[massysett]

There’s a lot of stuff that works remarkably well even though it’s cheap. I just came from a supermarket. It’s filled with items from around the world, of which most are very inexpensive. The consistent quality of these products is astounding—a bag of potato chips or a box of crackers tastes exactly the same, anywhere in the country where I buy it, year-round. A can of Coca-Cola tastes exactly the same even though they’re bottled in different facilities with different owners.

These things did cost a lot to develop, but for the consumer it’s quite inexpensive. As GP said, we just take these things for granted and don’t notice them.

[jules]

The coke bottles themselves are amazing too. I used to go to school with a reusable bottle filled with milk. Those cylindrical lunch bottles for kids were absolutely horrible. They leaked half the time, spoiling my bag and notebook. If you dropped them they would break because they were hard plastic. The rubber ring that was supposed to stop it from leaking would degrade quickly and start to smell funny. Those things cost as much as 20 bottles of coke, and an empty coke bottle is a vastly superior product in almost every way!

[samgtx]

A bit of a woo-woo aside but I've been trying to practice more gratitude thinking in my daily life and the grocery store is an easy place to be reminded of how good we have it.

[AnonC]

> A bit of woo woo aside but I’ve been trying to practice more gratitude…

No woo woo necessary. You may be interested in checking this (and related citations) about research on gratitude and psychological well being:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratitude#Psychological_interv...

[JohnBooty]

Practicing gratitude is probably the single easiest way to increase one's happiness, and yet it's so easy to forget to do it even if you know that. At least for me.

One thing we can do is keep a gratitude journal where we write down things we're grateful for. Can literally be grateful for the sun shining, or not experiencing an earthquake, for having the ability to write in a journal in the first place, etc.

It's so, so powerful.

[Aunche]

Relevant video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BNpk_OGEGlA

Grocery stores are a marvel for sure. It's a miracle that we can get a season fruit like grapes 365 days a year.

[mint2]

It may be a miracle of logistics when ignoring negative externalities like carbon cost vs not shipping it halfway across the globe. Why can’t we eat seasonally? It usually tastes better and makes things less monotonous

[Psyladine]

I'm a believer that the largest part of what led Yeltsin to fundamentally change what it was, and thus cause the dissolution of the USSR, was his impromptu grocery store visit in the US.

[hodgesrm]

Conversely there are lot of things that are expensive and work very badly. "Designer anything" as for example, designer light fixtures. I've had terrible experiences with these.

[fendy3002]

It happens to almost anything creative products, stylish, custom made, and services.

I guess because there isn't enough time and money to assess the quality and optimize them.

[CRConrad]

I think it's more that you just simply can get away with it: Artsy-fartsy types that care more about design care less about function and quality, so don't question and check them enough for manufacturers to have to keep high standards in those areas.

[WWLink]

> There’s a lot of stuff that works remarkably well even though it’s cheap.

Even light switches are pretty cheap. You can get a basic single light switch for around $2. Sure there's decora switches, dimmer switches, and all kinds of other great things for $50+ but the basic $2 ones will still last decades.

[NavinF]

If you replaced the contacts with a triac and replaced the switch mechanism with a thick bistable flexure, it would likely last centuries and have a BoM cost around $2.

I’ve had 2 switches fail over the last 2 years out of the ~40 switches installed in the house. One failed by welding itself closed and another failed by caving into the electrical box when I hit it too hard. Even though the 40 year life expectancy of a single switch sounds good, the reality is that one fails catastrophically every year. I’d love to get more reliable switches that last well over a century, but I’m not aware of anyone that measures this sort of thing.

[fendy3002]

Exactly. I can't imagine how expensive a computer chip should be if the process isn't optimized / streamlined.

And for kitchenware and dinningware, we still get decent quality for a still rather cheap price. Of course as the article stated it's not easy to determine which one with decent quality, however if customers only aim for the cheapest one of course it won't be good.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Coke and potato chips are not at all inexpensive if you include the health costs.

They're pretty good examples of things that are cheap and don't work very well, if your goal is health and not distraction/entertainment.

[CRConrad]

But health isn't the goal when people consume Coke and potato chips, and conversely if health is your goal you don't consume Coke and potato chips.