Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Selling Lemons

frankchimero.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 122 posts

Re: Selling Lemons

#91

Post by yummypaint »

csallen wrote: post #78

Call me crazy, but it is possible to distinguish good from bad in most of these "lemon markets" the author lists. When buying physical products, there are tons of high-quality review sites like Wirecutter, with journalists who spend months testing out products and reviewing them to find the best ones. Not to mention the reviews on sites like Amazon itself. And of course, just doing internet searches, researching the…

It doesn't matter whether it's possible for a highly motivated and educated person to distinguish the lemons. This will usually be true. The important thing is the experience of real consumers participating in the market as it actually exists. A better framing would be "of all products in category X sold last month on amazon, what fraction were lemons?"

Re: Selling Lemons

#92

Post by creamyhorror »

_kidlike wrote: post #73
rjh29 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it detracts from his point - there are so many almost identical brands that you can't tell what's good and what's bad anymore. Hopefully, MZOO will establish word-of-mouth reputation much like Anker did.

I still can't believe that Anker has not completely dominated the market... I almost always see other inferior brands when people pull out their powerbanks.

Anker's gone a little pricier compared to other Chinese brands. Ugreen and Essager were good value several years ago, and Vention more recently.

Re: Selling Lemons

#93

Post by Night_Thastus »

rusk wrote: post #14

There’s definitely always been vibes of this off the PC market. So hard to get one that’s “nice” y’know what I mean. There are some notable high end PC vendors but they typically sell direct. In the high street, it’s lemons all the way down. Even reputable brands have to get in on the action with a lemon line. Apple’s whole thing it seems, has always to stay away from being a lemon. The only time they came close, inc…

I'm a bit unclear - are you talking about off-the-shelf prebuilds like the sort Dell or HP would sell? Or are you talking more gaming-oriented ones? Or are you talking just parts?

If you get something more business-oriented, most of them are reasonable. They're not as good or as cheap as if you assembled it by hand, but they offer good discounts and benefits for businesses buying in bulk. They're often plenty powerful and well-specc'd for what you pay.

Gaming is different. 90% of the gaming pre-builts are complete garbage, because their buyers only buy one at a time and aren't well-informed, nor do they tend to have a lawyer on hand. They're poor value for money, sometimes use sub-standard parts or proprietary non-standard formats, are poorly configured, not well tested, etc.

Re: Selling Lemons

#94

Post by csallen »

yummypaint wrote: post #91
csallen wrote: post #78

Call me crazy, but it is possible to distinguish good from bad in most of these "lemon markets" the author lists. When buying physical products, there are tons of high-quality review sites like Wirecutter, with journalists who spend months testing out products and reviewing them to find the best ones. Not to mention the reviews on sites like Amazon itself. And of course, just doing internet searches, researching the…

It doesn't matter whether it's possible for a highly motivated and educated person to distinguish the lemons. This will usually be true. The important thing is the experience of real consumers participating in the market as it actually exists. A better framing would be "of all products in category X sold last month on amazon, what fraction were lemons?"

> It doesn't matter whether it's possible for a highly motivated and educated person to distinguish the lemons.

It does though, since the entire premise of the "lemon market" idea is that buyers can't differentiate between good and bad products. What matters is where the bar is to be a good differentiator, and how many people can cross it.

It also doesn't necessarily matter how many lemons are for sale, if the good ones are easy to find. Imagine that there are 1 million trashy sleep masks on Amazon and only 3 good ones, but the 3 good ones are right at the top, with superior ratings and reviews.

The better question is: what % of buyers are buying lemons?

Re: Selling Lemons

#95

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ericmcer wrote: post #63
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #24

Not just The Internet. All of tech, and likely, other industries, as well. I was told that this was what happened to Etsy. When it first came out, people with real skills, sold real, handmade goods, at fairly high prices. Then, the mass-produced knockoffs flooded the site, priced way-lo. The legit stuff couldn't keep up; in price or in scale. I see this happening everywhere.

Isn't that just the nature of capitalism? When a need is identified people rush to fill it as cheaply as possible. It sucks that it drains the soul out of things, and that mass produced cheap variants can crush anyone trying to make quality things by hand. On the upside I can get shitty custom art (If I need a victorian painting of my dog or something) for like $20. That would have been hundreds a few years ago, and…

It is, but that's not a good thing.

Capitalism needs brakes and regulations; Not a popular stance, with this crowd.

Re: Selling Lemons

#96

Post by jamestimmins »

chubot wrote: post #48
toss1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread of comments seems like very nice example of "The exception that proves the rule". Both are satisfied to have found good products, and somewhat surprised, at least tacitly acknowledging by even finding it worth commenting, that the productscape overall is basically a sea of lemons. Cool

Yeah that is nice, but ironically we can only have this discussion because Hacker News itself is not full of lemons I can click on the profiles, and see "created 2009 or 2014", and think "OK this is probably a real person" Whereas if this were Reddit or Instagram, and the account was created recently, I might think "that's AI spam". So yeah someone has to do real work to create spaces that are not lemon markets. I gu…

When I research Reddit recommendations I always click into people's accounts to see old posts. If they have non brand safe posts (nswf, politics, profanity), I view them as more likely to be real.

Unclear if this is actually a good heuristic.

Re: Selling Lemons

#97

Post by dredmorbius »

gmueckl wrote: post #15

Who here remembers those old 1000+ pages thick mail-order shopping catalogues? This was a (more or less) carefully curated collection of items because the catalogs could only have a finite number of pages. When Amazon started to accept virtually unvetted product listings from third parties, they opened the floodgates for lemons. It's kind of a real world ACME equivalent now. I'm surprised that I don't make that duped…

The canonical instance of this is, in full irony, one of the precursors of the Internet: the Whole Earth Catalog (instituted now largely as Wired Magazine). Its premise:

The WHOLE EARTH CATALOG functions as an evaluation and access device. With it, the user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting. An item is listed in the CATALOG if it is deemed: (1) Useful as a tool, (2) Relevant to independent education, (3) High quality or low cost, (4) Not already common knowledge, (5) Easily available by mail.

Save that last, the current iteration of the Internet, the actual whole-Earth catalogue, is itself an anti WEC. Rather than "access to tools", it is overwhelmingly "access to shit".

(I could also have listed the Sears Catalog, somewhat less-credible offerings such as Sharper Image or Brookstone, or any number of others. Costco is a current exemplar of this strategy, in that it selects quality merchandise, as does (or did) Marks & Spencer. Not necessarily cheap, but high value.

Re: Selling Lemons

#98

Post by OkayPhysicist »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #88
redleader55 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> real life pick up is unwanted and creepy The act of "pickup" is creepy because it's based on a false pretense - establishing a human connection and trust quickly. Succes is guaranteed only for the sociopaths. Talking to people in real-life, without the help of technology is not creepy and doing it casually just for the sake of human contact is what all of us should be doing more. We would be able to filter out the…

There are many countries where on attempt to small talk they will death stare and squash you into the ground, or laugh off. Actually... most of countries in Europe.

I've yet to find a place in the world where talking to strangers at bars is socially unacceptable. Everywhere has different rules about where idle chit-chat with strangers is allowed or not, but bars are a universal.

Re: Selling Lemons

#99

Post by m463 »

I think there's one big "information asymmetry" I REALLY wish could get addressed.

basically - products spy on you, create a detailed dossier, and then sell or share your information.

And this information is basically unavailable, for many reasons.

So you cannot find out if a product is not only bad, but evil.

You only hear about stuff like this

1) tangentially

2) long after the fact

Like how the pentagon says DJI is basically the chinese military.

or how XYZ corp was compromised and leaked lots of people's data (and the people don't know who they are, where the data came from, and how long it has been happening)

Re: Selling Lemons

#100

Post by alberth »

First, I really respect Frank. He’s an amazing designer and have enjoyed using what he’s made in the past (Abstract, etc).

I have a different take thought and it’s not so bleak, and believe a few different topics are conflated in the post.

- Everything in life trends towards the lowest common denominator. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it just means companys optimize for mass appeal (e.g. they want Walmart volume, not low boutique sales).

- Information asymmetry is actually not as bad as the post would make you believe. 5-star rated system for seller & products (and buyer comments) exist preciously to prevent information asymmetry. This helps buyers make informed purchasing decisions. You see this from: Amazon, Yelp, Uber, Airbnb, etc.

What I think is getting conflated is:

- Launching a new physical good (not just software) has never been easier. In tech, we got accustomed to how easily it became to launch a 1-person SaaS over the last decade (i.e. “indie hacker” movement). The same is now happening with physical goods.

- Curation matters. Nordstrom has the legendary return policy where they will take back any good sold. This is in part able to be done because Nordstrom is hand selecting any good they sell. Which means they are vetting it coming from a reputable supplier and has a certain degree of quality. In an economy where it’s just one big open marketplace (which is directionally where we are going), customers lose the relationship they once had with a merchant who performed the trusted curation of product selection for them.

Post reply on HN