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Parable of the Sofa

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Re: Parable of the Sofa

#71

Post by jodrellblank »

baggy_trough wrote: post #66

This is like people complaining about how air travel sucks compared to the time you could get a rib roast carved in the aisle in the 1960s. Markets have determined that people prefer cheaper, shoddier sofas compared to expensive high quality sofas. If you don't believe that, then go into business as a high quality sofa factory.

In the same way that markets have determined that people ‘prefer’ renting small mouldy damp apartments and eating noodles than buying penthouse apartments and eating at five star restaurants?

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#72

Post by bratwurst3000 »

refulgentis wrote: post #46
bratwurst3000 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto bros are like this. 100% behind the product . Most don’t even know how a database works or that crypto is that. It’s only magic words….

Crypto bro? Databases? What? Anyways, for the crowd, in another post, you say: "May I add, cheap shit will always win if most people don’t have the initial money to spend on quality. A 400€ dollar shitcouch seems better than no couch at all." Sounds like you completely understand my point

Sorry the crypto argument was for one post beneath you. But yes I get your point.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#73

Post by thrance »

solidasparagus wrote: post #64
lordnacho wrote: post #29

This is something that has bothered me for a while. When we're discussing capitalism, people seem to get it in their head that it's either what we have now, or you can fuck off to North Korea. How I would characterize my ideal economy is one where the feedback loop works: people can make reasonable guesses about what a product is, how long it will work for, and what its cost is. They can adjust their purchases accord…

That leaves a market gap and then a better company can fill it, unlike centralized economies. Is that happening? I would say yes, at least in some cases. High-quality, direct-to-consumer brands are great. I rely on purchasing guides for many of my buys and those point me to brands whose primary attribute is quality (or cost effectiveness) instead of marketing or historic adoption. That's great for me and great for th…

I really don't believe people will be able to adapt to navigating a system that is designed (and constantly redesigned) to make them buy cheap garbage. Young people are not much more tech-literate than their elders.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#74

Post by nakedneuron »

Quality (or the lack thereof) as a hidden property seems to be a man-made artifact. Are there any examples in nature (excluding mankind) coming up with this? Evolution doesn't seem to choose this path. Why do we?

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#75

Post by contrarian1234 »

tmnvix wrote: post #57
contrarian1234 wrote: post #51

If you get out of the US bubble, the prices are simply insane fix a sofa: it's equivalent to a month's salary/stipend here in Asia. 200 bowls of noodle (if it's a cheap noodle then it's more like 500) new sofa: "new leather sofas of the “not flat-packed sawdust and glue” variety quickly get into five figures" So like a year's worth of stipend/expenses Could be that just the US dollar is crazy - but until the economic…

A significant portion of the cost is labour, so if you translate that into a local non-US cost does it still seem absurd? I may have misunderstood your point, but I don't think it is a good argument for why running a business fixing things using local labour should be a fantasy. Aside from that, in my view a world where a sofa costs less than one weeks wages is the absurd and unsustainable one. We've adopted an attit…

I think there are two issues that are going in parallel

1. fixing stuff

As long as some dude on the other side of the world is willing to make a new sofa and send it to you for cheaper than it is to fix it locally, the idea of fixing it locally will just never take off. You can ban/limit international trade, but then you're just screwing over poor people on the other end of the world for a "feel good" kind of thing

2. not making cheap crap

You can find some way to disincentivize making cheap stuff. Ban IKEA.. etc. But then you are just making life harder for the poor in your own country. That's cool you can afford a 5 figure quality sofa.. many people in the US won't be able to afford that. It just comes off as a bit heartless as well when rich programmer types deplore the quality of cheap things. There are the five figure sofas if you want. Go buy them - nobody is stopping you. You don't have to force everyone else into that price bracket though

The two things aren't disconnected. But in the end it seems like rich people want to ban cheap things, so that they can have more local repair services for their expensive stuff

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#76

Post by thrance »

It's weird how many people here will shout against any (assumed) critic of capitalism.

"So you want to live in North Korea???". No, I don't. What I want is a system where we can get quality products that are not manufactured by slaves on the other side of the world, and that didn't require burning 3 bathtubs of gasoline. And our system definitely ain't it.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#77

Post by TeMPOraL »

nakedneuron wrote: post #74

Quality (or the lack thereof) as a hidden property seems to be a man-made artifact. Are there any examples in nature (excluding mankind) coming up with this? Evolution doesn't seem to choose this path. Why do we?

Plummage and other external indicators of fitness, which animals use to game the mating game?

Still, nature is first and foremost red in tooth and claw. Fighting for survival has a magical ability to cut through all the bullshit and reveal things for what they are. Quality won't stay hidden for long if it's directly relevant to you eating your next meal, instead of becoming one.

Related, I believe this is why humanity seems to have made major leaps in science and technology during and after military conflicts. But the stakes matter. When people ordering and funding the research are really worried about losing, you get amazing pace of innovation. When they're not, you get amazing pace of fraud.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#78

Post by [deleted] »

sparky_z wrote: post #5
bad_username wrote: post #3

> Late Capitalism: Check check fucking check. I think the author would stop blaming capitalism after seeing the atrocious sofas of the late socialist Soviet Union, which wete not only worse than anything, but also the only choice.

That's correct, the only two conceivable possibilities are "everything exactly the way it currently is" and "everything exactly the way it was in Soviet Russia".

[deleted]

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#79

Post by downWidOutaFite »

sokoloff wrote: post #8
kgeist wrote: post #2

>Sofas made in the past 15 years or so are absolute garbage, constructed of sawdust compressed and bonded with cheap glue, simple brackets in place of proper joinery, substandard spring design, flimsy foam, and a lot of staples. Interesting, I didn't know it's the case everywhere, not only in my country. Several beds/sofas we bought in the last 5-10 years had such poor quality they cracked in multiple places already…

High quality furniture is still being made and sold, just not for $300 for a couch. Cheap shit is going to be cheap shit. Growing up, furniture was something that was expensive, carefully shopped for, and hand delivered fully assembled. I see the availability of cheap (to make and to transport) furniture as filling a gap in the market previously not addressed, but if you’re in a position to buy a piece you’d like to…

The mid-tier has been hollowed out keeping prices high but increasing the profit margin. From the Dwell article:

> Today’s $1,000 sofa is not in the same league of construction as a $299 Sears sofa (about $1,100 today) from 1980. That thing was made of actual wood.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#80

Post by saagarjha »

refulgentis wrote: post #45
saagarjha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have literally no idea what joins my sofa has. I own far too many things to check the seams and joints on everything I have ever bought.

There's a motte and bailey here. Motte: "people tell me to go to North Korea for my idea that it should be illegal to make couches with the wrong joins, use license agreements, or air ads that don't match my eventual experience", Bailey: "I don't know what a join is, and I shouldn't need to" Again, I ask: What's actually being proposed here? If nothing, is this just white collar barroom conversation, via griping?

The proposal is that it should be illegal to make couches with bad joins, yes. Or do so in a way that isn't completely obvious, rather than me having to check the actual join.
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