[nradov]

Nonsense. If you want really nice, high quality furniture then you can just pay a local craftsman to make it for you. This is always an option regardless and some of us are not easily manipulated by ads. Of course good furniture will be expensive.

[omeid2]

The mass production discount must not be overlooked, whatever most people want becomes the most cost effective, and it appears that most people want cheap, and so anything beyond the absolute minimum costs a lot more relative to the quality.

[Rotundo]

I don't believe the "people want cheap" spiel. Sure, they want affordable.

As consumers can not tell the quality of products beforehand, and price is certainly no guarantee of quality, the only logical choice is to buy cheap.

I wish there was a sort of rating of product quality [1], so I can choose the optimum price/quality for a product.

[1] Reviews suck for this purpose. Half of them say things like "Fast shipping, five stars!". By the time defects show up months later and the one-star reviews arrive, the product is discontinued anyway.

[ozgrakkurt]

You can’t do this for a washing machine of a tv or a phone.

Even if you can now, it is getting more difficult.

And there doesn’t seem to be any way to avoid it as every washing machine is becoming “smart”, worse at actually washing clothes and using internet to send your data so it can be sold for more profit.

[nradov]

You can buy a dumb washing machine on the commercial market.

https://speedqueencommercial.com/en-us/products/top-load-was...

[cherryteastain]

Last time I wanted to do this for a desk which perfectly fits a particular nook in my home, the local craftsmen quoted 20x the price of Ikea and an 8 month lead time.

Needless to say, I got an Ikea desk delivered 3 days later.

[blfr]

Yeah, you prioritized price and availability over sheer product quality. Millions upon millions of people made the same choice.

[XorNot]

I mean I bought an Ikea desk like, 15 years ago and have moved it through multiple home offices in that time and it's holding up fine. I also bought it because it was cheap enough I wouldn't worry about taking a jigsaw to it to get it customized just right for me (which was mostly cutting a hole for my tower computer case to sit just right in).

The problem with "you want real quality" people is they mostly seem to advocate buying expensive demonstrative items, rather then properly evaluating what they need.

If a desk has successful held my things and enabled me to work at it for over a decade, what exactly is "quality" meant to be and be bought for?

[blfr]

That's true: millions of people bought a desk right for their needs but we are comparing it to some super expensive (in real terms) item from 80 years ago.