[yrimaxi]

> There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out, replaced by better objective information about products. I'm kind of partial to this idea myself.

Based on what? Are people investing less in marketing than before?

[prepend]

My personal experience is that many brands had a high markup on brand recognition and I used to be able to find better quality and value through no name brands that made good products. The internet is supposed to spread information well and with perfect information I should be able to differentiate true quality vs just a known brand signaling quality.

I think the problem is that places like Amazon distort information (eg, tolerate crappy reviews) because it makes them more money. The bazaar model is supposed to have some positive feedback loops to incentivize positive events, but that’s drifting away.

So I used to think that effective marketplaces would replace brands with disintermediation and perfect info. But not so much now.

This is sort of a tl;dr for why I buy Apple. They have a huge markup for brand name, but it’s exhausting to me to try to evaluate what’s the best laptop this year and I can trust Apple to probably be pretty good.