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The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

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Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#611

Post by rizs12 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #403
dijit wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-anecdote. I bought some Jeans from ASDA (owned by Walmart now, not sure about then) for 5GBP in 2005.. FIVE, POUNDS. Crazy cheap by any measure; they were extremely thick, to the point where you could stand them up with no person inside them. They lasted me for over 10 years. New jeans (at any price point) seem to wear out in the inner thigh inside of a year, and I am not as active as I was back then due to a…

> ASDA (owned by Walmart now, not sure about then) Not any more, they got bought by two rather dodgy petrol station owners.

you mean two owners of a massive petrol station chain. What's dodgy about them?

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#612

Post by deanmoriarty »

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…

I totally agree! Philips diamondclean toothbrush anyone?

The first one lasted literally 10 years, it was one of the best consumer purchases I ever made.

Ever since then each replacement has crapped out within a year or two, despite same usage pattern. I bought one at Costco on sale and after returning it broken after just six months, a record for a $100+ device, the clerk at the return counter said they have piles of those. Crazy.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#613

Post by lenkite »

WalterBright wrote: post #557
nicoburns wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "socialism" you mean the majority of economic activity being state-run, then probably not. If by "socialism" you mean things like worker-owned corporations, strong anti-competition laws, high levels of consumer regulation, then absolutely.

If worker-owned collectives produce superior products, why aren't they everywhere? It's not illegal to form one.

They don't do well in the US due to ideological aversion, no policy incentives and lack of funding platforms like community investment trusts.

But they are quite successful in other nations. Amul in India for example.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#614

Post by swed420 »

jonplackett wrote: post #233
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…

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.

> Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm?

Yes, just as Marx predicted with his law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (LTRPF):

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/01/22/a-world-ra...

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#615

Post by hedora »

nehal3m wrote: post #358
MarkPNeyer wrote: post #326

Earlier 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 think this is a great insight. Also, from a personal perspective, one of the problems I regularly experience as a consumer of goods is that it is very difficult for me to judge quality, meaning I can explicitly not intuit value. For example, two years ago I bought 3 identical pairs of Levi’s jeans at considerable cost. Granted, they’re all I wear, but given that I follow the washing instructions and don’t put undue…

The only solution I know of is just not buying stuff from brands Walmart (and, increasingly, Home Depot, amazon, etc) carries.

A new pair of Levi’s are $20 at walmart and $80 everywhere else (before recent inflation).

In theory, the $80 pair matches their previous quality, but in practice, they were forced to chase profitability with high-volume $20 jeans, so it’s all outsourced to the same overseas factories. The $80 pair are also crap being produced for sustenance wages, but with slightly thicker denim.

This is absolutely intentional, and is the cornerstone of modern retail in the US. Monopoly retailers drove prices below production wages or environmental impact, and their profit is driven by by the frequency with which stuff breaks and is replaced.

It all relies on information asymmetry. Look at the market for grifters discussion on HN yesterday. It talks about the economics of targeted advertising, but similar games are played by name brands. For instance most appliance manufacturers own many brands, and rotate which brand is garbage in a given year. That constantly tricks people into buying garbage from a “reputable” brand.

https://reclaimdemocracy.org/walmart-product-quality-durabil...

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#616

Post by quickthrowman »

moffkalast wrote: post #199
nfriedly wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not saying that a high price label guarantees high quality, just that the spectrum of cost vs quality has broadened, even within big name brands. I think this needs to be repeated. People tend to think more expensive equals higher quality (I want this to be true!), and I think brands frequently take advantage of that to increase margins without significantly increasing quality. For example: I've been through th…

Along that line of thought I've noticed this recently: I can buy an expensive tool for say $200 that will last me 10 years. Or I can buy a cheap tool that costs $20 but will only last me two years. But if I want to use that tool for the duration of 10 years it then makes more sense to buy five of the cheap tool and save half in costs. Which one is really providing more quality over time? For some things this doesn't…

Some tools are much easier to use if you spend more money, I’ve compared a Harbor Freight oscillating multi-tool against a Fein and the Fein is so much more usable due to less vibration in the tool body that the Harbor Freight version is almost useless in comparison.

Air compressors are another one where spending money vastly improves usability, the more you spend the quieter the compressor pump motor is.

Makita’s portaband only lasts ~10 cuts before the blade falls off, Milwaukee’s portaband blades don’t fall off ever. I run electrical work and my guys cost $100-130/hr, I’d rather have them spend time cutting conduit and strut with a functional tool than replacing blades on a cheaper version.

I’ll grant that professional tool and homeowner tool usage patterns differ greatly, but sometimes it is worth spending the extra money.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#617

Post by bigstrat2003 »

swiftcoder wrote: post #485
teiferer wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prior to that energy was almost seen as disposable Turns out that from an environmental perspective, that view was bad anyway and I'm glad it's gone for good (even if the AI hype almost makes us forget that again). I don't fully see how that implies everything having to be crap now. Lighter doesn't mean worse quality.

> Lighter doesn't mean worse quality For a number of product categories it means replacing solid metal parts with inferior materials, and that pretty explicitly does mean worse quality. Have you used a 1960s KitchenAid mixer? They look almost identical to models that followed - but in the 1970s KitchenAid replaced the metal drive gear with one made of nylon on the consumer-focussed models, and now if you use one heav…

The question is, does that prevent something worse from breaking? It's not inherently bad to have wear parts in a device, after all. Shear pins are a great example where you need to replace them, but something more important would break if it wasn't the shear pin, so it's worth it.

IDK the design of the mixers well enough to know if that's true for them, but I do wonder if that is the case.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#618

Post by knallfrosch »

Furniture really is the prime example. I've heard endless complaints about IKEA, along the lines of "I move two times and it's broken."

You ask people whether they have a sturdy childhood wardrobe that they could use. The idea seems disgusting. You ask them what other options they considered. The comment appears to be offensive. How many people have researched and considered a company's service hotline quality before deciding to buy? Noone.

People love to hate "evil" companies and expect laudations for knowing the concept of "planned obsolence" (they heard it once.) It's easy, it's someone else's fault.

But mention their own responsibility as capitalist consumers and they'll quickly leave the discussion.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#619

Post by zkmon »

rr808 wrote: post #549
zkmon wrote: post #112

I live in a developed country. People buy a new home here, and find the kitchen counter top surface bulges up easily when a hot plate is placed on it. Turns out that the surface is a laminate that is not heat resistant. Family business houses used to invest in long-term success through brand, reputation and durability. Startups or hired CEOs focus on short-term goals and invest in creating superficial perceptions tha…

> kitchen counter top surface bulges up easily when a hot plate is placed on it This is pretty normal when I was growing up. You should never put a hot anything on a countertop.

You hardly ever see any real stone, real wood, real brick, or real walls. Also, floor tiles are not glued or cemented to floor. They are just a floating layer of plastic (in case of laminate).

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#620

Post by swed420 »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #576
walleeee wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't easily recognize (post-)modern social construction in his worldview, especially construction of reality at large (morality it is easier to see the argument) but I admit it has been years since my reading. I agree with you that there is a strand in Western thought which is infatuated with science/engineering to a historically novel degree but I am not so sure that enlightenment ideals fit so neatly in the same…

> I can't easily recognize (post-)modern social construction in his worldview, especially construction of reality at large The most relevant piece is probably Theses on Feuerbach. Feuerbach advocated a materialist (e.g. essentially naturalistic) point of view to which Marx objected. His basic argument is that it doesn't make sense to talk about an objective materialist universe. That point of view leads to middle cla…

> he most relevant piece is probably Theses on Feuerbach. Feuerbach advocated a materialist (e.g. essentially naturalistic) point of view to which Marx objected.

One must have a very warped understanding of Marx to claim he didn't advocate for materialism. Are you unfamiliar with his dialectical/historical materialism?

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