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- Hacker News
- This is a false pretense. Quality was never the norm.
What is no longer the norm is getting first-hand experience with a product before you buy it. Everything comes in the mail and it's a surprise to the consumer after they buy it. That's nuts!
by danesparza - I think there is a bit of survivor bias here. People like to say "everything is shit now, I've had this item for 20 years and it still works." But that's because they can see that 20 year old item, not all the shit they bought 20 years ago that broke and they got rid of.by spjt
- There's few things where the drop in quality is astronomical, one of them being clothing.
Clothes used to last a life time till few decades ago.
Right now you buy stuff that after the first wash already looks worn out, terrible or starts falling apart.
Major known brands are guilty of this too, often regardless of price.
So people end up with closets filled of junk that they look terrible in anyway.
I wish there was a line of brands and even better shops that focused on quality fabrics and sewing processes for clothing that lasts for ages as it used to.
by epolanski - I personally see two effects that are very detrimental here:
1) "Quality brands", where you pay a premium to get high quality/durability products, are economically incentivized to "sell-out" (cash in the brand name by producing as cheaply as possible). This is because customers take some time to catch on, and short-term financials are too often more important than anything else.
2) Increasing trend towards no-name products (or ephemeral brands). This means that producers can sell cheap trash with no drawback whatsoever; slightly more expensive quality products become unmarketable because every customer will assume you're just trying to sell them the same cheapest shit for more.
I used to think that brand products were a universal money waste for suckers, but now I think they can be a very valuable mechanism.
What would really help in my view though is to force companies to stick with their brand, to incentivize them to invest into it and to make "cashing out" on good brands a universally bad decision.
by myrmidon - I agree with this. It's curious that we always talk about "things used to last forever and weren't only made by corporations chasing infinite growth", when those things are often still available, but are almost invisible because we now discover everything through social media or SEO.
You can find great-quality, long-lasting products at great prices (great price doesn't equal cheap, but great for what you get).
I use capable LLMs on high reasoning to run a prompt like this:
"I want to buy a high-quality [category] that will/has/can [requirements here]. I do not want to pay for a brand name that doesn't improve.
Start by finding manufacturing clusters in [region of the world, e.g. Europe] where [category] is made, then find the businesses making [category] in that cluster that I can buy from.
Normal online stores are okay, but also try non-obvious avenues:
-local business registers -stores that may only be available in the local language -factories that sell samples directly" -cooperatives that sell products from multiple local manufacturers
(I modify this prompt, but it's the skeleton)
To verify a given product/brand/store, a great follow-up prompt has been:
"Now find me big brands offering a product of similar quality (ideally measured by objective characteristics) and show me how much it is vs. [store name here]"
This has showed me incredible finds. It's become how I buy most things that go beyond basic trinkets, and I often pay less for far higher quality.
by FinnLobsien - One big problem is that prices are easy to compare, while quality is not.
I recently bought a tub that was advertised as stainless steel on Amazon. I was suspicious but decided to take a chance. Turns out it is galvanized, not stainless. I’m not sure the average person knows the difference. To be charitable, perhaps that’s even why the listing advertised it that way. But the difference matters significantly in terms of performance and quality, especially for certain kinds of products and use cases.
There’s no “sort by quality, best to worst” system like there is for price. No “genuine stainless only” filter. You just have to know certain things.
Shopping in person obviously helps, but you still have to know what to look for. Refrigerators are a good example of this. Most people shop for them in person, yet it’s not at all obvious whether model A or model B will last longer. You can try to use price as a proxy for quality, but the more expensive refrigerators are actually more likely to fail years earlier because of the added component complexity. They’re basically banking on the fact that you don’t know how to read a wiring diagram.
To combat that, lots of people turn to YouTube or reviews to figure out quality. And sure, you can find some good sources that will tell you that top freezers will last longer than a French door model at basically any price, and they might even explain why. But all of those platforms are muddied with perverse incentives, affiliate programs, sponsorships, etc. Again, not always obvious.
We need to make quality obvious. We need to make it comparable, sortable, filtrable, and guaranteed. Poor design needs to be a valid reason to return an item. Manufacturers should be required to label products with an estimated lifespan. Give tax breaks or other incentives to products that include a warranty for its full lifespan.
We have to figure out how to improve the efficiency of making high quality goods, so that everything doesn’t just get more expensive. There should be a public database of the best known designs and techniques for making long lasting items. Patents that relate to longevity could be given extra time to encourage research, but then after, say, 3 years there could be a requirement to license the technology so that it can go mainstream.
This doesn’t solve everything. Some products need more specific approaches. Food quality is a problem. Housing needs to be both more affordable and higher quality. But I think with enough changes to incentives, the culture could shift towards seeing the value in making things well.
by sholladay - Quality was never the norm: cheap always beat quality with a hand tied behind his back!
Western working class has spent decades complaining about cheap imports from China... while feeding that market with their own money.
Western frequent fliers keep reminiscing about the grandiose pre-deregulation era or air travel, but cry a river when their low-cost carrier of choice actually enforces the limit on cabin baggage.
Everybody hates ads, but no-one is willing to pay a penny for a service they use daily.
by pif - While it does relate to price discovery--i.e., some folks just aren't willing to pay for an additional unit of quality at 10x--my theory is that the decline in quality is another hidden form of inflation. Thing continues to cost X even though regulations have increased costs Y, ship production to China and scrimp on the inputs. (Or have market forces do that for you.)by piker