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Autos, which were the first major industry to globalize, have shown undeniably significant and sustained improvements in quality, reliability and safety over ti

• ezzzzz 7y ago
  This is true, but there are 2 things to consider here. First, purchasing a new or gently used car is likely to be a person's second biggest monthly expense after housing. It is therefore in the best interest of the manufacturer to create a product that is reliable (at least reliable enough to last as long as the 6-7 year loan which are common today). Secondly, you have a couple of 'unicorn' manufacturers (to use a SV parlance) in Toyota and Honda that have historically been outliers in reliability within their market, and have subsequently dominated the market. This is a huge difference from the sweat-shop in Bangladesh making t-shirts for Wal-Mart or H&M, or the electronics manufacturer in Shenzhen making toasters. It's all about supply and demand, the demand for a reliable automobile creates a market for that product. Meanwhile, as lower and middle-class people have less purchasing power due to high housing prices, debt, medical expenses etc, the demand for cheap toasters is greater than the demand for a more expensive (but robust) alternative.