can’t fanthom that computers are as mysterious to normies as sneakers are to the nerds of HN. A lot of people know how to tell apart good and bad footwear - it just isn’t you or your crowd!

Shoe culture places very little emphasis on the actual quality of the product. Brand and exclusivity is far more important.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#523

Post by epolanski »

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…

Levis and Nike are common offenders here.

Quality has dropped insanely low.

Fast fashion brought down most of the fashion industry up to luxury level.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#524

Post by ungreased0675 »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #344
jonplackett wrote: post #233

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.

Yes. To be more specific, look for the point where a Private Equity firm gets involved. Whose aim is extractive and often bankrupts the host company - to cut costs, send production somewhere cheaper, and in general use up the value in the good name that the product has. This is what happened to Dr. Martens (footwear) to Instant pot (cookware) to Red Lobster (restaurants)

Are there good arguments against outlawing those type of PE acquisitions?

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#525

Post by baxuz »

Quality has become something reserved for the rich. To get a garment or an item of the same quality that was available 20-30 years ago, I'd have to pay 10-100x the price. And I wouldn't even know where to start looking or how to get them.

You can by a "professional" set of Zwilling or Fissler cookware from Germany, which is actually made outside of Germany, and corrodes and warps way worse than a set of pots from the 1990s. Pitting from dishwashers, bad welds, delamination that occurs when using the boost function on the induction hob... The quality that was present in those pots from the 90s are now reserved for actual professional cookware sets not found in regular catalogues, which costs upwards of 300€ per pot.

Same goes for garments. If you want cotton spun from high-quality yarn that won't pill or fray within 1 year, the only place you will find it is by the yard at the tailor's, or in brands you don't even know the name of. Meanwhile, I am still rocking the same T-shirt that I wore in elementary school 30 years ago.

Office chairs — I have an Italian one from early 2000s and it's a beast. Both the mechanism and the upholstery. Today's "best" office chair — the SteelCase Leap is a rickety piece of trash by comparison. You can see the same decline in materials if you compare a Herman Miller Aeron from the early 2000s and ones built today.

Look at the Kitchen Aid stand mixer. The old ones had metal internals, and powerful, reliable motors. The new ones are much weaker, have nylon load bearing parts, and have a life span of 5 years tops.

Cutlery, tools... Everything has become worse, and there is a new category of "premium" items which are anything but.

And the biggest problem is that people's standards have been lowered to incredibly low levels. It's like they don't even understand how bad the things they are using actually are.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#526

Post by RandomBacon »

nradov wrote: post #192
JKCalhoun wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with your point, but I suppose my wish then is that there were not low-quality (low-cost) everything in the world right now. I'm not unsympathetic regarding the poor, I grew up poor myself. And my single working mother raising two kids got by on hand-me-down furniture from her mother (probably, as you and the article suggest, of decent quality though). Having the option for (new) inexpensive everythi…

It's great having the option for cheap, low-quality stuff. If I need some oddball tool for a home improvement project then I can just buy the crap at Harbor Freight. If it breaks after a few uses then so what, I won't need it again anyway.

I wouldn't knock Harbor Freight.

I bought a screwdriver at Home Depot, and screw stripped the screwdriver! I returned it and bought the same type of screwdriver at Harbor Freight and it's been great.

The only product in Harbor Freight that I haven't liked so far, was their moving blankets - very thin.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#527

Post by fnordlord »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #390
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…

That's pretty much the game plan for every private equity acquisition: exchange brand goodwill (and all other sources of value) for profits, pocket the profits, leave the empty husk behind.

This is mostly how I see it too. I've wondered recently if it was possible to plot that curve and use it to show which companies are still on the quality portion of the arc and which are on the downturn.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#528

Post by somenameforme »

teiferer wrote: post #464
somenameforme wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 wi…

You can buy garbage for high prices. You can buy great stuff for low prices. And you can buy great stuff for high prices.

For a market to function properly people need to hone in on the great stuff for low prices quadrant, but that is, increasingly frequently, not what's happening. And it's not like some esoteric art - just check reviews. It's not too hard to ignore fake reviews.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#529

Post by hinkley »

hliyan wrote: post #316
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…

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…

That’s not the only one it’s just the easier one.

When people tear down new models of gaming systems they find fewer chips on the boards because they’ve found some chip that does two things for less than the price of both - below a certain point it’s financially infeasible to make simple parts because the capacity they consume makes a chip that does half as much only 15% cheaper. See also when people started putting Linux rescue disks into the EEPROM, because appropriately sized ROMs no longer existed.

You can find better equipment and processes that get you more product per hour out the door without necessarily making the product shittier.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#530

Post by ungreased0675 »

baq wrote: post #240
bamboozled wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I break this promise from time to time, but every time I buy an IKEA product lately, I vow never to do it again.

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.

Do you have suggestions on where to buy high quality furniture? My local furniture stores seems to sell 20% better pieces at 100% more cost.
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