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> The issue with an industry awash with cheap dross, is that it becomes prohibitively expensive to produce high Quality stuff. This seems to be one of the brut

> The issue with an industry awash with cheap dross, is that it becomes prohibitively expensive to produce high Quality stuff. This seems to be one of the brutal truths of the modern world, and as far as I can tell it applies to everything. There's always a race to the bottom to make everything as cheaply as possible, and the further the industry goes down that "cheapness" scale, the more "quality" loses market share, the more expensive "quality" must be in order to operate at all, and finally things that used to be just "normal" and not too expensive are now luxury goods. Consider textiles, carpentry, masonry, machine tooling, appliances, etc. etc. This doesn't feel like a good outcome, but I'm not sure there's anything that can be done about it.

gallerdude 1y ago
I can see both sides of it. There’s a fancy bread bakery by where I live. I go infrequently, the bread is great. But it’s expensive, most of the I just want a cheap loaf from Target, as do most people. Instead of broad employment of artisan breadsmiths, we have people doing email work, because it’s more economically valuable. If the government mandated a higher quality of bread, we’d be slightly richer and bread and slightly poorer in everything else.
mercenario 1y ago
> There's always a race to the bottom to make everything as cheaply as possible Not true at all. Apple and its expensive devices are the best selling devices in their categories.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Yes, but Apple has deep pockets, and a very mature brand. I worked for a 100-year-old company that has one of the most respected brands in the world. I am quite familiar with what it takes, to make the highest-Quality stuff. That said, it's downright impossible to start from scratch, creating high-Quality stuff.
  - mercenario 1y ago
    > That said, it's downright impossible to start from scratch, creating high-Quality stuff. I'm not so sure. It is not common, but it seems that some companies actually start with high quality and only much after offer popular options. Just a random example is uber, at least here it started with only uber black and only after it was very popular it offered uber x. Another counter example to cheap stuff is luxury clothing/purse/perfume brands. Actually, I'm not so sure if this is about quality or status.

gallerdude 1y ago

I can see both sides of it. There’s a fancy bread bakery by where I live. I go infrequently, the bread is great. But it’s expensive, most of the I just want a cheap loaf from Target, as do most people. Instead of broad employment of artisan breadsmiths, we have people doing email work, because it’s more economically valuable. If the government mandated a higher quality of bread, we’d be slightly richer and bread and slightly poorer in everything else.

mercenario 1y ago

> There's always a race to the bottom to make everything as cheaply as possible Not true at all. Apple and its expensive devices are the best selling devices in their categories.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Yes, but Apple has deep pockets, and a very mature brand. I worked for a 100-year-old company that has one of the most respected brands in the world. I am quite familiar with what it takes, to make the highest-Quality stuff. That said, it's downright impossible to start from scratch, creating high-Quality stuff.
- mercenario 1y ago
  > That said, it's downright impossible to start from scratch, creating high-Quality stuff. I'm not so sure. It is not common, but it seems that some companies actually start with high quality and only much after offer popular options. Just a random example is uber, at least here it started with only uber black and only after it was very popular it offered uber x. Another counter example to cheap stuff is luxury clothing/purse/perfume brands. Actually, I'm not so sure if this is about quality or status.