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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.

Blaming this on villainous far-away capitalists is what the kids call “cope.”

Extremely related point: people don’t want to pay more for quality, they want to be cheap and complain!

Costco is the opposite of Amazon because they have a team of professional buyers who stock their shelves with a limited selection of high quality goods that provide good value. And unlike Target and Walmart, they have not opened up their e-commerce platforms to third-party sellers of cheap garbage.

The amount of reading you have to do on Reddit to background check any purchase over $50 is wild. Side note: you absolutely cannot trust Amazon reviews because sellers routinely give away free product and cash in exchange for five star reviews.

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.

Well this certainly was unpopular.

And how does one buy things straight from the factory? would you be so kind and let us know?

a reply to me pointed out correctly that for washers, repair/appliance guys love speed queen, but speed queen is also extremely bereft of modern features and "ugly" compared to better selling options. people trade off quality for price constantly.

speedqueen has leaned in fully to "we last effing forever" and their basic entry-level front-load washer (though they're all basic) is $2400 bucks. for half that price i got an LG wash/dryer combo tower and it's reliability is "good enough" on top of more features speedqueen.com/products/fro...

I mostly don't get what people are talking about. Seems like washer/dryers last like 15 yrs, hasn't it always been like this?

But this is a poor example because the cheapest washer is still like 400-500 bucks and nowhere near as good.

People are pretty good at shopping.

This is a very thoughtful critique:

I agree this is the best critique I think people will often sacrifice quality for price, but even when they would rather not they still sometimes have to because price is not a good signal for quality My off brand Chinese knockoff waterpick is better than the brand name and ~65% cheaper

And even attempting to do the work and research what IS worth spending extra money for is tough because the internet is just a spam landfill nowadays.

information asymmetry is important, and i think you can kinda see this in action because when it comes to cars, which is a HUGE outlay for the typical person, reliability starts becoming a very strong factor into what cars and marks do well (though there will always be people who buy jeeps)