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Comment by tolugenius | Hacker News Reader

Love this writeup. The temu analogy is best to describe what is going on beyond just what llms have done to software. What's closer to question is temu could only exist in the way it did (it's fast rise mainly) because of the work done by amazon prime in making fast shipping both logistically doable and the psychological default for many. So my question is what was the "amazon prime" era of software and perhaps learning what did (and did not) occur then can better understand why AI has wrought the effects it has in less than 10 years.

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Temu built out some local distribution after it had already reached a pretty high level of popularity, but Temu was enabled by regulatory and political indifference that allowed China, with an enormous GDP, to get extremely subsidized postage rates. Also, lax enforcement of import duties (do you think the declared values were accurate?), and effectively zero enforcement of any safety standards, etc., on the products sold.

So, it was less of them following a path Amazon had trod and was maintaining, and more like sneaking in a back door and trying to sell you a counterfeit purse.

But if the US and EU had been on their game, it'd of either not happened or would've at least happened much more slowly.

Postage rates and geopolitical games aside, it’s an easy high horse to stand on to say that quality and good experience is going down the drain in favor of junk products and ad-riddled media. Not to say that having junk/ad-riddled stuff is good, but there are two sides to this coin.

My feeling during my time I have spent in most lower cost of living countries including China is that people in wealthy countries regularly get ripped off on consumer goods for the mere fact that they live in a wealthy country. For many consumer goods categories they don’t gain a whole lot of additional safety or peace of mind, they’re just paying more.

Anyone who has ever gotten prescription glasses made in the markets in China realizes how badly they’re getting ripped off.

If you actually live in China you aren’t paying $30 for a hooded sweatshirt like you do when you walk into a Target store. That price would be insane, astronomical (unless you’re just wealthier and shopping specifically at a luxury or Western brand).

Let’s take an example: a Boogie Board writing pad.

At Barnes and Noble the Boogie Board Jot Kids drawing tablet is $20.99

At Temu/AliExpress, it’s $3.50 total including shipping.

I.e., it’s easy for us to say that the “Netflix without ads experience” or the “smart TV without ads/spyware” is the experience we should all have. What’s harder is putting up the money to pay for those items when you’re working a real working class job.

I can’t blame anyone for dropping even moderately priced SaaS subscriptions for vibecoded cheap/free alternatives. I’ve done it myself: for example, why is every notes app with a decent feature set and collaborative functionality that is outside the Apple/Google ecosystem $5-10/month? That should cost $5/year.

As much as I hate Amazon, I think there is a simpler explanation. Europe has been relaxing their consumer protection standards for the past two decades, and EU’s consumer protection enforcement against foreign tech companies is hardly ever done today. This applies to both American and Chinese companies.

TEMU only exists because they simply neglected quality of their products which their competitors were required by law to have. And then they were not punished for it as they should have been.

In other words, TEMU only exists because Europe has turned into a deregulated neo-liberal paradise.

TEMU also existed because of the de minimis exception. To speed up customs processing and ease business, the US and EU had minimum package values before customs and tariff inspection occurred.

TEMU and Shein just kind of took it and ran with it by shipping $5 shirts en masse.

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This also only really happened because China's whole export oriented policy relies on keeping workers underpaid via capital control. Workers get their bank accounts at uncompetitive rates and that capital is used to fund manufacturing expansion. The normal thing that happens as a country gets richer is that workers earn more, start buying more of their domestic surplus and their export advantage goes away. However, the current thinking promoted by Xi is that consumption is just capitalist decadence, and so Chinese consumers can't buy the ever increasing goods surplus even if they wanted to. And China is also dealing with internal deflation now due to the massive confidence shock after the property bust.

There is a world, where Europe did not turn into a neo-liberal paradise as soon as the cold war ended. Where Europe straightened their labor rights (and kept their consumer protection). In that world, as people started waking up the fact that their products were largely made in sweatshops in India and China, Europe would have imposed import restriction and fined and closed companies who knowingly sold products made in sweatshops.

We do not live in that world. We live in a world where Europe went fully neo-liberal as soon as the threat of communism was over. And the results were companies taking full advantage of labor markets with abhorrent lack of labor protections.

European regulators and politicians could have done something about this, and decided not to. And so we have TEMU.

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