[everforward]

> the quality is so poor for many items that it simply is no good for society in any way.

There are some that are genuinely dangerous and bad for society, but there are tons of goods that are "the same thing but half the price because it lasts a quarter the time" that have genuine utility.

Harbor Freight has basically made a drop-shipping business out of it. I often have tools that I need but will probably use 4 times in my life, and the Harbor Freight stuff is crap but will probably work 4 times.

Copy that over a bunch of verticals and it starts to make sense. Clothing for a costume I'll wear maybe twice, niche cooking gadgets for very specific things, tools to do a one-time repair on a car, a flash drive to turn over photos to family members, yada yada.

[verall]

I think the dirty secret is that a lot of it is not "1/2 the price that lasts 1/4 the time" but "1/4 the price that lasts 9/10 the time" or "1/2 the price for the exact same product without half of the budget going to marketing".

It's not all of it. Some things are seriously worse quality. But really a ton of the "better quality" is just better marketing.

[retired]

> Clothing for a costume I'll wear maybe twice

There was a time where society didn't buy clothes to only wear once or twice but would instead rent them for those occasions.

[doubled112]

> some that are genuinely dangerous ... tools that I need but will probably use 4 times in my life, and the Harbor Freight stuff is crap but will probably work 4 times

Forehead hit hood, but I caught myself so it was a "gentle" reminder instead of a concussion. I should have splurged that time I broke a socket tightening an axle bolt. 150 ft-lbs + 180 degrees is a fair bit of torque.

[everforward]

There are definitely things I wouldn't roll the dice on from Harbor Freight.

Anything that unpredictably dumps large amounts of kinetic energy on failure is one of those.

I had a buddy that bought the tool for getting car suspension springs on from Harbor Freight, and I definitely wouldn't roll those dice.

[ktallett]

This assumes that we can't pass items on in life which we can or even repurpose, such as the USB key.