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Comment by everdrive | Hacker News Reader

>Customers will need aggressive agents to price-shop on their behalf. Take hotel booking as one of the current nightmares of price visibility.

Or I'll just buy as little as possible and buy used whenever possible.

The only answer I see anyone suggest is _more_ complexity. "This complex system we've built is flawed. I know what to do: I'll add another layer of complexity and abstraction on top of it."

"Needing" buying agents would be the worst possible outcome. How could I possibly trust the buying agent? Wouldn't that agent just take funds from companies to promote their products as suggestions?

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> Or I'll just buy as little as possible and buy used whenever possible.

This is the way, but also, places like eBay are increasingly “professionalized” by huge resellers and refurbishers who squeeze out any possible margin. I’ve also noticed that thrift and consignment stores aren’t such a bargain anymore. You can often get a better deal from large retailers when they go on clearance.

P2P transactions still pay off but it’s not as easy as it used to be.

That's good to know regarding ebay. I don't use it much, but I wasn't aware. Agreed with regard to thrift stores. Some of them have seen quite a lot of inflation. I think it's yard sales and minimalism for me.

Even those have price-constraints - if you watch for awhile you get a real feel for the prices that people will pay vs the "value" if you will. Certain thrift stores will be dirt cheap, others (Goodwill) will be barely below Walmart - sometimes you can even scratch the price off and find a clearance sticker for lower under it.

eBay is still worthwhile for some items, but lots of the "deals" on actual used product have moved to other marketplaces like Poshmark.

Shipping kills all of it, however.

Buying used is great and all, but so many more products and product features have become cloud and subscription reliant across all industries. They'll be able to get you profiled and locked into a dynamically priced subscription eventually.

I'm sure someone is working on an AI powered toaster though, and we'll be able to achieve the ultimate goal of a talking toaster as they had in the TV show Red Dwarf. Hopefully it'll use Claude tokens while it engages intelligently with us.

>but so many more products and product features have become cloud and subscription reliant across

And 100% of these products and features are trash, as are the companies pushing them.

> Or I'll just buy as little as possible and buy used whenever possible.

You're forgetting that consuming newly created products is the only way to express yourself or gain a modicum of fleeting happiness. Also, if you're not consuming, you can't "vote with your dollar" which is of course the most effective way in history for ordinary people to hold the powerful accountable.

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