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The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

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Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#731

Post by Der_Einzige »

trod1234 wrote: post #640
gtowey wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just being stupid, it's that the information space is overflowing with marketing and BS. It's a mammoth task to parse through it all and not be suckered in by a slick advertisement that says the product you're looking at has everything you want. Amazon is absolutely the worst for false advertising, garbage masquerading as top of the line. And the usual alternative, using Google to search for companies direct…

The noise is so loud, you can't find any signal. Shannon's Limit has been reached. Also, the knowledge needed to differentiate has been lost by many, and suppressed given the economic disadvantage of quality vs cheap in a money-printing economy. Unless you have a fairly good knowledge of sewing, construction, chemicals/materials, you end up getting things that look the same but aren't the same. With Jeans, most of th…

>You won't find any company offering Jeans that last more than a year or so

I literally just linked to a pair of jeans that you will try and fail to kill over a lifetime of use for most people.

If you still need bigger, Naked and Famous make 32 oz and 40oz, but the heavy denim crowd has bought them all and it's hard to find them right now.

Trying to teach HN how to buy high quality clothes is like talking to a brick wall.

This is 25 oz from the same brand: https://bravestarselvage.com/collections/heavyweight-selvage...

Quoting their description: "Selvage denim of this weight and caliber are rare, expensive and very difficult to manufacture here in USA due to the sheer weight, thickness of the yarn and time factor involved in slowing down the production line.

Each sewing operation has to be considered and necessary adjustments need to be made to accommodate the weight. Our sewing operators are required to wear safety goggles during the sewing process due the frequent exploding needles which can be quite dangerous. Needless to say it's extremely time consuming due to the half speed at which the operations can be accomplished which makes it a very labor intensive production process. "

I'd like to see you kill that in a year, or 10.

I found some 22 oz from some Indonesian selvedge company for 124 USD: https://wingmandenim.com/product/zero-zeke-22oz/

Japanese materials.

You just don't know how to buy jeans.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#732

Post by Der_Einzige »

steveBK123 wrote: post #536
Der_Einzige wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think even normies know about the selvedge denim. But where are the quality tee shirt, Oxford, polo, etc pieces that don’t fall apart in 2 years?

Gustin makes them, also wash on cold and hang dry.

Normies do NOT know about selvedge/raw denim at all.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#733

Post by Der_Einzige »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #569
Der_Einzige wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol jeans. Just got into selvedge denim, go buy from a company like brave star denim, and don’t buy anything less than 15 oz. I can find a literal 21 oz unrippable insane heavy weight selvedge denim pants for less than 200, and it’ll be made in America of Japanese materials. Most Americans are simply stupid when they buy clothes. They don’t do research and they make extremely suboptimal purchases by trusting big bran…

Jeans at old navy or costco or next are $20 to $30. And I can wash them on “normal” cycle every time I wear them, and dry them on normal and never have to worry about taking care of them. They still last me at least a couple years. And I don’t have to trust that the manufacturer made them well enough to last 7+ years for me to break even.

Wearing unfashionable or ugly clothes will get you treated poorly by others, which leads to negative life outcomes. No one finds old navy or costco 20-30$ jeans fashionable.

You need to trust that the manufacturer didn't cheap out in ways that could negatively impact your health.

From https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-beauty/article/319092...

"Experts said Shein is not a unique case. Clothes from many large clothing brands like Lululemon, Old Navy, and REI have been found to contain toxic chemicals."

Selvedge Denim from made in america/japan brands (i.e. brave star, gustin, naked and famous, iron heart, etc) is made using 1940s machines/techniques using (usually) 100% cotton denim. No toxic chemicals.

My jeans are better than yours.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#734

Post by Der_Einzige »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #522
Der_Einzige wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's sneaker head culture and than there's the high end foot wear crowd.

Sneaker heads are all about the new nike x yeezy "mchitler edition" collab air joran X's

high end foot wear crowd will drop 700$ on aldens and almost 1000$ on a pair of boots from whites or nicks which will outlive you and your parents.

It's not the same crowd.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#735

Post by thrwwy_jhdkqsdj »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #326
ants_everywhere wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked at a big tech company, the life quality of software engineers was undergoing what old timers perceived as a significant decline. The official response of the CFO was that the quality can't be declining that much because people aren't quitting an an accelerating rate. This is the same phenomenon as your suspicion. There's some metric (e.g. people keep buying our widgets) and you stress test demand for it…

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 agree with you in principle but I would not put as much moral or rational in peoples head. Maybe your comment had some sarcasm in it and I missed it, in this case what's next is pushing an open door.

> ...In the west, and places influenced by it - most elites come to believe that value is purely subjective. We talk, instead, about people's _preferences_ - but we can't measure feelings, just actions. "Some things are more valuable than others" is a very different belief from "people prefer some things over others".

When it comes to functionnal products, my take is this is the rational we give because it is impossible to take down. What I think it really mean is "This is not me who wants it, it's them". It is the same argument as "I do it because if I don't do it, someone else will" when doing something illegal or immoral.

This is why I'm inclined to believe when your argument is this empty you know what you are doing. This is how you end up inventing "customer personas" and asking your consumer themselves why they buy your product.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#736

Post by xattt »

brewdad wrote: post #334
nubinetwork wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it depends on what you buy... my couch and table are fine, my bed wobbles and squeaks a fair bit... /shrug

I’ve found many beds ship with the minimum viable hardware to hold them together. You might see if you can find better screws/bolts/etc and replace the cheap ones that come with your frame.

Another semi-permanent option is to run lines of wood glue before connecting pieces together.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#737

Post by DrScientist »

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…

What's really annoying is when you do find a company that produces quality product and then it get's bought by one of the big brands and then the process you outline starts to happen - the brand is exploited through a combination of marketing and cost cutting.

What makes these quality brands sell out? I suspect when they become a target of the bigger company, there is a combination of carrot and stick - with the stick having a significant component of the larger company using it's channel dominance to exert pressure.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#738

Post by globnomulous »

Unfortunately, I see no mention of a closed related issue that nobody ever seems to discuss or even question: the Internet has turned most people into 24-hours-per-day shoppers. Who decided that we should want to live this way and just accept it unquestioningly?

Being at home used to mean being able to shut off browsing, buying, and consuming and to shut out the people and companies that want us to think about purchasing this or that.

I've stopped doing this. I now avoid every part of the Internet and every electronic practice that subjects me to this awful facet of our culture. My life has improved, and I'm certain my brain has benefited.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#739

Post by ikekkdcjkfke »

simianparrot wrote: post #149

Airplane tickets used to cost a lot more for economy class, even adjusted for inflation and fees. To get the equivalent service and quality today you simply have to pay more, you just have the choice of paying very little for very low quality because there’s more flights and more planes. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/even-with-fees-the-miracle-of... Same can be said for most electronics and even clothes. I’m not say…

That is where they get you, higher priced goods with better wrapping but marginaly higher quality

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#740

Post by swiftcoder »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #617
swiftcoder wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> The question is, does that prevent something worse from breaking?

That is the stated justification, yes. However, in practice pre-1970s models will happily knead bread dough for years on end, and more recent models tend to explode within the first few times you attempt to make a loaf of bread (leading home bread makers to have to spend more on an expensive commercial model...)

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