The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality
240 comments
·July 20, 2025layer8
microflash
This has been especially pronounced in medical equipments where there’s this unnecessary race to introduce “digital experiences”. An example is hearing aids. A few years ago, it was relatively easy to get an analog model with dedicated volume buttons and off switch. Now, most of the models come without off switch and need Bluetooth pairing with an app installed on your phone. What used to be plug and play is now a clunky mess of hand offs between brittle components.
jonplackett
Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm?
I don’t think it’s ‘efficiency’ in the same way spaceX is run. Yeah they cut costs, but they got better quality results.
With clothes / appliances etc we have reduced quality at our expense - while the companies doing it make more money than ever.
xattt
E.g. the race to the bottom of the Billy bookcase. In the last 5 years, IKEA has started using plastic fasteners to secure the backing.
bamboozled
I break this promise from time to time, but every time I buy an IKEA product lately, I vow never to do it again.
baq
IKEA has some of the best quality cheap furniture. To get something noticeably better you need to spend at least 2x for any given item; 3-5x is common for not at all fancy stuff.
inglor_cz
Interesting. I rarely have problems with IKEA products, but I had quite many problems with bespoke wooden pieces of furniture.
agumonkey
I agree too. And originally the company had multiple motivations to produce high quality. For pride reason (express your skills, new challenger mindset) and to gain brand recognition. Once that's settled, this forces get replaced by profit/ growth mindset.
A subtle variant of this is incorrect metrics. In 2000s, full featured audio chipsets started to show up, all in one chip 24bit audio. Soon everything used these, the 24bit resolution wasn't enough to make a good audio interface... (I think it was noisier) But it was too late, most devices used this and old audio cards were priced out.
IronyMan100
I had the same impression when buying clothes. I often buy the Shirts Form H&M. I have some old Shirts and the quality IS a Lot better. No loose Threads, the colors did Not wash out for and after washing they stayed how they are. Today all of that is not the Case anymore.
bamboozled
It's also interesting, as you said, that everyone seems to want to defend crap. It's like corporations keep spreading the idea that you're always getting more for your money and everyone just seems to parrot that verbatim.
My life is a constant struggle when it comes to finding nice things.
moffkalast
It's possible for that to be true while also there being competitors that are just making a name or themselves and aren't cutting corners. Incumbents in areas of low competition always get complacent and attempt to maximize profits without any further investment. Quality really only depends on the competition, since it removes those who lack it.
layer8
True, but as I said I often fail to find a good replacement when surveying the market for alternatives. Sometimes everyone copied the product but didn’t copy the original quality.
moffkalast
In that case it might've been that the original product wasn't cost effective to produce in the first place, or that most people buying it don't really care much about quality but just about the price, so that's what each provider optimizes for instead?
trial3
exactly! i came to this thread to smugly type “capitalism” in a comment. but i’d like to, less smugily, posit that it’s really just enshittification. MBA-driven physical-goods enshittification. It’s cheaper to use cheaper glues. To slightly change the fabric blend towards polyester. Thinner gauge wiring.
There are tradeoffs towards more complex devices being made, sure, but that’s not exactly what “quality” is, to me. There’s an extensive discussion about the iphone vs a snake-era nokia, which i feel like misses the point entirely
markx2
January this year a water pipe burst in the kitchen directly over a Belling Range cooker (some 13+ years old). Switched it off at the mains and awaited a visit from an electrician once the place had dried out. The sparky that arrived had worked for Belling, was very familiar with their products. He checked it over, tested, declared it safe. He then added that if something had been wrong I would have been better to get parts replaced rather than a complete new oven - because Belling products these days are much less reliable. I have no data on that, but I can't but believe someone in the industry.
simianparrot
Airplane tickets used to cost a lot more for economy class, even adjusted for inflation and fees. To get the equivalent service and quality today you simply have to pay more, you just have the choice of paying very little for very low quality because there’s more flights and more planes.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/even-with-fees-the-miracle-of...
Same can be said for most electronics and even clothes. I’m not saying that a high price label guarantees high quality, just that the spectrum of cost vs quality has broadened, even within big name brands. There’s now cheap and expensive Nike ranges, for example, where there used to be only the quality expensive tier.
But if you look at the cost of, say, quality furniture today and adjust for inflation, it’s going to be around the same as quality furniture 50 years ago. We just have the choice to pay a lot less for much worse now.
nfriedly
> I'm not saying that a high price label guarantees high quality, just that the spectrum of cost vs quality has broadened, even within big name brands.
I think this needs to be repeated. People tend to think more expensive equals higher quality (I want this to be true!), and I think brands frequently take advantage of that to increase margins without significantly increasing quality.
For example: I've been through three or four pairs of my $180 Sony link buds hitting various issues before giving up on them entirely. Meanwhile, my $5 Auki bluetooth earbuds keep on chugging.
croisillon
same here, i have been through several €50 Braun stabmixers which kept dying on me, the €8 no name one has now been working for over 10 years
corimaith
Expensive does mean higher quality if you know the right brands to pick*. Case in point, $180 for Sony Link Buds is pretty bad deal! There are much better options at the same price range like Apple Airpods, Samsung's AKG tuned Galaxy Buds or the higher end Sony XM4s or XM5.
Obviously there are many companies that do rely on branding to jack up prices like Beats or Marshal. But there are also companies that do no to little marketing and instead focus on craftsmanship where the majority of the cost is going into higher quality experience. And in those segments there isn't really some magical way to reduce costs. Akko is getting pretty popular, but their high-end IEMs like the Obsidian are still going to be in the same price-range as Sennheisers or AKG.
moffkalast
Along that line of thought I've noticed this recently:
I can buy an expensive tool for say $200 that will last me 10 years. Or I can buy a cheap tool that costs $20 but will only last me two years. But if I want to use that tool for the duration of 10 years it then makes more sense to buy five of the cheap tool and save half in costs. Which one is really providing more quality over time?
For some things this doesn't hold at all, the cheap entry level offerings just don't get the job done or break relatively immediately, but for others the premium offer doesn't really improve a whole lot over the cheapest.
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ptsneves
Very good perspective but I think that there is also a cost or loss of value in the inconvenience of a tool of good stopping its function at the wrong time. The opposite can also be true, that it is sometimes convenient that something breaks down because I actually wanted this new model anyway but could not justify throwing away a perfectly fine good.
mgfist
This is true, and in general people are usually financially better of getting cheap stuff and replacing it. But a lot of us like getting hobbyist stuff just because it's more fun. I have an expensive espresso machine because it's more fun than a standard breville machine or just making a pot of coffee. It's certainly not more economical, even though coffee nerds will try to convince (rather gaslight) themselves into thinking so.
elaus
> Same can be said for most electronics and even clothes.
I wish that were my experience as well. However, I've found that most brands simply add a huge markup for their name while investing very little into quality. As a result, you end up paying three times the price for just 20% better quality.
When it comes to electronics, I feel like I can judge that for myself, and my gut feeling about clothing was confirmed after falling down a YouTube rabbit hole of "clothing teardowns."
JKCalhoun
I don't disagree with your point, but I suppose my wish then is that there were not low-quality (low-cost) everything in the world right now.
<ramble>
I'm not unsympathetic regarding the poor, I grew up poor myself. And my single working mother raising two kids got by on hand-me-down furniture from her mother (probably, as you and the article suggest, of decent quality though).
Having the option for (new) inexpensive everything allows us to accept low-quality; even encourages it (as has been pointed out, there's a Dopamine hit from purchasing a new thing … I don't know if the same rush comes from purchasing a used piece of furniture from a Goodwill — I suspect though it does somewhat). And, as we know, the landfills, oceans, become the destination for all this consumption.
I admit that I am surprised that I am finding myself wishing that we, the Western world, were poorer again. It seems though that manufacturing has caught up to (down to?) the ability to provide new crap for us even if we were poorer.
One wonders what the Great Depression would resemble in the 21st Century. Would we still have the latest, but crappy, gadgets and such? I sure can't imagine new car sales would not be seriously impacted.
</ramble>
whoisyc
> I admit that I am surprised that I am finding myself wishing that we, the Western world, were poorer again.
Luxury belief.
Doesn’t it feel a little suspicious that the only people to ever say “we should become poorer” are people from rich countries where even the poor can afford cars and gadgets? Go to the countries actually manufacturing your goods and ask the average factory worker if he wants to be poor and prepare to get flipped off.
Spooky23
> One wonders what the Great Depression would resemble in the 21st Century. Would we still have the latest, but crappy, gadgets and such
Think Star Wars. Live in a hovel, but have some magic gadgets.
nradov
It's great having the option for cheap, low-quality stuff. If I need some oddball tool for a home improvement project then I can just buy the crap at Harbor Freight. If it breaks after a few uses then so what, I won't need it again anyway.
bamboozled
Yeah, fuck the externalities
inglor_cz
I think that if we fully incorporate all the environmental costs of production into the end prices of customer goods, we will become poorer, at least in the short run.
In the long run, that could actually spur some development re cheap and safe energy etc.
csomar
This is true but flawed. Think about the iPhone. If you wanted the model of today but 5 years ago, it would have cost you millions? If that’s even possible.
What you are saying will be correct if we had no technological advancement whatsoever. But we had significant advancement. Everything should, must, be better if we applied the same cost. But while that’s the case in some things, lots of things have degraded in different ways.
raspasov
"Following his reasoning, it cannot be stated in absolute terms that an iPhone 15 is of “better quality” than a 2003 Nokia."
This statement suffers from either viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses or from total cultural relativism in the most pejorative sense.
I'm not sure about 2003, but around 2009, I owned a Nokia N900, which was arguably the flagship Nokia phone at the time. I can confidently state that current iPhones are _way_ better than that phone. On paper, the N900 phone was amazing: it had GPS, Wi-Fi, multitasking, a camera, a touchscreen, and (!) a hardware keyboard, and more. It had a desktop-class browser, on paper. But nothing quite worked well. It was far too bloated for the hardware capabilities of the time. When you came home, it never damn switched properly to WiFi, or it took forever. The same applies to switching off WiFi and switching to cellular when you leave home. The GPS always took minutes to establish a location and easily lost connection due to small obstructions. I recall that I compared it to a friend's iPhone at the time; the N900's GPS was embarrassingly bad and slow.
I can confidently say that today's flagship iPhones (or even Androids) are significantly better quality than the N900, in every way possible.
forgotusername6
I owned a Nokia in 2003. The battery lasted a week and they were virtually indestructible. The phone never crashed or reset, the keys were so reliable and well placed that I could text without looking at the screen. The phone did not get slower with age. None of these things can be said about my current smart phone. Granted it does a lot more, but the quality of the things it does do is much worse.
Spooky23
[delayed]
kovac
I bought my dad a Nokia phone in 2008. A dumb phone, with just texting and calling features. It continues to work to this day, so, 17 years (the markings on the buttons are fully erased now, other than that it works). It outlasted him. I don't know how they managed to build stuff like that. I would expect some electronic part to fail sometime along the way.
dijit
Well, I can tell you how: rigorous testing.
I worked for Nokia (briefly, just before Eloppification) and I remember being told that when the iPhone launched everyone laughed because there was no way that the battery could last more than a day, there was no app store back then, no flash, no high-speed data (2G) and it failed every single one of the internal tests that Nokia had.
Yet, people didn’t care, obviously - and the iPhone is the model for nearly all phones today.
I get bent out of shape about this, the same way I get bent out of shape about the death of small phones and modular laptops; but people vote with their wallets and if the market was large enough for both to exist then there would be better options; yet it seems like there’s not.
People seem to care much more about capacitive touch screens, large displays, hungry CPUs, incredible post-processing of cameras (and great camera sensors) than they do about being drop proof, having stable software or battery life.
Features > Stability ; to most people. (and, how do you put stability on a spec sheet for tech youtubers to care about or savvy consumers trying to buy the best “value” they can; build quality doesn’t fit onto a spec sheet).
inglor_cz
I once supported an expensive application for Symbian OS and the customers had plenty of problems with Nokia smartphones. Not dumb phones, but smartphones. HW keyboards failed constantly, wi-fi quality fluctuated randomly from piece to piece, displays developed weird errors, loudspeakers developed tin sound etc.
Oh, and my favorite, problems with microUSB charging ports were eternal.
kalleboo
If you limit your smartphone usage to the capabilities of a 2003 Nokia (turn off data and wifi, only use calls and SMS) the battery will last 2 weeks and never crash or reset. Before I got a phone with dual SIM capability I used to bring an old spare phone to keep my home SIM in with data off only to be able to not miss calls/SMS. They’d typically last the whole trip without charging when they’re not keeping connections alive for email, push etc.
Before I got a smartphone I used a j2me IRC client to keep connected with my friends, and I had to carry 3 batteries to swap throughout the day for it to last, the battery life was horrible if you actually did anything on it.
lwkl
Phones of the past also died when exposed to a little bit of water. Back then it was common to hear someone say their phone died because of water damage but it has been years since I‘ve heard that about a smartphone.
baxtr
In 2003 I almost never touched my phone, because you couldn’t do much on that tiny display other than actually calling people.
Maybe that’s the reason the battery lasted a week.
gilfoy
> virtually indestructible
Owned a Nokia in 2003 as well and it was destructed by some water. It had no Nokia Care and my grandma refused to buy me a new one.
> text without looking at the screen
I do it all the time by dictating.
pas
my nothing phone (1) full of very ugly scratches (and one especially ugly testament on a corner to me dropping it one too many time) was stolen a few months ago while I was in a house of worship (I was introducing my favorite girlfriend to the forbidden pleasure of dipping fries into mcfreeze ice cream with caramel - and while in this trance state...)
anyway, the new Nothing phone (3a) is amazing batterywise!
null
jabjq
I googled the author's name and from a cursory look at his linkedin he was a toddler in 2003. It’s therefore reasonable to conclude that he has no idea how a phone from 2003 worked. I mean, he could’ve used one for a bit, but definitely not as a daily driver.
blub
As late as 2011 Nokias like the N8 or N9 were competitive with the iPhones of that time i.e. the iPhone 4. That iPhone is the famous “holding it wrong” phone.
Then Nokia admitted defeat and switched to Windows which failed badly. Symbian was too hard and expensive to maintain and their Linux OS strategy was to redo the OS three times instead of incrementally developing it.
JansjoFromIkea
The gap between 2025 and 2009 is massive for smartphones but I'd say it gets drastically smaller around the midpoint.
If it wasn't for it no longer being supported by iOS I'd still be using a 2016 SE and the only things I'd seriously miss are an OLED screen (so good for using the phone in dark spaces) and wireless charging (basically for peace of mind if the charging port ever breaks)
Earw0rm
Memory loss and survivor bias.
There was mountains of tacky, throwaway crap produced in the 80s. Guess what, we've thrown it all away. Quality lasts.
And don't even get me started on the food. A lot of tin cans. Desserts that you reconstituted from powder in a packet. The list goes on.
leoedin
Food is way better now than it was in the 90s. Every supermarket has refrigerated ready meals which are actually pretty healthy. Here in the UK, the quality of food in cafes (at least in the major cities) is far better than it was when I was a kid.
bluescrn
> I can confidently say that today's flagship iPhones (or even Androids) are significantly better quality than the N900, in every way possible.
Until you need to replace the battery.
Battery replacement has been intentionally made not just a pain, but actually dangerous, by using excessive amounts of adhesive to hold in batteries that may spontaneously combust if physically damaged while trying to remove them.
Replaced a battery in a Nintendo Switch not too long ago, and what an absolute fucking pain that was to get the old battery out, IPA, dental floss (to try and get under the battery and cut through the glue), and still needed a worrying amount of levering out.
(It's not as if these batteries have any significant space in which to move around, why do they need adhesive at all, and not just some foam/rubber pads to hold them in place?)
raincole
It feels like when people watch the video of a 70s car crashes into a modern car and leaves in one piece.
"Wow, old car was much more solid! The modern car got destroyed!"
Until you realize that the old car utilizes the driver seat as the crumple zone.
MrGilbert
Same. We had that phase were every manufacturer build their own tiny OS around 2007/2008. I had an LG KS360 and a Sony W200i. The LG would crash regularly. The W200i would work fine, but of course had all the proprietary Sony connectors. The W350i on the other hand was a catastrophic phone, that I had replaced twice, as evident in my Amazon account.
bluedino
My Palm Treo 700W was straight garbage. Battery lasted hours, terrible OS, Windows Mobile...
jstummbillig
Quality has improved across many dimensions in nearly every domain I’m familiar with. In fact, I’d argue there are very few products or services that couldn’t be made today to a higher standard than at any point in the past, if we chose to prioritize that.
But what’s often mistaken for a decline in quality is really a shift in priorities: toward affordability, efficiency, and accessibility. And that’s fantastic. Products that were once expensive and exclusive are now available, at good-enough quality, to billions more people around the world.
Yes, that trade-off can mean shorter lifespans or less repairability. But on balance, widening access is a moral win, and one made possible by the very progress the article seems to mourn.
djfivyvusn
I'm not convinced the widening access to American consumerism is a moral win. The amount of fossil fuels we're dependent on as a species is obscene. I worry for our children. There is no offramp, only growth.
panick21_
This is one of these philosophies that I hate more then almost any other.
The idea that is bad that poor Indian and Chinese people now have access to anything from clean water to planes is absurd. You can sit there in your luxury house and cry about consumer culture but for millions of people its basic stuff that they have access to for the first time.
And in Europe, despite increasing quality of live, both total energy consumption and fossil fuel consumption is going down.
Now part of this is export of emissions to China but China own growth explains the majority of it.
Continued growth is good, and only continued growth and better technology will get humanity off fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels have been a net good for society and still are!
myaccountonhn
The reason it's seen as bad is because there are not enough natural resources to sustain such a consumption, and many of these countries (esp India) will practically become unhabitable if global warming continues like it does. There are very few signs that technology will be able to fix this.
No one is against clean access to water...
anthk
Fossil fuels will crumble down when the ITER gets working well. China already did some experiments on salts based nuclear plants, but no fusion jet.
Still, the days for the uber-polluted Beijing are numbered. It will change drastically.
mayas_
Not quite sure about the affordability part.
Cars are becoming prohibitively expensive. Housing is becoming a luxury.
Even consumer products are becoming increasingly expensive.
Safety largely improved but not craftsmanship.
SapporoChris
BYD launches new 2025 Dolphin EV with the same $14K price tag and more range.
https://electrek.co/2024/07/08/byd-launches-2025-dolphin-ev-...
The problems you mentioned are a local problem, not a global problem.
cantor_S_drug
That is uniquely american or first world experience. I won't comment on the mechanisms of wealth transfer from rest of the world to first world. The rest of the world has been very hardworking and trying to make it one day at a time. Here's an example.
A Day in Life of Africa’s Wooden Scooter Crew
whoisyc
Car prices are affected by ease of financing and a huge second hand market. The former make it easier to “afford” a fancy vehicle (whether or not you actually afford it is another question) and the later means fierce competition in the lower parts of the market making cheap cars less profitable.
jstummbillig
> Cars are becoming prohibitively expensive.
Adjusted for inflation, car prices are actually lower now than decades ago, especially factoring in huge safety and tech improvements. Entry-level models remain affordable, while buyers voluntarily pay more for SUVs and tech-heavy EVs.
> Housing is becoming a luxury.
Rising housing prices are mostly driven by land scarcity and zoning. The actual cost per square meter of construction (build quality) has improved and remains stable.
> Even consumer products are becoming increasingly expensive.
Nope. Electronics, clothing, and appliances have become dramatically cheaper. Quality-adjusted prices for TVs and computers have plummeted.
> Safety largely improved but not craftsmanship.
Craftsmanship is alive and well, if you are willing to pay for it. Which most consumers are not; they prefer being able to afford more things at lower prices and quicker tech cycles.
ghaff
Generally agree.
In snowbelt (and even somewhat sub-snowbelt) regions, cars would pretty much rust out at 50K miles and starting when conditions were wet or cold could be an adventure.
And, while I have the option of buying an expensive "handmade" (with the aid of expensive CNC equipment) dining room table--which I have done--I also have the option of buying a sturdy and nice-looking mail-order bed for $300 that I assemble.
Housing is the main thing but, as you say, that's mostly a matter of location. There are a ton of cheaper locations but many don't want to live there--even if they're fairly accessible to a major city.
jltsiren
Cost per square meter is a misleading measure. A model that assigns a fixed price to a 0 m2 home and an additional price for each square meter is a better match for both construction costs and subjective utility.
Or maybe the additional price should be based on the number of rooms instead. Adding empty space by making the rooms bigger is cheap, but extra rooms are usually more valuable to those on a limited budget.
Where I live in California, construction itself has become unaffordable. Even if the land were free, construction and permits are now so expensive that it's impossible to build affordable housing without subsidies.
amluto
> The actual cost per square meter of construction (build quality) has improved and remains stable.
Do you have a source? And are you considering expensive markets (cough, Los Angeles)?
carlosjobim
> Adjusted for inflation, car prices are actually lower now than decades ago
And so are salaries. Just compare what kind of job you needed to be able to afford a car 40 years ago to today.
Reality is still reality, people live in it and face it everyday.
AdrianB1
Cars are becoming prohibitively expensive because they get more and more stuff included. I owned cars in the 90's and cars from 2015, the newer one came in the basic trim with stuff that adds to complexity and cost, from AC and electric windows to dozen aibags, sensors and driving aids.
For housing, there are 2 things that happened: regulations made houses more expensive to build (I personally built 3 houses in the past 35 years, I saw the increase in cost) and second thing is house prices are totally disconnected to cost, my current home is evaluated (for tax purpose) about 3 times the real cost to build it. Except the buyers, everyone is happy to have a huge increase in housing cost, builders make more money, local governments raise more taxes, buyers are screwed from all sides and not many people go build their own, even if it many places is still possible (I currently planning to build a house for some friends).
But in a way building a house is cheaper: tools, technology and new materials make it faster and cheaper to build. It should make houses more affordable, if the other factors would not completely eat this saving.
jmrm
I would add that sometimes when people usually say that rancid phrase of "they don't make it as they used to", they are comparing expensive products in the past with cheap ones in the present.
Most of those "good 'ol" goods exist, but probably are pretty/too expensive for what we are used to pay.
mihaic
While that's sometimes the case, those expensive products were the norm, and now no longer exist as an accessible option.
For many products, the market went with cheap and crappy, and quality became a niche that is no longer available in the general economy, and can only be found with great cost and effort.
cantor_S_drug
Thos who think quality has decreased should watch this youtube shorts channel.
bsenftner
Do not discuss "content" of this article, discuss the reasoning behind and the effect of this article. The author many not even realize this is a propaganda article, using a well known mechanism of "spray to dismay and therefore cripple". This article is a coordinated series of arguments that sum to the statement "you are powerless."
weinzierl
People fall largely in two categories: Those who condemn the past and those who glorify it.
Of course the reality is between. Whenever something experiences mass adoption, of course quality will decline, e. g. airplane seats with mass adoption of flying.
But so, so many things improved dramatically in quality. I could give you endless examples but just think about cars.
Despite anecdata to the contrary the reliability of cars increased over the decades.
Most 60s cars had rust problems after a couple of years. By the 80s this was largely solved.
Most 70s cars had all kinds of mechanical problems but by the 90s this was largely solved.
Most 80s cars had lots of electronics problems but by the 2000s this was largely solved.
Sure we still have software issues and the whole transition to EV's makes has us deal with new problems, but do I want any of my old cars back? Hell no!
bluedino
Cars still rust what was solved?
These days the bigger problem with cars is one piece breaks and it isn't made anymore so you total it when 90% of the rest of the car is still good.
weinzierl
Galvanized steel and zinc coated steel was only used from the 80s on in cars. Electrophoretic plating was mass adopted only in the late 80s. Before that the slightest scratch meant you could literally watch the rust build up.
null
deadbabe
Most 2020s cars are completely unaffordable or overpriced and over engineered but maybe by 2040s this will be largely solved.
The 2010s was peak car.
weinzierl
I grew up in Germany and as a kid I always thought when I grow up I will drive a Mercedes. Why? Because taxis were 100% Mercedes back then and if a car is good enough to be a taxi it will be good enough for me.
Of course I never got a Mercedes because it always was way to expensive.
Nowadays every Uber driver seems to drive a BYD Dolphin. They are nice cars and obviously good enough as "taxis". The BYD Dolphin Surf costs 8000 EUR in China (called Seagull there) and between 13000 EUR and 20000 EUR in most other places where it is available.
thatjoeoverthr
I’ve noticed a significant drop even recently, having recently bought the single worst pair of shoes at a brand name store. They basically dissolved like tissue paper within a week. I’ve never seen anything like it.
My working assumption right now is this two phenomena together.
One, a sneakier kind of “shrinkflation”. You can make a can of coke smaller but you can’t do this with shoes. But you can swap out materials or hire more careless manufacturers.
Two, the breakdown of communication caused by AI, earlier fake reviewers and the death of the media at the hands of the web. Taken together, you can get away with a lot more without liquidating your brand simply because word won’t spread.
ralfd
> simply because word won’t spread
Shame the shoe brand!
blfr
Most things are still available at the same quality your parents remember, thanks to ecommerce much more avilable, but sadly also at a similar real price your parents remember which we find extortionary by comparison to all the cheap crap flooding the market.
You can have a tailored suit/shirt, hardwood furniture, grass-fed beef, vacuum to last decades, etc, but it will cost around the same in real terms and you're used to prices from Zara/Lidl.
Some things have truly declined because the demand collapsed so much that they basically got discontinued in the 1st world (that tailored shirt is coming from Ceylon) but others have improved tremendously by soaking up that drive for quality (check any independent coffee shop).
Not to mention the true pinnacles of modern manufacturing. Because for the price of a decent camera my father could get, I have a 100x zoom camera in my pocket, with a 7" touch screen, and 5g connectivity, also somehow all the books I could have ever read.
TrackerFF
At least when it comes to musical instruments, cheap instruments today are astronomically better than the cheap instruments I grew up with - and they are cheaper. The manufacturing process has become so good that what you get for $350 today, is about the same standard as what you'd pay $500-$800 for 30 years ago (which is probably closer to $1000-$1500 today).
As far as clothes go - I the cheap junk back in the day didn't last too long, either. Cheap supermarket jeans would last me maybe 1 season, before something ripped. Granted they probably only cost $20 back then - but the quality isn't too different from the H&M you purchase today for $50.
dijit
Counter-anecdote. I bought some Jeans from ASDA (owned by Walmart now, not sure about then) for 5GBP in 2005..
FIVE, POUNDS.
Crazy cheap by any measure; they were extremely thick, to the point where you could stand them up with no person inside them. They lasted me for over 10 years.
New jeans (at any price point) seem to wear out in the inner thigh inside of a year, and I am not as active as I was back then due to age. I also haven’t gained a significant amount of weight to account for this. I thought it could be caused by cycling, but I stopped cycling and the wear outs still happen. I thought it could be the quality of what I was buying so I bought more and more expensive jeans, alas, the same was true.
The best Jeans I ever owned are simultaneously the cheapest.
(side note; I also noticed that nearly all Jeans these days contain “elastane” which is basically plastic, which probably contributes to the degradation - Elastane didn’t exist for jeans in 2005, they were mostly still 100% cotton until the legging jeans fad and then it started making its way into normal jeans).
esperent
> clothes are unrecognizable after the second wash
What clothes are these? I don't buy any kind of expensive brands. I don't take any care when washing. I don't own a lot of clothes so I wear each item weekly. And my clothes last me for several years at least. The dyes have gotten noticeably better than when I was a child - when was the last time you had colors run in the wash?
Rotundo
I've got a pack of seemingly nice quality t-shirts that got a lot shorter and wider after first wash. I tried stretching them back to their original form but that doesn't work.
Used to be the cheap "three pairs for 10 euro" socks lasted a couple of years. Now I get, maybe, a year out of them before the holes get too obvious.
And price is not a reliable indicator of quality. Buying expensive can be just as much as a gamble as buying the cheap stuff.
throwaway2037
Do you have Uniqlo where you live? Cost performance is excellent.
sgt101
I bought some wrangler jeans, because I remembered that I had a pair years ago that fit me better than levis, the levis were quite expensive and the wranglers cheap.
They were ok for the first wear - but not great to be honest.
Then I washed them and they were unwearable.
Didn't do anything fancy, just a cool wash, dried them on the line.
They turned to cardboard.
subscribed
Interesting, my experience with Levi's and Wrangler is equally the opposite, and to the larger extent - 501's, 510's would barely survive 6-9 months of wearing, while Wranglers (mostly Arizona And Texas) happily roll into... <checks purchase date> third year.
Washing in 30 degrees, always tumble drying on low (dryer has a humidity sensor and stops when it's dry, doesn't overdo).
drdec
That's kind of what happens to denim when you air dry it. They are fine. Wear them a bit and you won't notice. If it bothers you next time tumble dry them on low.
amluto
Having recently compared one tumble dryer to another, “low” covers an exceedingly wide range, from genuinely lukewarm to “damage my clothing please”. Oddly, both machines I compared were LG and were not especially old. “Low” is a relative term.
uxp100
Yeah, I like that about new denim. After 6 months of wear it won’t do that so much and you’ll miss it. Maybe the poster is used to denims that are not 100% cotton.
CarRamrod
The last two times I purchased men's socks off the shelf at a big box store, they looked like fishnets after I put them on. Perfectly normal looking, brand name crew socks.
jabjq
I bought some dark blue trousers at C&A and after a dozen washes they are noticeably losing their colouring.
Yes, I know, Cheap&Awful. I’m poor.
rambambram
Wearing the same now, can agree.
Ccecil
Costco garbage don't bleed :)
Seriously though...
jmrm
It happens the same to me. Probably we don't experience that because we don't either buy any cheap garments from Shein or similar Chinese stores.
ginko
I tried to get all kinds of expensive tshirts but I have yet to find a brand that won't develop holes around the seams after a year of weekly wear.
Arn_Thor
Shein crap falls apart in the first wash
astrobe_
> For some consumers — although we know there won’t be many — the Nokia’s extreme durability may be more valuable than the iPhone’s technological innovations
I still use a phone of the generation after Nokia - it must be 20 years old now. The thing is, for everyday use voicemail and SMS are enough for me. I don't need more technology. And certainly not the kind of technology that make people walk like zombies on the street. If you remember the old Youtube video about viewers not noticing a gorilla in the middle of basketball players because viewers were instructed to count something, this is exactly that.
> there’s another, lesser-known but even more effective method: convincing consumers that a product is outdated for aesthetic or symbolic reasons, even if it still works.
Long story short, durability is the greatest enemy for businesses. They have decades of experience of fighting against it. IIRC Europe introduced laws against planned obsolescence, but businesses probably did start to switch to "perceived obsolescence" when consumers proved the existence of planned obsolescence.
It's not even something evil to do for some categories of products. Good household appliances use less energy, even good ICE cars probably are more efficient than they used to be, etc. It seems that it defines a different metric for product quality, total cost of ownership.
> However, Rodríguez argues that, generally speaking, automation does improve customer service. [...] The initial investment in technology is extremely high, and the benefits remain practically the same. We have not detected any job losses in the sector either.
If companies really are investing in order to improve their customer service, that's big news.
blfr
That's great for your use but meanwhile my phone has now better eyesight than I do (and I'm 20/20), carries all my notes and photos, answers random questions about prions, and offers fully e2e encrypted instant communication with virtually anyone across the world.
Many comments here are arguing that quality has actually gone up over the past decades. However, a common experience for me is that I own something of good quality from 5/10/15 years ago and now buy the successor model from the same brand, but the product has gotten worse, being cheaper made. And I have a hard time finding a replacement that matches the quality of the old version. It’s a regularly reoccurring frustration.
My suspicion is that when products are successful and mature but reach market saturation, profit growth pressure leads to cutting some corners on every iteration, and hence to a slow decline in quality over the years.