4 ms·

I would consider market forces a more reasonable explanation: most people are going to pick the cheapest option. The success of cheap, flickering bulbs attests

by jml7c5 7y ago

I would consider market forces a more reasonable explanation: most people are going to pick the cheapest option. The success of cheap, flickering bulbs attests to that, I think. It doesn't help that the old Edison screw is terrible for cooling.

stubish 7y ago
There is no sane option but to pick the cheapest option. You go to the shop here and see 3 or 4 brands, and looking at the details they all seem identical. You choose your voltage, colour warmth, and if you want to pay a premium for the only brand name you recognize.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  You can do 3-5 minutes of research before picking a brand.
  - Inityx 7y ago
    People don't.
    - nine_k 7y ago
      That's their problem, not necessarily yours.
      - dredmorbius 7y ago
        Incorrect: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyranny_of_the_minimum_viable_user/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      Okay. But it's still a perfectly good counter to "no sane option".
      - dredmorbius 7y ago
        Really, it's not. Unless there's some regulatorially-mandated set of minimum standards, given the thin information channel of price ("what will I have to pay out of pocket right now for Product X, with no other indicator of quality, longevity, or potential risks"), the market will pursue low costs with an iron determination, over all other factors. Consider that a corrolary of Gresham's Law, which in its essence says that given a nominal currency value, currency of lower determinable quality (lower specie metal content) will tend to drive higher-quality currency from the market. "But wait, Dred," you say, "You just said that there was no other indicator of value. Why is low specie currency driving out high specie?" Because that's not the relevant value, and it actually is apparent (or at least sufficiently so to a certain number of traders in coin). It's the nominal value that's the determinant for circulation. In the case of coin, it's face value which determines market exchange. Put another way: in a world of copper-painted zinc lozenges circulating as pennies, a diamond-encrusted gold penny will still only net you $0.01 in exchange value as currency. You're better off holding on to it or trading it for its specie / gem value. With bulbs or electronics, the logic shifts around a bit, but the result is similar. Price becomes exchange value, product quality factors (colour registration, colour range, flicker rate, dimmer compatibility and performance, heat dissipation, any electronics buzz or hum, diffusion pattern, and most of all, that one factor you cannot determine in 3-5 minutes at a store: product life (or more properly: product-quality-life, the period of time it functions adequately before driving you bananas, even if it doesn't fully fail). You're standing in a store aisle, or staring at an utterly uninformative webpage of quite probably counterfeit and fake-reviewed Amazon LED bulbs as well as whatever LED-bulb-adjacent search results Amazon's Alexa Search Engine has decided it needs to distract you with today, and you see two things: - LED bulb. - Price. And "you" is the typical shopper. Which is to say, one who's not read this particular screed. What are you going to do? You're going to pick the lowest-cost bulb you see and offer a prayer to His Noodliness. This is, incidentally, a chief reason why pure market solutions tend toward abysmal product offerings in the absence of some external regulatory, ratings, or similar systems. There's an alternative, and some retailers follow this. Marks & Spencer in the UK long made a tradition of carrying only one exemplar of a brand, generally represented as "the best there is". That is, M&S undertake the research and quality determination costs for its customers. Your research problem is reduced to "shop M&S". In the US there are retailers who follow a similar strategy, though emphasizing the price-quality relationship. Costco is among these, where typically only a small range of products within a category is offered (Trader Joe's operates similarly, though only in food). Friends purchased a convection toaster-oven from Costco recently -- not the cheapest model out there, but one which performs quite admirably, will handle a frozen pizza and most meals for 2-3 quite well, and (whilst slightly tricked out on controls) is fairly simple and straightforward to operate. On balance, "shop Costco" has been justified in this case. The pure-pricing model typically works best (if at all) for nondifferentiable commodities of minimum complexity. Foodstuffs, bulk construction materials such as sand and gravel, coal, oil, etc. And yet even within each of these in developed economies you'll find grading and quality control, some imposed by government mandates, some self-adopted by industry. And outside of bulk commodities -- in services, in wages, in rents, in interest and risk markets, in public goods -- pure market-based pricing absent various corrections, breaks down entirely or leads inevitably to pathological conditions. See "Iron Law of Wages" and "Law of Rent" -- the twin prods of numerous revolutions. The problem with your "sane option" is that at mass market scale, say, the 100 million or so households in the US, or the 300 millions or so in China, it simply does not scale. Information and expertise implies some level of clustering and trust relations. Commodity pricing doesn't provide for this.
  - foxyv 7y ago
    But little do you know, the brand was bought out by a different company so they could sell cheap junk using the reputation of the brand you chose and the review is now out of date.
- IgorPartola 7y ago
  Record those bulbs with slow motion mode on your phone. Some of them flicker a lot more than others.
  - vonseel 7y ago
    Good idea. I have never noticed flicker on any of my lightbulbs. I wonder if some of us are unable to see (most) flicker, even though we may otherwise have great uncorrected vision?
- nine_k 7y ago
  You can pick the cheapest within a range, but not the cheapest overall. E.g. I get relatively good bulbs by requiring CRI > 90. Or just requiring no flicker, as a feature. When the producer has more than one parameter to optimize, they seem to come up with more well-rounded designs. To say nothing of the useful features I mentioned. Yes, I likely pay 2-4 times more for these bulbs. But they perform, and they stay for years of intense use. The cheapest overall bulbs are designed for other purposes.
glenngillen 7y ago
And yet, that industry segment has prior form here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
IanSanders 7y ago
While cheapest options are likely to be among least reliable, I doubt more expensive options are always going to be more reliable.
foxyv 7y ago
Except when you go to buy the bulb that is more expensive, hoping it works better, it just ends up dying FASTER. There seems to be no correlation between price and quality anymore.

by jml7c5 7y ago

stubish 7y ago

There is no sane option but to pick the cheapest option. You go to the shop here and see 3 or 4 brands, and looking at the details they all seem identical. You choose your voltage, colour warmth, and if you want to pay a premium for the only brand name you recognize.

Dylan16807 7y ago
You can do 3-5 minutes of research before picking a brand.
- Inityx 7y ago
  People don't.
  - nine_k 7y ago
    That's their problem, not necessarily yours.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Incorrect: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyranny_of_the_minimum_viable_user/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    Okay. But it's still a perfectly good counter to "no sane option".
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Really, it's not. Unless there's some regulatorially-mandated set of minimum standards, given the thin information channel of price ("what will I have to pay out of pocket right now for Product X, with no other indicator of quality, longevity, or potential risks"), the market will pursue low costs with an iron determination, over all other factors. Consider that a corrolary of Gresham's Law, which in its essence says that given a nominal currency value, currency of lower determinable quality (lower specie metal content) will tend to drive higher-quality currency from the market. "But wait, Dred," you say, "You just said that there was no other indicator of value. Why is low specie currency driving out high specie?" Because that's not the relevant value, and it actually is apparent (or at least sufficiently so to a certain number of traders in coin). It's the nominal value that's the determinant for circulation. In the case of coin, it's face value which determines market exchange. Put another way: in a world of copper-painted zinc lozenges circulating as pennies, a diamond-encrusted gold penny will still only net you $0.01 in exchange value as currency. You're better off holding on to it or trading it for its specie / gem value. With bulbs or electronics, the logic shifts around a bit, but the result is similar. Price becomes exchange value, product quality factors (colour registration, colour range, flicker rate, dimmer compatibility and performance, heat dissipation, any electronics buzz or hum, diffusion pattern, and most of all, that one factor you cannot determine in 3-5 minutes at a store: product life (or more properly: product-quality-life, the period of time it functions adequately before driving you bananas, even if it doesn't fully fail). You're standing in a store aisle, or staring at an utterly uninformative webpage of quite probably counterfeit and fake-reviewed Amazon LED bulbs as well as whatever LED-bulb-adjacent search results Amazon's Alexa Search Engine has decided it needs to distract you with today, and you see two things: - LED bulb. - Price. And "you" is the typical shopper. Which is to say, one who's not read this particular screed. What are you going to do? You're going to pick the lowest-cost bulb you see and offer a prayer to His Noodliness. This is, incidentally, a chief reason why pure market solutions tend toward abysmal product offerings in the absence of some external regulatory, ratings, or similar systems. There's an alternative, and some retailers follow this. Marks & Spencer in the UK long made a tradition of carrying only one exemplar of a brand, generally represented as "the best there is". That is, M&S undertake the research and quality determination costs for its customers. Your research problem is reduced to "shop M&S". In the US there are retailers who follow a similar strategy, though emphasizing the price-quality relationship. Costco is among these, where typically only a small range of products within a category is offered (Trader Joe's operates similarly, though only in food). Friends purchased a convection toaster-oven from Costco recently -- not the cheapest model out there, but one which performs quite admirably, will handle a frozen pizza and most meals for 2-3 quite well, and (whilst slightly tricked out on controls) is fairly simple and straightforward to operate. On balance, "shop Costco" has been justified in this case. The pure-pricing model typically works best (if at all) for nondifferentiable commodities of minimum complexity. Foodstuffs, bulk construction materials such as sand and gravel, coal, oil, etc. And yet even within each of these in developed economies you'll find grading and quality control, some imposed by government mandates, some self-adopted by industry. And outside of bulk commodities -- in services, in wages, in rents, in interest and risk markets, in public goods -- pure market-based pricing absent various corrections, breaks down entirely or leads inevitably to pathological conditions. See "Iron Law of Wages" and "Law of Rent" -- the twin prods of numerous revolutions. The problem with your "sane option" is that at mass market scale, say, the 100 million or so households in the US, or the 300 millions or so in China, it simply does not scale. Information and expertise implies some level of clustering and trust relations. Commodity pricing doesn't provide for this.
- foxyv 7y ago
  But little do you know, the brand was bought out by a different company so they could sell cheap junk using the reputation of the brand you chose and the review is now out of date.
IgorPartola 7y ago
Record those bulbs with slow motion mode on your phone. Some of them flicker a lot more than others.
- vonseel 7y ago
  Good idea. I have never noticed flicker on any of my lightbulbs. I wonder if some of us are unable to see (most) flicker, even though we may otherwise have great uncorrected vision?
nine_k 7y ago
You can pick the cheapest within a range, but not the cheapest overall. E.g. I get relatively good bulbs by requiring CRI > 90. Or just requiring no flicker, as a feature. When the producer has more than one parameter to optimize, they seem to come up with more well-rounded designs. To say nothing of the useful features I mentioned. Yes, I likely pay 2-4 times more for these bulbs. But they perform, and they stay for years of intense use. The cheapest overall bulbs are designed for other purposes.

glenngillen 7y ago

And yet, that industry segment has prior form here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

IanSanders 7y ago

While cheapest options are likely to be among least reliable, I doubt more expensive options are always going to be more reliable.

foxyv 7y ago

Except when you go to buy the bulb that is more expensive, hoping it works better, it just ends up dying FASTER. There seems to be no correlation between price and quality anymore.