Stuff Is Worse Now | Hacker News Reader

Stuff Is Worse Now

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39 pointsjgwil210 comments

I often think how contradictory it is that we all want to get paid well AND buy good cheap stuff. These are contradictory goals, and the solution has been physical separation. We make good money here, and buy stuff from poor people over there. This dynamic has eroded long term viability of human civilization.

I couldn't agree with this more. I feel like those if us in rich countries are outsourcing low wages, shitty conditions, pollution, and other seedy regulatory skirting practices.

I try to buy as close to local, regional, national, etc as possible for this reason.

I applaud the initiative. But I think the real solution is to dial down human civilization. We need less people, less consumption, less work, less of everything. Since this seems anathema to everything I see and hear on the news and from other people in conversation, I think we are gonna hit the wall before changing directions. Humans only change when we hit rock bottom.

The lesson is: be somewhere safe when we hit the wall.

Maybe we can bring back local manufacturing… ?

Movies are also about to be made with much less quality as studios try to save money since the films will no longer be as profitable.

An antidote to this is making some things yourself. It's empowering and you end up liking the thing you made more than if you'd bought it.

If you want something done right...

I find this myself now in a few things. I've taken to making Mead and seeing how much of the process I can insource. I'm currently looking at Beehives. I could even build that myself, but it seems like an easy target for outsourcing.

This isn't a realistic option in general and wouldn't impact the market enough to shift company behavior.

Instead, just like marketing was used to manipulate the public into bad buying habits, perhaps it may be possible to make fast fashion seem cheap and mass produced (which it is) and therefore undesirable. I.e., if you buy fast fashion, you're buying garbage and therefore dressing yourself in garbage (both true). You're also polluting the environment (true) which means climate change cache can be used profitably. Fast fashion must be seen as a kind of scam.

For many products it's so true, but for others, improvement in technology has meant that far better is on offer for cheap.

The most notable for defying the trend and actually improved in my small world, would be the washing machine moving from a robust gearbox which inevitable blew the top seal, to all in one electric motor -- though the initial offerings the first couple of years weren't that robust iirc.

But much of the new is worse is when a company begins cashing in on the good name for quality it earned over a number of years, to spin off cheap knockoffs of their former products.

A prime example is Delkor batteries and their larger white cased batteries in the late 80s or early 90s. They were IMO nothing short of marvellous, one would pay as much as a CAT five year life battery, but I was getting over ten years easily at full capacity, one lasted 20 years in service only dying a couple years ago. I bought two pairs a few years apart and a final delkor that without my knowledge was removed and placed in a vehicle that drained batteries in a week. I found it a year later ... amazingly it accepted charge (most types would be dead as a dodo at that point and refuse to charge back up) but it only really lasted two or so years in full service then retired given its issues, but still was handy for a test bench battery for a couple after that. Around 2010 the large white cased batteries were replaced with regular black cased ones. I spent an hour with the main battery distributor since the black cased small delkor I'd got for my car mid 00s barely lasted two years ... he repeated reassured me they definitely were exactly the same just with a different case, he'd even at some point visited the manufacturing centre ... the change was merely some big customer wanted regular black cases. They were at the time very pricey, I settled on one and then another pair a year or two later. I also had highly recommended delkor to various people about over the years. In a short time around the three year mark, it was obvious the same batteries were not in fact the same, I barely got five years out of the first larger black case battery, the following pair limped after year five meaning they were pampered with maintenance charging on a near weekly basis. What didn't make things nice were the few people who invested in delkor since I'd waxed lyrically about how wonderful the white cased ones had been, there was a bit of hissing at me for a couple of years though from time to time one of them reminds me about it. Fair enough, not buying the brand any more either and they're not selling for much more than regular batteries.

Obviously sometime stuff is just not as well made due to the high availability of replacements and there's little interest in a company marketing an over engineered product when the same function can be achieved with a near disposable product.

However what I do see that's worse is where certain technological aspects have been sidestepped because it's viewed more as a disposable world than back in the day when it was perhaps important to keep competent metallurgist / chemical engineer / material specialist on hand when designing a product that one day would need to be fixed or serviced.

Think the every day torch and the confounding useless switch that starts its evil a few months into purchase.

There's a certain joy in pulling apart to service, a well made regulator gauge from the 60s, looking at the metal matching to minimise the corrosion between different metals, something one doesn't see in more recent gauges.

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