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I think my most genuinely unpopular take is that a widely held and genuine consumer preference for cheaper, lower-quality goods, not private equity, is driving the decline in quality of consumer goods like clothing and housewares.

Consumers used to select their purchases from what was available at local stores, which were stocked with goods chosen by professional buyers looking for quality and value.

Online shopping eliminated these gatekeepers and disintermediated the market, allowing consumers to express their desires more directly. And it turns out that what people really want is cheap disposable goods, not more expensive but higher quality stuff that lasts a long time.

@maxdubler.com eh, there are time-consistency and information-search problems here. There is definitely a preference for cheap, because that’s a consistent, comparable, knowable-here-and-now piece of information. Quality is unknowable, only barely surfaced by the shopping tools (and gameable), etc.