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im fortunate enough to be in a position where i can buy quality over quantity, but u have to remember the slavery that goes into making fast fashion is the real problem. thats something you absolutely can blame far-away capitalists on, because they set the low wage average for that kind of labor

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

There's also a nasty congruence between people talking about "enshittification" and people talking about how women *used* to understand their role in a relationship and white men *used* to be able to get any job they wanted and such things.

Right! They're not all that far away lol

private equity is part of the way the supply chains are hidden and costs externalized. folks always want a lower price, but there's less information IN the price then ever before. maybe?

If wealth was more evenly distributed then I think people would pony up for better stuff

Does this line look down to you

Not really though is it

Who do you think created and operates online marketplaces?

Dude it's really not but whatever

i don't see it tbh, it might cause long-term perverse incentives on a societal level but it's not necc. irrational on an individual level (but on a related tangent being clumsy and forgetful is certainly going to make someone favour cheap low-quality non-durable goods... thinking of myself here...)

I'm also saying Max is dumb if we're keeping score!

No it isn’t at all? The entire point is that people behave rationally according to their preference.

decades if you took care of it-not anymore. Hell-cars from 100yrs ago are still on the road. Henry Ford-antisemite that he was-didn't build junk-he built stuff regular people could afford that LASTED. I have antique kitchen appliances from the 1940's w/never an issue & I actually use them a lot.

It does demonstrate that the "market" is an incredibly bad way to distribute resources.

People "want" cheap shit because they HAVE NO MONEY

Yes, that's when private equity is at its worst, too: grab a brand with value and milk it for all that worth, and consumers are left without a quality choice they used to have.

(i'm reminded of an old natgeo article about sweatshops in eastern europe where the correspondent watched women put Gap and Old Navy labels on identical garments, noting how one would sell for more than twice the other)

not everyone is like this, mr opinion-haver

There are many goods for which prices have fallen dramatically: tvs are a great example. But for most household goods, they haven't, but quality has.

We have multiple low-budget airlines with no first class seats, but AFAIK no first-class-only airlines on the public market. Not even an "economy plus" line with half the seats (2x2, 42 inch seat pitch) and twice the price and no other perks.

And the low cost / high quality goods should be made in the USA by union labor. Again, trade offs are a communist plot and not a real thing we need to engage with.

i wouldn’t talk like a Manchester factory owner while being wrong on the merits of what you’re talking about but that’s just me

No YOU want that.

(I think the private equity thing is in play but "cheap people make bad choices" is largely underrated as a factor. My impression is lots of folks don't even see "this will break soon and I'll have to replace it" as a downside because they get a little thrill when the next Amazon box appears)

The consumer also grasps variable pricing and the benefit it can provide despite what Senator Warren believes.

My crank take on this is that buying durable goods feels bad for people who have a consumerism addiction. They both miss the hit of buying replacement stuff and feel bad about buying multiple non-disposable items they won't use up.

It's like Gresham's Law, but for shopping

Median numbers cover up a lot, don't they?

I'd argue that complaining about how cheaply things are made is part of the whole deal.

The effects will vary by market. I have seen consumer products sell a premium version for a nontrivial price increase, the sum of the differences were that the product was red, and washers were added so it felt heavier. When you have the market to do price discrimination, it’s good.

which is why Le Creuset and Staub are still in business...there's just not much in the middle zone anymore.

My personal theory is that boomers reach a certain age and have RMDs from 401ks now that make premium economy very attractive It’s demographics I’m not a marketer so don’t take my word for it

I always check Costco first for anything I want to buy. But if they don't have it, I find it really hard to research what's actually high quality. It's not always "you get what you pay for", because I've absolutely paid higher prices for stuff that turned out to be crap. :(

Costco isn’t perfect but the number of times we’ve been burned following my wife’s strategy of trusting Costco for this reason is like less than five, as opposed to all the times, everywhere else, for every conceivable item.

for a dollar? I'll buy three, use them for two years each, and throw them away when they break

I don't know for certain, but I'd expect Amazon has a significantly higher market share for most products than Costco

Costco is popular but limited. Amazon has a much broader footprint and reach.

They do deliver for a small fee. Might be worth at least looking into.

They also sell products at roughly breakeven and rely mainly on the membership fee to profit.

others that I think have done well in smaller silos are businesses like Dick’s Sporting Goods or Scheels, they have reliable and competitive athletic gear, and you don’t have to sweat some weird knock-off

I've always been joking that Amazon is merely American AliExpress

People are really missing that the outcome of this is people just buy the cheapest option.

Just went down a rabbit hole for a 'new' remedy for migraines. Saw a FB 'advertorial', went to the website to eventually find the price (quite reasonable if it works but the hard sell makes me suspect it doesn't) then over the Amazon to see whats what and one man's crusade to make everyone aware

Every market is the Market for Lemons to some extent.

Reddit is all astroturfed marketing now too. Retailer sites (Sephora/ulta) are mostly incentivized (ie free product programs). Quince straight up doesn’t post any bad reviews. there is nowhere left with unbiased product reviews at scale.

I do VIDEO reviews/demos of Amazon products for a sales commission if someone views my vid and then buys. My videos aren't part of the star rating system. I am required to disclose up front if I got the product for free (most of my videos). Most of us making the vids are honest about faults. 🧵>>>

Thus would seem to fly in the face of your claim no? That people are desperate for stuff that doesn’t suck and often spend a lot of time and energy trying to get that stuff.

In the UK there’s something called “Which?” run by the Consumer’s Association (a charity, although Which? Itself is commercial) - this does unbiased, thorough reviews and tests. Costs c. £5/mth but avoids this problem.

I was an Amazon reviewer for years, never received cash (in fact paid taxes on the items I reviewed). I tested everything thoroughly & wrote long, detailed reviews. Then 3rd party sellers realized it was easier to flood the zone with bots that wrote 5⭐ reviews like "good"

I'm a fan of the three star review. Five stars can give some good context/background. Occasionally one-star will give a genuine vibe for shite. But three star folks tend to be real. * also, if the low stars are all about packaging, the product is probably solid.

So, is it transaction costs (comparison has become extremely costly, putting quality goods further out of reach), or is it consumer preference? Those seem like radically different explanations?

I got a card in a product ftom Amazon making this exact proposition & reported tye seller to Amazon. Their response was "c'mon buddy you don't like gift certificates?"

Do you not see how this is possibly inconsistent with it being the revealed preference that people just want cheap, poorly made goods?

NY Mag and NYT to triangulate on basically any purchase over $30 that I can't get at Costco

So do you plan to address how this directly contradicts your view at the start of the thread?

Amazon reviews are a source but look at the one star reviews first. And use other sources

I actually find 3- or 4-star reviews pretty useful. There's often discussion of flaws in the product, and whether it's worth the tradeoff.

I find that reddit is good at filtering out garbage, but reddit [product category]-enthusiasts seem to regularly hyperfocus on features that normies don't care about. I don't want a speedqueen topload washer will (/may) last ~forever... while causing 2x the wear to my clothes.

My partner says one of my greatest assets is my ability to research internet purchases.

i want to note as someone who lives in asia that i *regularly* get spam texts/messages trying to recruit me to review-bot on the regional shopping websites

Yep, a friend received random, quite expensive stuff from Amazon over a few months. presumably hoping for 5* reviews

This somewhat undermines the revealed preference case. Being hard to tell the junk apart from quality pushes price to be the determining factor.

I don’t want to pick on this person but you can still buy Dr Martens that are made in their English factory using heritage materials and high quality Japanese-made Levi’s 501s that are just like the ones they made in the 80s. These are less popular than the cheaper, lower quality versions.

You can’t trust Reddit any more. There are plenty of bots & shills. There are even companies that explicitly offer this as a service

This completely contradicts your original point!

Doesn't this point that you seem to agree with oppose your core thesis? It's probably not purely a consumer preference thing if it's really hard to find out what stuff is genuinely quality and worth extra money?

Quitting Amazon and Target in 2025 was the best thing I've done to reduce my consumption in general and crap specifically. I still buy things but I'm way more intentional about it.

I wonder how much of it is that the retailer’s liability for marketplace sales were, until very recently, non existent compared to brick and mortar stores. Even now, it seems like Amazon’s requirement is limited to removing the seller

That’s not the measure I spoke of.

I think people are poor, actually.

You suck