[aintgonnatakeit]

It’s part of a broader trend of enshittification that has hollowed out the middle. I blame the concentration of market power in the hands of a few large companies, mostly privately held. So you can pay far more for something good, or you can resign yourself to replacing the garbage everyone sells these days in the rapacious pursuit of shareholder value extraction.

[foxyv]

I've found most of the shitty garbage I buy has a single point of failure that can be replaced with a quality part. A plastic gear replaced with brass or steel. A capacitor. Sometimes just a dodgy USB port. A slowly degrading OS that is eventually discontinued.

I've extended the life of several devices by decades through simple repairs. It is no wonder that these same companies that want you buying a new washer/fridge/oven every 4 years are opposing right to repair. They love adding walled gardens to their products. Even our BBQs are getting electronic garbage added that can't be fixed normally...

[m463]

I wonder if you're touching on the ikea effect - your modification makes it more valuable to you

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect

Personally, I found that if the product is heavy, don't buy it on amazon. Everything is relentlessly based on shipping costs. If you buy wire shelves on amazon, they cost slightly less but the entire unit is far less durable.

[foxyv]

Naw, I'm just cheap. My washer had to literally fall apart before I replaced it. Cheap galvanized cast iron junk that vibrated itself to death.

Our family motto is "I can make it cheaper than that!" which tells you how often we fall victim to the IKEA effect. Lately I like to budget out my projects so I know if I'm actually saving any money. Especially considering labor. Most of my projects lately are stuff I can't get for hook or crook from anywhere.

You are totally right about heavy stuff on Amazon. To your door freight is SO expensive. The problem is all the stores are setting their prices to Amazon's prices.

[listenallyall]

> the rapacious pursuit of shareholder value extraction

It's always the fault of greedy corporatists here on HN -- honestly, that is just lazy thinking. Sure, they want to make money. But also, the average Joe wants stuff cheap. Made in China, lots of plastics replacing metal, lower-density materials, fewer fixable/replaceable parts, limited quality control. You can't really blame companies who build their products like this when it's shown over and over and over that cheap stuff is what sells.

[AndrewKemendo]

It’s the same problem…short term thinking. However it’s lopsided - the consumer can’t think long term because they are increasingly squeezed financially, so companies Race to the bottom for penny pinching consumers - driving wages further down or outsourcing altogether.

It’s a vicious cycle

[biomcgary]

Part of the short-term thinking is because reviews can be gamed. Why would I buy an expensive thing, if I don't have a reliable signal that it is higher quality and worth the extra cost? Price is a clear signal, reputation for quality is not.

[throwaway173738]

If you can handle the object you can also judge quality. I buy hand tools at specific stores and I pick the tool up and examine it for failure modes. I’ve broken cheap sledge hammers and framing hammers before so I try to be careful. It’s really important to look at the grain of the wood in the handle

[astrange]

Americans are increasingly higher income and more able to afford consumer products, not "increasingly squeezed financially".

[aintgonnatakeit]

This explains the growth in the low end but not the lack of decent mid-range options. We no longer have good/better/best. We only have shitty/best and one is 10x the price of the other. Of course Joe Blow isn’t going to spring for the 10x option; he can’t afford it. In the min-maxing of profit margins, we’ve lost the pretty ok. Also I didn’t blame the corporations man; I specifically blamed market consolidation, greedy investors, and the output of HBS.

[listenallyall]

> We only have shitty/best and one is 10x the price of the other.

Such as? Every product I've considered buying in the past few years has more price points and options than ever before. Yes many of them are ultra-cheap, but plenty of mid-priced options as well. For example a new top of the line GoPro Hero11 is $550. However you can easily find other action cams anywhere from under $99 to $450, some of which are other GoPro products.

[propogandist]

gopro is commodity hardware with a lot of marketing and branding to try and command a premium purchase price

[s1artibartfast]

I think it's the opposite of Market consolidation. It is Market diversification to the point where most brands mean nothing. When you have a hundred or a thousand brands for a good, being Middle Market means very little.

[dnissley]

Either you need the item onceish so you buy the cheap option, or you use it a lot so you buy the expensive option. Those in between can find a used expensive option on marketplace/craigslist/etc. Not a lot of demand left in between after that.

[KRAKRISMOTT]

CAD software is also to blame. The proliferation of CAD means we know exactly when a part will fail (subject of course to a statistical distribution). Things are not overbuilt anymore and manufacturers have precise control over an item's lifecycle.

[wilg]

Is there data on enshittification? I suspect people are overstating this. In theory making a product simpler and cheaper and lighter and easier to manufacture is better. The downside is (if it’s even true) reliability and “feel”.

[pcstl]

There is no data and that is intentional. This is lazy activism, meant to prey on people's feelings and biases rather than actually propose concrete improvements.

[red-iron-pine]

Planned obsolescence and "they don't make em like they used to" has been a thing long, long before anyone posting on HN was born.

Requiring data to prove that concepts are a thing is disingenuous -- what products? what timeframe? what metrics? what profit margins vs. outcomes?

I don't need a 2 million strong Postgres DB to tell me that Ikea furniture is more prone to breaking than the heavy Amish furniture they sell a county over.

[wilg]

It’s obviously not disingenuous to try to figure out if something is true. Otherwise, you can just believe whatever makes you feel good about yourself or angry at the right other people.

[kevviiinn]

Better for who, exactly

[wilg]

Everyone

[kevviiinn]

Cheap goods that break and need to be replaced not only end up costing more through replacement and repair but also harm the environment through greater pollution and energy use due to more items being manufactured

[wilg]

Only if the replacement rate is higher than the cost of extra materials for each unit. Otherwise, the opposite is true.

[kevviiinn]

So you're saying that manufacturing a greater number of items does not use more energy? That doesn't sound quite right to me

[biomcgary]

Planned obsolescence is the subscription model for physical goods.

[red-iron-pine]

> mostly privately held

Nah. Privately held means that they don't need to pander for next quarter's numbers. Publicly traded is always a race to the bottom.