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I also advised some Chinese manufacturers to produce cheap, dummy home appliances and then sell to the Western market with a bit of mark-up, as more people are fed up with the smart ones. Not sure anyone is going to try though. Looks like everyone is in the data business.

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Electronics are cheaper than high quality electromechanical stuff, and allow you to give any product a veneer of sophistication and modernity that the modern consumer still perceives as being a sign of higher quality.

Our love of blinken-lights will be our downfall.

And you can make very shiny out-of-the-box finishes even in quite shitty materials that will decay quite quickly: soft plastics going gooey, white plastics yellowing, all plastics becoming brittle, poor anti-rust coatings, soft paintwork, etc, etc.

China already competes in that market in the USA with Haier.

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